Abstract
This paper discusses speaker viewpoints in face-to-face interactions. A new type of viewpoint, interactive viewpoint, is proposed to supplement the descriptive viewpoint identified by McNeill (1992) to capture spontaneous gestures. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of speech, gestures and gaze directions in videotaped spontaneous conversations revealed that (1) actual gesticulations were preceded by the speakers' gaze shift toward the gesture space, (2) speakers' gaze moved away toward listeners before the end of their speech, and (3) listeners supplied back channels in response to the speakers' gaze shift toward them. These results indicate the importance of considering interactive viewpoint in addition to descriptive viewpoint in order to interpret verbal and non-verbal behaviors in face-to-face interactions.
