The Science Between the Interplay of Public Speaking and Gestures

    The Science Between the Interplay of Public Speaking and Gestures

Throughout history, different orators have utilized gestures as a means to elucidate an idea, emphasize points, or get a certain message across to a group of people. Easier said than done, public speaking is an art that is difficult to master.MLK utilized many speaking techniques, one of those techniques being gestures. He performed movements such as the “preacher’s hand”, pointing to the crowd, and using a raised fist. These movements displayed a sense of power, credibility, assurance, and emotional connection towards his audience. These movements weren’t just for show, they captivated the crowd’s attention and made his spectators likely to listen to what he had to say. In the research done by Zielenski and Wakefield , they highlighted that in learning, children with bilingual proficiencies benefitted from gestures when being taught new information. Further research enhances the argument that gestures make it easier for an audience to internalize information on a deeper level by activating different cognitive processes. Therefore, gestures can be used as a tool to help individuals of varying levels of understanding connect more to a public speaker no matter what the topic of conversation is.

The Research done by Zielinski and Wakefield is particularly interesting because they suggest through their experiments that gestures are the most beneficial when language processing is difficult for the listener or learner. This information has implications in the realm of public speaking- it serves as a basis to prove that the best orators gesture because it serves as a liaison between comprehension and audiences with diverse levels of understanding. Gestures help whether the barrier has to do with language , unfamiliarity of the topic, or ignorance of a subject. Using gestures  reinforces a message and makes intellectual topics more digestible to those who may see it as abstract. In addition, a well employed hand movement can convey emotion and passion in a way that words alone fail to express. It is much more than just an action, gestures can be more inspiring than words themselves. 

Furthermore, it is important to note that according to research, gestures actively influence one’s understanding. Since speakers are often trying to persuade a crowd or teach a crowd about a certain topic or agenda that they are not well versed in, it’s why gestures are vital when it comes to public speaking. A study that was done by Miriam Novack and Susan Goldin-Meadow titled Learning from Gesture: How Our Hands Change Our Minds (2017) discusses a multitude of ways that simple hand movements ( or not so simple) can impact comprehension. First off, they discuss how utilizing gestures can reveal implicit knowledge. This means that a listener can start to understand even before they can form words to describe what they learned. For instance, a child who may not know how to express a quantity of something may be able to use the gestures they internalized to physically portray a difference in quantity. This represents an implicit understanding of cognitive information that has not yet turned explicit. Moreover, gestures also kickstart the motor system which helps to reinforce the cognitive learning process. This was proven by using an fMRI, “New fMRI evidence finds that children who produce speech and gesture when learning about mathematics problems are more likely to later activate motor regions when just passively solving the math problems…”(Novack, Meadow).  Studies show that children who gesture while learning certain concepts such as math, activate brain regions that are associated with motor skills. This is a notable finding because it suggests that gesturing is an active way of learning new information, which is much more efficient than passive learning. By associating a new concept with a certain movement, it integrates cognitive and physical processes making learning more tangible to the student or listener of a public speaker. Finally, to no surprise, gestures are an incredible communication tool. They are great tools because they facilitate connection between the public speaker and the listener- or the teacher and the learner. For example, when teachers gesture, an active learning environment is created and students become more involved and engaged in the process. “Research has found that when instructors gesture during a lesson, children are more likely to gesture as well, which, in turn, leads them to profit…”(Novack, Meadow ). This excerpt from the research explains that students can become more engaged in the process because they start to gesture as well. This fosters a deeper relationship and a better connection to the material at hand. This finding can be applied to a public speaking environment. When people are listening to a public speaker, they grasp information better when they are engaged, which is achieved by gestures. Also, gestures can create an emotional connection between the speaker and the listener which causes engagement and, int turn, enhances comprehension. Overall, this research has implications in public speaking because all these findings can be applied to the comprehension of the listener. The audience of a public speaker needs to be able to implicitly understand the speech being conveyed, they should implement active listening to integrate the speech, and they should feel a rapport between them and the orator- all can be accomplished by gesturing. 

All in all, gestures are a vital tool for enhancing understanding, engagement, and connection. As said in the introduction, Martin Luther King Jr’s use of gestures not only exquisitely displays how hand movements amplify a speaker’s message, but also how they foster a relationship between each individual listener and the speaker. Different research continues to prove that gestures are crucial for cognitive and emotional integration involved in learning and communication. It doesn’t matter whether someone is in an auditorium speaking to thousands of people, or in a classroom speaking to twenty, gestures will always be a powerful way to  decrease the knowledge gaps between the speaker’s vernacular and the audience’s understanding. 

            Reference 

Novack, M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. ( 2017, September 27). Learning from gesture: How our hands change our minds.(3):405-412. DOI: 10.1007/s10648-015-9325-3.

Zielinski, N., & Wakefield, E. M. (2021, July 19). Language proficiency impacts the benefits of co-speech gesture for narrative understanding through a visual attention mechanism. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63r5d3qq