The Relationship of Gestures and Quantification of Language Phenomena in Czechpersons with Aphasia Cover Image

Vztah gestikulace s kvantifikací jazykových jevů u českých mluvčích s afázií
The Relationship of Gestures and Quantification of Language Phenomena in Czechpersons with Aphasia

Author(s): Martin Janečka
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Applied Linguistics, Psycholinguistics
Published by: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci
Keywords: aphasia; multimodality; gestures; type-token ratio; hapax legomenon

Summary/Abstract: In aphasic persons speaking Czech, I verify the following assumption established by Jakob et al. (2011): the more speech-limited an aphasic person is, the more gestures he/she produces during the interpretation of a story. It was found that the number of words produced by aphasic persons varies, partially dependent on the specific type of aphasia. This is particularly true on both ends of the scale – people with large speech distortion use the highest quantity of gestures, people with low speech distortion use gestures to a lesser extent. Within the classification of semantic gestures, I focus particularly on iconic and deictic gestures. In addition, I presume that symbolic gestures (i.e., emblems) do not occur in aphasic persons’ speech, because aphasic persons prefer gestures that display the plot in the most concrete way. My data correlate with other studies dealing with this topic – aphasic persons do use gestures intentionally to substitute for their verbal deficiency. At the same time, they mostly use very concrete (iconic) gestures, which enable them to transmit a large volume of information

  • Issue Year: 14/2022
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 74-89
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Czech