8 - Language-specific encoding of placement events in gestures

Summary

Introduction

What information do speakers attend to as they prepare to speak about the world? This question lies at the heart of concerns about how language might influence the ways in which humans deal with the world. As we plan to talk about events around us, we must select which information is relevant for expression and how to encode it in speech. This activity is alternatively known in the literature as ‘macro-planning,’ ‘linguistic conceptualization,’ ‘event construal,’ and ‘perspective taking’ (e.g., Levelt 1989; von Stutterheim and Klein 2002; von Stutterheim, Nüse, and Murcia-Serra 2002). Various suggestions have been made regarding what constrains such information selection. One approach focuses on the effects of the linguistic categories themselves. It suggests that speakers' choices of information are guided or “filtered” through the linguistic categories afforded by their language, specifically by the categories they habitually use to express events (e.g., Berman and Slobin 1994a; Carroll and von Stutterheim 2003, and in this volume; Slobin 1991, 1996a; von Stutterheim and Nüse 2003; von Stutterheim, Nüse, and Murcia-Serra 2002). This idea is known as the thinking for speaking hypothesis (e.g., Slobin 1991, 1996a). Language-specific rhetorical styles, views or perspectives arise through the habitual use of linguistic categories that select for certain types of information to be expressed (Slobin 2004; Talmy 2008). This view of the effect of linguistic categories on speaking differs in scope from the so-called linguistic relativity or neo-Whorfian hypothesis.