ABSTRACT
Research has often linked the occurrence of gesture in a second language (L2) with its incomplete or transitional quality (see Faraco and Kida 1998; Kellerman and van Hoof 2003; Stam 1998; for some studies within this perspective). In addition, it is widely accepted that people gesture more when they speak a language other than their own (Gullberg 1998). It has been suggested, however, that the specific task that learners perform at a given time can also have some impact on gesturing (Nobe 2001). This last view underlines the activity itself of learning a second language-reference to native speakers’ gesturing is secondary-and has been inspirational for my research on the gestures my students use while gaining new language skills. In this chapter I will focus on a group of these learners who are performing a traditional task in a French class: the exposé or oral presentation, typically an expository kind of discourse. The viewpoint I will develop is that their gestures were mostly caused by the type of discourse that was generated by this task.
