Question sequences and their gestural correlates in French and English TED talks

Several studies have investigated the interaction between gestures and illocutionary meaning (Kendon 1980, 2004; McNeill, 2005). Kendon (1980: 207) explains that speech-associated movements, “are generally recognized as being intimately linked to the activity of speaking and are often regarded as part of the speaker’s total expression.” In other words, to derive the most accurate illocutionary meaning, both verbal and non-verbal cues must be taken into consideration. 

Gestures are used in both monologic and dialogic communication and have been studied in both discourse types (Shattuck-Hufnagel & Ren, 2018; Weinstock et al., 2020; Ginzburg & Lücking, 2021; Ter Bekke et al., 2024). TED talks are one discourse type which could be considered monologic, due to speaker’s ability to maintain control of the discourse and the addressee’s limited ability for dialogic participation (Author 1 & Author 2, 2024). They are a digital discourse which should be considered part of the New Oratory, as defined by Rossette-Crake (2019, 2022).

One feature of TED talks is the presence of question sequences in which the speaker poses one or more sequential questions without creating a response space (Cardo and Celle, 2024). Question sequences have previously been studied in conversational settings and are considered to serve a backward-looking repair function or a clarification request (Ginzburg et al., 2022). In monologic discourse settings such as TED talks, however, the purpose of question sequences is less clear because they are less explicitly linked to a change in speaker turn. In contrast with their use in conversation, recent studies on question sequences in monologic discourse postulate that they are linked to strategies of salience and interaction (Cardo and Celle, 2024). 

The meaning of questions, as well as their correlated gestures, depends on the discourse type and setting. In other words, gestures that co-occur with questions in dialogic settings are not identical to gestures that are used in monologic settings. Through the analysis of question sequences and their gestural correlates in French and English TED talks, as studied in Celle et al. (forthcoming), this paper will test the theory that question sequences coincide with gestures that are used to mark salience and interaction. We hypothesize that the emphatic and interactive functions of question sequences are indeed reflected by the gestures they co-occur with, as question sequences tend to be marked with head beats, two-handed gestures, and repetitive hand gestures. Moreover, this study stands to examine the differences between question sequence gestures in French and English TED talks. Such differences may indicate a difference between the communicative function of questions in the two languages.

Our study is based on the analysis of 18 English and 11 French TED talks. Individual interrogatives were first identified and segmented after being imported into ELAN (Sloetjes and Wittenburg 2008). Question sequences were then considered to be two or more sequential interrogatives which were cohesive in theme and uninterrupted by a pause or topic change (Cardo and Celle, forthcoming). Gestures were manually annotated as described in Lelandais 2025. Our corpus thus consists of 805 gestures which were observed in 236 question sequences. The gestures were categorized as head movements, eyebrow movements, and hand gestures. Through the analysis of co-occurring gestures and question sequences, our study suggests that English TED talk speakers use more interactive question sequences and less gestures while French TED talks speakers use more salient question sequences and more gestures (Cardo and Celle, forthcoming).