Date

2008

Author

Vural, Erkan

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The purpose of this study is to investigate disfluency and gesture in the second language under specific conditions such as familiarity vs. non-familiarity, concrete topic type vs. abstract topic type and speaking with native speaker vs. speaker with non-native speaker. The sample of this study was sixteen students from the Department of Basic English in Middle East Technical University (DBE), three instructors from DBE and one instructor from Modern Language Department in Middle East Technical University. Two of the instructors are native and the rest of them are non-native speakers of English. With an assigned instructor each student spoke on the following topics: making spaghetti, giving directions, spring festival and clashing midterms, and effects of religion on our life. The conversations on each topic were recorded audio-visually. Then the audio-visual data was annotated in terms of linguistic and gestural elements. In order to explore the relation among disfluency, gesture and controlled variables, quantitative data analysis methods were used. Levelt’s speech production and Krauss’s gesture production model were used as a basic framework. Dual Coding theory and Metalinguistic Awareness Theory was used to explain intricate results of the present study. As a result of the study, it was found that in the concrete topic condition, learners speak more fluently because of time and topic effects. Similarly, in the condition of familiar addressee and native speaker, learners speak more fluently than they do when speaking with a non-familiar or a non- native speaker.

Subject Keywords

Cognitive sciences.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12610090/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/18014

Collections

Graduate School of Informatics, Thesis