Per un approccio pragmatico allo studio della comunicazione multimodale: l’azione linguistica tra gesto e parola

The linguistics has an increasing need to approach the linguistic system as a multimodal system. This paper shows a study on multimodal communication through analysis of data from the CORMIP pilot corpus. It investigates the relationship between gesture and speech expressing linguistic action. The quantitative data demonstrate that gestures are widely used to express linguistic action, most often with speech. The qualitative analysis shows instead that gesture functions could be distinguished in two different pragmatic functions: the textual function and the illocutionary function. Gestures can express these functions both without speech than with it.