Speaker: Camilla Crawshaw, Technische Universität Dortmund

Title: Gesture and Metaphor: Two Sides of a Conceptual and Linguistic Coin?

Abstract: This talk will discuss potential analogies between metaphor and gesture comprehension with reference to findings from an 8-year longitudinal study. Prior research has independently shown that early gestural abilities predict children's subsequent language development (e.g. Colonnesi et al., 2010; Kirk et al., 2022; Lüke et al., 2020) while other work has shown evolving, strong connections between language skills, metaphor comprehension, and Theory of Mind (ToM) ability (e.g. Kalandadze et al., 2018; Milligan et al., 2007; Osterhaus and Koerber, 2021; Pronina et al., 2023; Tonini et al., 2023). Connecting these previous findings, we aimed to investigate the contribution of two different types of gesture—production of preverbal pointing gestures across a number of communicative motives and early iconic gesture comprehension—alongside early language skills to the later development of more advanced metacognitive and social pragmatic skills: ToM and metaphor comprehension.

Thirty-five monolingual, German-speaking children (18 boys, 17 girls) participated between the ages of 1 to 9 years in a longitudinal study at TU Dortmund University. Alongside the ongoing development of their language skills (productive vocabulary, productive and receptive grammar), the children were also assessed for pointing gestures at the age of 1;0 and iconic gesture comprehension at the age of 3;0, as well as metaphor comprehension and ToM skills at age 9;0. Results indicated that index-finger pointing at 1;0 can predict ToM ability and metaphor comprehension at age 9;0, mediated by both iconic gesture comprehension and language skills at age 3;0. These findings confirm existing work, highlighting the predictive nature of early gesture usage and comprehension not only for general language abilities such as vocabulary and grammar but also for more advanced metacognitive and social pragmatic skills.

Speaker’s Bio

Camilla Crawshaw is a fourth-year PhD student at TU Dortmund University under the supervision of Ute Ritterfeld and Carina Lüke. She previously worked as a research assistant with Katharina Rohlfing at Paderborn University and completed her master’s degree under the supervision of Mila Vulchanova at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Prior to this, she worked as a secondary school teacher of modern foreign languages in Bristol, having completed a PGDipEd at the University of Birmingham and a BA in German and Japanese at the University of Leeds.

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