Story telling in the New Zealand context - investigating the role of body language in oral performance | AILA Research Network (ReN) "Social and Affective Factors in Home Language Maintenance & Development"

This is the data collection phase for a research project investigating differences in verbal and non-verbal behaviour (especially gesture) by monolinguals and bilinguals speaking English and Maori. We are currently making audio and visual recordings of twelve young male New Zealanders in our recording studio. Six participants are monolingual in English and six are Maori/English bilinguals.

In separate recordings, the participants will engage with a Pakeha and a Maori interviewer in a number of tasks including the retelling of stories and telling about positive and negative incidents that occurred in their past and also in the previous week. Bilingual participants will be involved in a third interview with the Maori interviewer in the Maori language. The tasks performed in all sessions will be similar.

Non-verbal cues will be coded to see whether there are differences in the rate and type of gesture used by the monolingual and bilingual participants and when the bilingual participants are using different languages. This data will form the basis of a number of perception experiments to examine whether such things as ethnicity or language being spoken can be reliably determined from the visual signal alone.

Project Leader: Jeanette King

Associate Investigators: James Gruber, Jen Hay, Lucy Johnston

Access information about the project here

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Story telling in the New Zealand context - investigating the role of body language in oral performance