Kinesiological Approach to the Interpretation of Gestures in a Written Literary Text

Abstract

The interpretation of the universal hand gestures of spreading arms and clapping hands in a written literary text is considered using the kinesiological approach to non-verbal communication of participants while speaking, which is currently widely developed. This approach makes it possible to identify the structuring role of the human body in the implementation of gestures based on the biomechanics of individual body parts involved in the process of gesticulation. For movement analysis researchers of French Sign Language designed a real-time 3D gesture visualization tool named ThirdEye to help study the importance of movement in the production of meaning within the context of sign language. Some studies support the idea that research on gestures accompanying speech can provide ways of studying speakers’ conceptualization of grammatical notions as they are speaking. So, the research on co-verbal gestures in French shows that gestures marking a boundary are predominantly associated with the Passé composé (perfect tense) whereas the gestures without boundaries are more often associated with the Imparfait (indefinite tense).

As to literary text, it has been proved that the material embodiment of a gesture will obviously differ in each individual case, taking into account the author’s commentary, which gives an ambiguous expressive and evaluative characteristic of the action being performed. The importance of reliance on the extralinguistic context is emphasized, which increases significantly in the situation of translating a text that interprets the body language of the “third” culture representatives who are not native speakers of the source or the target languages. Given the lack of a visual representation illustrating a specific gesture, the interpretation of the relevant fragments of the text requires an extensive cognitive baggage and a developed creative imagination of the translator.