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Kin cognition and communication : What talking, gesturing, and drawing about family can tell us about the way we think about this core social structure

Devylder, Simon LU ; Hinnel, Jennifer ; van de Weijer, Joost LU orcid ; Brink Andersen, Linea LU ; Laporte-Devylder, Lucie and Kulukul, Heron Ken Tomaki (2024) In Cognitive Science 48(9).
Abstract
When people talk about kinship systems, they often use co-speech gestures and other representations to elaborate. This paper investigates such polysemiotic (spoken, gestured, and drawn) descriptions of kinship relations, to see if they display recurring patterns of conventionalization that capture specific social structures. We present an exploratory hypothesis-generating study of descriptions produced by a lesser-known ethnolinguistic community to the cognitive sciences: the Paamese people of Vanuatu. Forty Paamese speakers were asked to talk about their family in semi-guided kinship interviews. Analyses of the speech, gesture, and drawings produced during these interviews revealed that lineality (i.e., mother’s side vs. father’s side) is... (More)
When people talk about kinship systems, they often use co-speech gestures and other representations to elaborate. This paper investigates such polysemiotic (spoken, gestured, and drawn) descriptions of kinship relations, to see if they display recurring patterns of conventionalization that capture specific social structures. We present an exploratory hypothesis-generating study of descriptions produced by a lesser-known ethnolinguistic community to the cognitive sciences: the Paamese people of Vanuatu. Forty Paamese speakers were asked to talk about their family in semi-guided kinship interviews. Analyses of the speech, gesture, and drawings produced during these interviews revealed that lineality (i.e., mother’s side vs. father’s side) is lateralized in the speaker’s gesture space. In other words, kinship members of the speaker’s matriline are placed on the left side of the speaker’s body and those of the patriline are placed on their right side, when they are mentioned in speech. Moreover, we find that the gesture produced by Paamese participants during verbal descriptions of marital relations are performed significantly more often on two diagonal directions of the sagittal axis. We show that these diagonals are also found in the few diagrams that participants drew on the ground to augment their verbo-gestural descriptions of marriage practices with drawing. We interpret this behavior as evidence of a spatial template, which Paamese speakers activate to think and communicate about family relations. We therefore argue that extending investigations of kinship structures beyond kinship terminologies alone can unveil additional key factors that shape kinship cognition and communication and hereby provide further insights into the diversity of social structures. (Less)
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author
; ; ; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Kinship typology, Gesture, Relational thinking, Spatial thinking, Perspective taking, Spatial semantics, Multimodality
in
Cognitive Science
volume
48
issue
9
article number
e13484
pages
32 pages
publisher
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
ISSN
1551-6709
DOI
10.1111/cogs.13484
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
365bfee5-bc62-46cc-a8ff-91eea5ce9171
date added to LUP
2024-09-04 15:05:05
date last changed
2024-09-10 13:25:11
@article{365bfee5-bc62-46cc-a8ff-91eea5ce9171,
  abstract     = {{When people talk about kinship systems, they often use co-speech gestures and other representations to elaborate. This paper investigates such polysemiotic (spoken, gestured, and drawn) descriptions of kinship relations, to see if they display recurring patterns of conventionalization that capture specific social structures. We present an exploratory hypothesis-generating study of descriptions produced by a lesser-known ethnolinguistic community to the cognitive sciences: the Paamese people of Vanuatu. Forty Paamese speakers were asked to talk about their family in semi-guided kinship interviews. Analyses of the speech, gesture, and drawings produced during these interviews revealed that lineality (i.e., mother’s side vs. father’s side) is lateralized in the speaker’s gesture space. In other words, kinship members of the speaker’s matriline are placed on the left side of the speaker’s body and those of the patriline are placed on their right side, when they are mentioned in speech. Moreover, we find that the gesture produced by Paamese participants during verbal descriptions of marital relations are performed significantly more often on two diagonal directions of the sagittal axis. We show that these diagonals are also found in the few diagrams that participants drew on the ground to augment their verbo-gestural descriptions of marriage practices with drawing. We interpret this behavior as evidence of a spatial template, which Paamese speakers activate to think and communicate about family relations. We therefore argue that extending investigations of kinship structures beyond kinship terminologies alone can unveil additional key factors that shape kinship cognition and communication and hereby provide further insights into the diversity of social structures.}},
  author       = {{Devylder, Simon and Hinnel, Jennifer and van de Weijer, Joost and Brink Andersen, Linea and Laporte-Devylder, Lucie and Kulukul, Heron Ken Tomaki}},
  issn         = {{1551-6709}},
  keywords     = {{Kinship typology; Gesture; Relational thinking; Spatial thinking; Perspective taking; Spatial semantics; Multimodality}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{9}},
  publisher    = {{Lawrence Erlbaum Associates}},
  series       = {{Cognitive Science}},
  title        = {{Kin cognition and communication : What talking, gesturing, and drawing about family can tell us about the way we think about this core social structure}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13484}},
  doi          = {{10.1111/cogs.13484}},
  volume       = {{48}},
  year         = {{2024}},
}