Visualizing the acoustic and gestural beats of emphasis in multimodal discourse: Theoretical and pedagogical implications

Abstract Perceivers’ attention is entrained to the rhythm of a speaker’s gestural and acoustic beats. When different rhythms (polyrhythms) occur across the visual and auditory modalities of speech simultaneously, attention may be heightened, enhancing memorability of the sequence. In this three-stage study, Stage 1 analyzed videorecordings of native English-speaking instructors, focusing on frame-by-frame analysis of time-aligned annotations from Praat and Anvil (video annotation tool) of polyrhythmic sequences. Stage 2 explored the perceivers’ perspective on the sequences’ discourse role. Stage 3 analyzed 10 international teaching assistants’ gestures, and implemented a multistep technology-assisted program to enhance verbal and nonverbal communication skills. Findings demonstrated (a) a dynamic temporal gesture-speech relationship involving perturbations of beat intervals surrounding pitch-accented vowels, (b) the sequences’ important role as highlighters of information, and (c) improvement of ITA confidence, teaching effectiveness, and ability to communicate important points. Findings support the joint production of gesture and prosodically prominent features.