Gesture as a marker of gender in orality: proposals for its study; El gesto como marcador del género en la oralidad: propuestas para su estudio

Abstract

This paper discusses gesture as a gender marker in oral communication. It considers two principles: the fact that oral communication acts consist of more than linguistic utterances; and the fact that the gender of these acts must be determined by considering performance and context elements. After analyzing a series of exam ples on how gesture characterizes different oral genres, the article proposes ideas for using classifications of nonverbal communication in order to perform complementary analyses of verbal content.