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'Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive
We report a large-scale, quantitative investigation of manual gestures that speakers perform when speaking metaphorically about numerical quantities. We used the TV News Archive–an online database of over 2 million English language news broadcasts–to examine 681 videos in which 584 speakers used the...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7671496/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33201907 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242142 |
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author | Woodin, Greg Winter, Bodo Perlman, Marcus Littlemore, Jeannette Matlock, Teenie |
author_facet | Woodin, Greg Winter, Bodo Perlman, Marcus Littlemore, Jeannette Matlock, Teenie |
author_sort | Woodin, Greg |
collection | PubMed |
description | We report a large-scale, quantitative investigation of manual gestures that speakers perform when speaking metaphorically about numerical quantities. We used the TV News Archive–an online database of over 2 million English language news broadcasts–to examine 681 videos in which 584 speakers used the phrase 'tiny number', 'small number', 'large number', or 'huge number', which metaphorically frame numerical quantity in terms of physical size. We found that the gestures speakers used reflect a number of different strategies to express the metaphoric size of quantities. When referring to greater versus lesser quantities, speakers were far more likely to gesture (1) with an open versus closed hand configuration, (2) with an outward versus inward movement, and (3) with a wider distance between the gesturing hands. These patterns were often more pronounced for the phrases containing more extreme adjectives ('tiny/huge number'). However, we did not find that speakers performed two-handed versus one-handed gestures. Nor did we find that speakers performed right-handed versus left-handed gestures, when referring to greater versus lesser quantities. Overall, this work supports the claim that metaphoric thought is involved in the production of verbal metaphors that describe numerical magnitudes. It demonstrates that size-based numerical associations observed in previous lab experiments are active in real-life communication outside the lab. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7671496 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-76714962020-11-19 'Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive Woodin, Greg Winter, Bodo Perlman, Marcus Littlemore, Jeannette Matlock, Teenie PLoS One Research Article We report a large-scale, quantitative investigation of manual gestures that speakers perform when speaking metaphorically about numerical quantities. We used the TV News Archive–an online database of over 2 million English language news broadcasts–to examine 681 videos in which 584 speakers used the phrase 'tiny number', 'small number', 'large number', or 'huge number', which metaphorically frame numerical quantity in terms of physical size. We found that the gestures speakers used reflect a number of different strategies to express the metaphoric size of quantities. When referring to greater versus lesser quantities, speakers were far more likely to gesture (1) with an open versus closed hand configuration, (2) with an outward versus inward movement, and (3) with a wider distance between the gesturing hands. These patterns were often more pronounced for the phrases containing more extreme adjectives ('tiny/huge number'). However, we did not find that speakers performed two-handed versus one-handed gestures. Nor did we find that speakers performed right-handed versus left-handed gestures, when referring to greater versus lesser quantities. Overall, this work supports the claim that metaphoric thought is involved in the production of verbal metaphors that describe numerical magnitudes. It demonstrates that size-based numerical associations observed in previous lab experiments are active in real-life communication outside the lab. Public Library of Science 2020-11-17 /pmc/articles/PMC7671496/ /pubmed/33201907 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242142 Text en © 2020 Woodin et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Woodin, Greg Winter, Bodo Perlman, Marcus Littlemore, Jeannette Matlock, Teenie 'Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive |
title | 'Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive |
title_full | 'Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive |
title_fullStr | 'Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive |
title_full_unstemmed | 'Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive |
title_short | 'Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive |
title_sort | 'tiny numbers' are actually tiny: evidence from gestures in the tv news archive |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7671496/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33201907 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242142 |
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