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“My French is rusty”: Proficiency and bilingual gesture use in a majority English community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

JASMINE R. AZIZ  and
ELENA NICOLADIS
JASMINE R. AZIZ
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
ELENA NICOLADIS*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
*
Address for correspondence: Elena Nicoladis, Department of Psychology, P-217 Biological Sciences Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton (Alberta) T6G 2R3, Canada, elenan@ualberta.ca
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Abstract

Gestures serve many functions, including aiding language access and message construction, particularly in spatial tasks. Some researchers have argued that gesture frequency is linked to proficiency in bilinguals, although results have been inconsistent. We tested Nicoladis’ (2007) proposal that bilinguals’ proficiency interacts with task: namely, more spatial tasks elicit greater proficiency effects. French–English bilinguals completed a cartoon-retell task (high spatial) and an interview task (low spatial) in both languages. We measured bilingual proficiency categorically by first language (L1) and continuously by assessing receptive vocabulary, oral fluency, and word types. Participants gestured more in the cartoon-retell task, but there were minimal proficiency effects and no interactions between proficiency and task. Interestingly, only participants with English as their L1 gestured more in their second language (L2), potentially due to ‘rustiness’, or lexical access difficulties in French from low usage in the majority English community.

Keywords

bilingualismlanguage proficiencygesture usetask effects
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , August 2019 , pp. 826 - 835
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

*We would like to thank Nathalie Savoie and Héloïse Plante, who ran the French sessions, Sinead O'Carroll, who helped with transcription, and Dr. Poliana Barbosa, who provided statistical guidance. Both authors received funding for this study from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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