Multimodal Construction Grammar of Transitivity in Russian Expository Discourse: The Case of First-Person Perspective
https://doi.org/10.24833/2687-0126-2025-7-4-38-55
Аннотация
The study addresses the cognitive nature of event construal in multimodal discourse. Adopting a multimodal construction grammar approach, it explores transitive and intransitive dis course events with a view to identifying the cognitive grounds of speech and co-speech gesture recur rent alignment patterns. We hypothesize that these multimodal constructions are mediated by the de gree of transitivity, which is manifested in different conceptual structures. The key research question is whether functional gestures serve to demarcate the degree of transitivity (high and low transitive, intransitive, and copular utterances) in first-person perspective Russian expository discourse. The research data are 20 recorded expository monologues detailing personal experiences of creativity in professional communication, containing 725 cases of first-person perspective utterances and 1959 cases of co-speech gesture use. The results show that a) copular utterances are aligned with pragmatic discourse representational, emphatic, and evaluative gestures, b) intransitive clauses co-occur with deictic pointing gestures, c) low transitive clauses employ more contact-establishing gestures, d) high transitive clauses are significantly more frequently aligned with representational gestures, particularly enacting, holding, and molding. Overall, multimodal transitivity is expressed in the higher frequency of representational gestures, which supports prior results, but specifies them in viewing transitivity as a scaled phenomenon. Transitivity then acts as an event construal category in multimodal expository discourse, displaying actionability and objectivity in speech and in gesture; while intransitivity dis plays prevalence to foregrounding the role of the cognizing and acting agent. The results contribute to developing a multimodal construction grammar framework in exploring universal categories of transitivity, actionality, and perspective in discourse.
Ключевые слова
multimodal construction grammar,
transitivity,
co-speech gesture,
event construal,
first-person perspective,
expository discourse,
professional communication
При поддержке: The research presented in Section 2 is supported by the State Assignment №125032004223- 6 of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, “Sociopragmatic factors of verbal and kinetic behaviour adaptation in Russian spoken and gesture language,” and is conducted at the Institute of Linguistics RAS. The research presented in Sections 3-7 is supported by the State Assignment №125031904195-0 of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, “Creativity in everyday communication: spoken language analysis in a multimodal aspect,” and is conducted at Moscow State Linguistic University.
Об авторе
M. I. Kiose
Moscow State Linguistic University;
Institute of Linguistics RAS
Россия
Россия
Maria I. Kiose is Doctor Habil. of Philology, Associate Professor, and Chief Researcher at the Centre for Socio-Cognitive Studies and at the Multi-Channel Communication Laboratory
Moscow
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Рецензия
Для цитирования:
Kiose M.I. Multimodal Construction Grammar of Transitivity in Russian Expository Discourse: The Case of First-Person Perspective. Дискурс профессиональной коммуникации. 2025;7(4):38-55. https://doi.org/10.24833/2687-0126-2025-7-4-38-55
For citation:
Kiose M.I. Multimodal Construction Grammar of Transitivity in Russian Expository Discourse: The Case of First-Person Perspective. Professional Discourse & Communication. 2025;7(4):38-55. https://doi.org/10.24833/2687-0126-2025-7-4-38-55
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