Gestures are modulated by social context

This paper investigates gesture as a resource for marking politeness-related meanings. We asked 14 Korean and 14 Catalan participants to retell a cartoon, once to an unknown superior and once to a close friend. Participants in both languages curtail gestures when interacting with a socially distant superior. Speakers of both languages produced fewer gestures when addressing the superior, reduced their gesture space, decreased the encoding of manner, and reduced the use of character-viewpoint gestures. We see the decrease in gesture frequency and the less frequent encoding of manner as indicators of lower levels of iconicity when talking with status superiors. Curtailing gesture marks a less playful communicative context, and a more serious and deferential persona. Altogether, our research speaks to the importance of politeness in gesture production, and the social nature of gestures in human communication.