The Use of Beat Gestures by a Native Spanish speaker affects Intelligibility, Comprehensibility, and Persuasiveness, according to Non-native Spanish listeners and Native Spanish listeners.
Keywords
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Issue Date
2022-07-25
Language
en
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The current study examines how beat gestures affect the lexical stress perception in Spanish. To elaborate we investigate whether the use of beat gestures produced by a native Spanish speaker affects the intelligibility, comprehensibility, and persuasiveness, perceived by L1 and L2 listeners of Spanish. Using an experimental survey with a 2x2 between-subject design, a total of 94 Dutch and Spanish native participants were used. A factorial MANOVA was done to analyze the effect of the presence of a beat gesture and language of the listener on intelligibility, comprehensibility, and persuasiveness, and a Spearman’s Rho one-tailed correlation test to analyze the relationship between intelligibility, comprehensibility, and persuasiveness.
Firstly, the findings showed no effect on the speaker’s intelligibility, regardless of the presence or absence of gestures. Secondly, beat gestures seemed to increase the speaker’s persuasiveness but decreased the speaker’s comprehensibility. Thirdly, compared to Dutch participants, Spanish participants thought the speaker was comprehensible, intelligible, and more persuasive. Nevertheless, if the interlocutor was an L1 or L2 respondent had no impact on the effect observed for the existence of a beat gesture. Furthermore, a positive correlation between intelligibility, comprehensibility, and persuasiveness. Finally, several limitations were recognized, followed by recommendations for future research.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Letteren