Language and Gesture in Chinese Conversation: Bǐshǒu-Shuōhuà

Language and Gesture in Chinese Conversation is a study of the semantic and temporal relationships between the speech and the gesture in the context of discourse interaction in Mandarin Chinese spoken in Taiwan. The cross-modal representation of ideas in natural discourse reveals the nature of BĬSHŎU-SHUŌHUÀ in the communication of meaning.

The study addresses two central issues:

- How do language and gesture represent the semantic information of various types of ideas?

- How do the linguistic representation and gestural depiction pattern temporally in the communication of cross-modal information?

The intended audience of this book are scholars in many academic fields, including linguistics, language and gesture, human communication, cognition, cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, sociology, linguistic anthropology, speech pathology, and speech therapy.

Kawai Chui is Professor of Linguistics and a research fellow at the Research Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning, and the Research Center for Chinese Cultural Subjectivity, National Chengchi University, Taipei. Her main research interests include the use of language and gesture in discourse, the neurocognitive processing of gestures in speech communication, and the gesture development in children with typical development and children with language delay. She is also engaged in a cross-language investigation of linguistic universality and specificity across Mandarin Chinese, Russian, and Czech.