Action depiction in gestures and signs

Abstract The relation between gestures and signs is highly debated both in gestures and sign language studies. Addressing the common symbolic ground from which both gestures and signs arise could improve our general knowledge about the body’s role in meaning construction and in shaping communication. To effectively compare how signers and speakers employ their bodies to convey meanings, we investigated how actions are depicted in gestures and signs by collecting and comparing data from 15 hearing Italian speakers and 10 Deaf LIS signers. Specifically, the present study addresses the use of representational strategies (i.e., own body, hand-as-hand, hand-as-object) in co-speech gestures and signs in different action domains (i.e., to break, to take, to attach, to open, to turn). We aim to look at how different action domains affect the distribution of representational strategies in gestures and signs. Our results showed that action domains influenced the use of representational strategies similarly among signers and speakers, suggesting that action events are conceptualized alike. Nevertheless, there are qualitative differences in action depiction, discussed throughout the paper, as well as in the combination of different representational strategies, used less by Italian speakers, compared to LIS signers.