Analyzing metagestuality
Résumé
Gestures have traditionally been analyzed via the direct observation of visible actions produced by individuals in various interactional contexts, such as the classroom. In this specific setting, existing studies have examined learners’ discourse about their teachers’ gestures during video-stimulated recall interviews (Azaoui, 2014a, 2015a, 2019a; Sime, 2006, 2008; Tellier, 2006). While gesture studies champion the idea that discourse needs to be investigated from a multimodal viewpoint, there has been no work dedicated to the analysis of the students’ gestural comments about their teacher’s gestures, known as metagestuality (Azaoui, 2019a). This chapter addresses various methodological questions regarding the implementation of video -stimulated interviews with learners to analyze their metagestural activity. It discusses how drawing on French anthropologist Marcel Jousse’s (1969) notion of rejeu (literally, replay) offers a complementary perspective that contributes to furthering the understanding of students’ utterances. I explain how to set up these interviews and how to adapt and connect various theoretical frameworks to be able to offer a satisfactory analysis and interpretation of the data.