Interpretation of French and Spanish hand gestures by beginning and advanced level students
Date
1996
Authors
Gopalan, Sandhya
Major Professor
Advisor
Chatfield, Walter L.
Committee Member
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Abstract
The objective of this thesis is to study how beginning and advanced level university students of French and Spanish interpret hand gestures, and what cues they rely on. This study refers to hand gestures as hand movements that are aimed at directly conveying a specific message. The hand gestures used in this study are mimic and emblematic, and are accompanied, followed, or occur independently of verbal statements. The aim of this research is to address three important issues: 1) If the students able to interpret hand gestures, given the communicative nature of their curriculum; 2) If the advanced level students perform better, given their lingustic maturity; 3) What kind of cues students at both levels use to interpret hand gestures. Additionally, the influence of four factors on the interpretation of hand gestures will be discussed: the number of years of experience in the target language, the number of years of experience in other foreign languages, whether the students are taught by a native speaker, and how long the students have stayed in a country that speaks the target language.
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thesis