Towards a corpus-based description of speech-gesture units of meaning

Abstract The theories and methods in corpus linguistics (CL) have had an impact on numerous areas applied linguistics. However, the interface between CL multimodal speech-gesture studies remains underexplored. One fundamental question is whether it possible, even appropriate, to apply paradigms established based textual data data. To explore this, we examine how can assist investigating lexico-grammatical patterns of speech co-occurring with a recurrent gesture (i.e. circular gesture). Sinclair’s (1996) unit meaning model used describe co-gestural patterns. study draws subset Nottingham Multimodal Corpus, which 570 instances gestures their are identified analysed. We argue that be extended include patterns, those descriptions enable more nuanced understanding context.