The development of speech and gesture in Sesotho oral narratives

Abstract

This study focuses on the development of speech and gesture in a narrative task in children between 6-10 years of age and adults in Sesotho, a member of the Bantu language family spoken in southern Africa. Previous studies show that speech and gesture develop with age. However, cross-linguistic studies demonstrate that language and cultural expectations relating to narratives also impact on speech and gesture development. A comparison of isiZulu with French show some differences that point to culture’s influence. Does multimodal narrative development in Sesotho show similar cross-linguistic differences? We analyzed 36 narratives produced by Sesotho speaking children aged 5-6 years (N=12), 9-10 years (N=10) and adults (N=10), who watched a wordless cartoon and narrated the story back to an interlocutor. Our results show similar developmental trends to those found in other studies showing speech and gesture increases and becomes more complex with age and that spoken discourse and gesture development are closely related (Colletta et al. 2015). Like isiZulu speakers, Sesotho speakers produced a higher proportion of representational or iconic gestures. This result contrasts with findings for other languages such as French where adults produce a higher proportion of pragmatic gestures