In this paper I investigate the use of gestural allo-repetition in nonnative-native and native-native Japanese and English narratives of the story of an animation. Although Lerner (2002) and Hayashi, Mori & Takagi (2002) have demonstrated that recipients match speakers gestures to show alignment and display co-tellership in multi-party talk, there have been few studies on the use of gestural allo-repetition by recipients in dyadic animation narratives.
Based on an analysis of 4 Japanese native and 4 English native speakers narrations of the story of an animation in Japanese and English (16 narratives), I found that native Japanese recipients used more iconic gestural allo-repetition for confirmation and to prompt nonnative narrators than native English recipients. According to McNeill (1992) an iconic gesture represents a concrete event, object or action which is referred to in the accompanying speech. When nonnative Japanese speakers indicated their uncertainty about or searched for a word/expression in Japanese with an accompanying iconic gesture, Japanese native speakers repeated the gesture while providing the confirmation and/or a Japanese word/expression for the nonnative to incorporate into their narrative. This suggests that gestures can be a useful resource for nonnative Japanese learners to accomplish learning through interaction. Iconic gestural allo-repetition was used less frequently by recipients in native-native Japanese narratives. When recipients made confirmations with gestures in these narratives, they did so to show their involvement or to savor (Tannen 1987) the gesture in the interaction. Finally, native English story recipients tended not to confirm with gestural allo-repetition, and asked more questions about new information rather than repeating for confirmation.
This research contributes to our understanding of how gestural allo-repetition is used in native-native and native-nonnative Japanese and English narratives, and has applications for teaching Japanese as a second language.