Research in bilingualism and second language acquisition has witnessed a sea change in the last two decades regarding the closely related concepts of plurilingualism, multicompetence, and translanguaging (Piccardo, Germain-Rutherford & Lawrence, 2022). In contrast to research based on monolingual, native-speaker models, plurilingual models view language systems (inclusive of gesture) as interdependent, multimodal, and possibly unified in both fluent and emergent multilingual speakers (Wei, 2018). Plurilingual practices are of particular interest to researchers of pedagogical contexts (Garcia & Lin, 2016) because teachers leverage various language features and other semiotic affordances for specific teaching purposes. Given that gesture is often noted in discussions of plurilingualism, and that gesture researchers are beginning to highlight multicompetence frameworks as highly relevant to gesture studies (Brown, 2016), there is considerable potential for investigating gesture further as a key feature of plurilingual practices in language instruction.
This qualitative, exploratory analysis looks closely at gesture as a feature of plurilingualism in the context of a novice level university Italian language classroom in the US. Data are drawn from over 30 hours of videorecordings. Both first and target language use is frequent, as is use of gesture and other multimodal resources. Using interactional discourse analysis (Tannen, Hamilton & Schiffrin, 2015), this presentation examines stretches of instructional interaction and considers how these data address emergent research questions such as whether the teacher gestures differently when using English or Italian, whether and when gesture appears to be designed for the benefit of learners and/or is aiding the teacher's own processing or self-management, and whether gesture appears to mediate plurilingual practices among participants. This presentation concludes by identifying future directions for research in instructional contexts to investigate gesture as a dynamic element of plurilingual language education.
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