Kawasaki2026
| Kawasaki2026 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Kawasaki2026 |
| Author(s) | Ayano Kawasaki |
| Title | Recipient designed gestures: teacher’s orientation to students’ cultural membership |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Conversation analysis, Cultural membership, Gassho gesture, Gesture, Japanese, Recipient design, In press |
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| Year | 2026 |
| Language | English |
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| Journal | Classroom Discourse |
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| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1080/19463014.2026.2708337 |
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Abstract
Although a growing body of classroom research has demonstrated how teachers use gestures to facilitate students’ comprehension in both language learning contexts and other subject domains, few studies have examined how recipient-designed gestures are oriented towards students’ cultural membership and identity. To address this gap, this study investigates how and in what contexts an English-speaking teacher with advanced Japanese knowledge and his students employ the gassho gesture – a culturally relevant, ‘pre-fabricated’ gesture involving the placement of both palms together – in a US-based lower-intermediate English-as-a-second-language classroom consisting predominantly of Japanese students. Drawing on multimodal conversation analytic investigation of 28 hours of video recordings collected across three semesters, the analysis reveals that (a) the gesture serves as a shared code in a community where participants normatively orient to English as the language of instruction, and (b) its metaphoric – as opposed to iconic – deployment, which is unique to the Japanese context, accomplishes a wide range of social actions (e.g. apologising, thanking) in both instructional and non-instructional activities. This study contributes to classroom research on recipient-designed gestures by highlighting the significance of their cultural relevance.
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