Janet Beavin Bavelas
Biographic Data
| ID | 184464 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Janet Beavin Bavelas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Janet Beavin |
| FAMILY NAME | Bavelas |
| SIGNATURE | BAVELAS J B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Victoria |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 323 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Given-New Effects on the Duration of Gestures and of Words in Face-to-Face Dialogue
The given-new contract entails that speakers must distinguish for their addressee whether references are new or already part of their dialogue. Past research had found that, in a monologue to a listener, speakers shortened repeated words. However, the notion of the given-new contract is inherently dialogic, with an addressee and the availability of co-speech gestures. Here, two face-to-face dialogue experiments tested whether gesture duration als…
Some pragmatic functions of conversational facial gestures1
Conversational facial gestures are not emotional expressions ( Ekman, 1997 ). Facial gestures are co-speech gestures – configurations of the face, eyes, and/or head that are synchronized with words and other co-speech gestures. Facial gestures are the most frequent facial actions in dialogue, and the majority serve pragmatic (meta-communicative) rather than referential functions. A qualitative microanalysis of a close-call story illustrates three…
Doing mutual understanding. Calibrating with micro-sequences in face-to-face dialogue
Effect of Dialogue on Demonstrations: Direct Quotations, Facial Portrayals, Hand Gestures, and Figurative References
Demonstrations (e.g., direct quotations, conversational facial portrayals, conversational hand gestures, and figurative references) lack conventional meanings, relying instead on a resemblance to their referent. Two experiments tested our theory that demonstrations are a class of communicative acts that speakers are more likely to use in dialogue than in monologue. We compared speakers' rates of demonstrations in face-to-face dialogues, telephone…
Reconciling the effects of mutual visibility on gesturing: A review
Fourteen visibility experiments, which compared the overall rate of gesturing when participants could or could not see each other, have produced perfectly contradictory results: Seven found a significantly higher overall gesture rate in the visible condition, and seven found no significant difference. Experiments that used quasi-dialogues in which the addressees’ responses were experimentally constrained (e.g., using a confederate) found a signif…
Teoría de la comunicación humana: Interacciones, patologías y paradojas
Libro en PDF. La lectura de este libro nos abre las puertas de un mundo que resulta a la vez familiar e insolito. Familiar en tanto su tema es el hecho comunicacional, que pertenece a lo mas basico de la experiencia humana. E insolito porque analiza a fondo y en forma ordenada una serie de fenomenos que, pese a estar al alcance de nuestra experiencia cotidiana, pese a ser transmitidos, aprendidos, ensenados, corregidos y recogidos una y mil veces…
Linguistic influences on gesture’s form
Hand gestures in face-to-face dialogue are symbolic acts, integrated with speech. Little is known about the factors that determine the physical form of these gestures. When the gesture depicts a previous nonsymbolic action, it obviously resembles this action; however, such gestures are not only noticeably different from the original action but, when they occur in a series, are different from each other. This paper presents an experiment with two …
Listener Responses as a Collaborative Process: The Role of Gaze
The authors examined precisely when and how listeners insert their responses into a speaker's narrative. A collaborative theory would predict a relationship between the speaker's acts and the listener's responses, and the authors proposed that speaker gaze coordinated this collaboration. The listener typically looks more at the speaker than the reverse, but at key points while speaking the speaker seeks a response by looking at the listener, crea…
An experimental study of when and how speakers use gestures to communicate
This experiment expanded the visual availability paradigm by subsuming it under the broader principle of recipient design . We varied recipient design by asking speakers to describe a picture to someone who would see a videotape of their description or only hear an audiotape. Second, speakers described pictures that varied in verbal encodability. Finally, in addition to gestural rate, we analysed the redundancy of gestures with words. The results…
Listeners as co-narrators
Visible Acts of Meaning: An Integrated Message Model of Language in Face-to-Face Dialogue
The authors propose that dialogue in face-to-face interaction is both audible and visible; language use in this setting includes visible acts of meaning such as facial displays and hand gestures. Several criteria distinguish these from other nonverbal acts: (a) They are sensitive to a sender-receiver relationship in that they are less likely to occur when an addressee will not see them, (b) they are analogically encoded symbols, (c) their meaning…
Come the Millennium
Come the Millennium
Theoretical and Methodological Principles of the Equivocation Project
The theoretical framework of this long-term research project on equivocation includes three essential principles: (a) An interesting and unexplained phenomenon is worth studying for itself, by inductive methods; (b) communicative acts are part of a communicative sequence; and (c) the methods must keep the phenomenon in its communicative sequence. The article explicates these principles and applies them to other research, including the studies in …
Using Face-to-face Dialogue as a Standard for Other Communication Systems
Because face-to-face dialogue is our first and most common form of communication, we can use it as a prototype to evaluate other forms of communication. Three features are fully present only in face-to-face dialogue: unrestricted verbal expression, meaningful non-verbal acts such as gestures and facial displays, and instantaneous collaboration between speaker and listener. In this paper, we explicate these three dimensions and then use them to me…
Anomalous Language in Sexual Assault Trial Judgments
We analyzed the language in a random sample of recent Western Canadian trial judgments in cases of sexual assault. We discovered five anomalous themes: erotic/affectionate characterization of sexual assault; sexual assault as distinct from violence; appropriate resistance by the victim; the good character of the offender; and grammatically omitting the agent of the assault. These themes are illustrated in context by a detailed analysis of one of …
Gestures as Part of Speech: Methodological Implications
Equivocal Communications
How do we account for the mindfulness of face‐to‐face dialogue
(1992). How do we account for the mindfulness of face‐to‐face dialogue? Communication Monographs: Vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 301-305
Interactive gestures
Illustrators are hand gestures made during conversation. Following Bavelas, Hagen, Lane, and Lawrie (1989), we propose a new division of illustrators, into topic and interactive gestures. Interactive gestures refer to the interlocutor rather than to the topic of conversation, and they help maintain the conversation as a social system. They subsume but are not limited to the category previously called beats or batons. Three tests of this theory ar…
Truths, Lies, and Equivocations: The Effects of Conflicting Goals on Discourse
This article proposes a situational and discourse-oriented view of a particular class of messages, equivocations, that have usually been dismissed as ineffective or even deceptive. We distinguish between-and measure independently- what a message says (whether it is true or false) and how it is said (whether it is clear or equivocal), and we propose that the nature of the communicative situation determines the position of messages on these two coo…
On Integrating Interactional Points of View
Political Equivocation: A Situational Explanation
Form and Function in Motor Mimicry Topographic Evidence that the Primary Function Is Communicative
Journal Article Form and Function in Motor Mimicry: Topographic Evidence that the Primary Function Is Communicative Get access Janet Beavin Bavelas, Janet Beavin Bavelas 1Janet Beavin Bavelas (Ph.D., Stanford University, 1970) is professor of psychology at the University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., Canada Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Alex Black, Alex Black 2Alex Black (MA., University of Victoria, 1986…
How people disqualify: Experimental studies of spontaneous written disqualification
Disqualification is nonstraightforward communication — messages that say something without really saying it. The four experiments described here examined whether naive, normal individuals might generate disqualified messages. The participants were presented with hypothetical communicative conflicts to which they wrote their own replies. These messages were significantly higher in quantitative measures of disqualification than were the messages wr…
Listeners as co-narrators
Interactive gestures
Illustrators are hand gestures made during conversation. Following Bavelas, Hagen, Lane, and Lawrie (1989), we propose a new division of illustrators, into topic and interactive gestures. Interactive gestures refer to the interlocutor rather than to the topic of conversation, and they help maintain the conversation as a social system. They subsume but are not limited to the category previously called beats or batons. Three tests of this theory ar…
Political Equivocation: A Situational Explanation
Gestures as Part of Speech: Methodological Implications
I show how you feel: Motor mimicry as a communicative act
Situations That Lead to Disqualification
Disqualification is nonstraighforward communication—messages that are ambiguous, indirect, or evasive to some degree. A previous paper defined and measured disqualification as deviations from the direct "I am saying this to you in this situation"—that is, as relative ambiguity in sender, content, receiver, or context. The present article addresses the question of what causes such messages. An interpersonal, situational theory is proposed and test…
Visible Acts of Meaning: An Integrated Message Model of Language in Face-to-Face Dialogue
The authors propose that dialogue in face-to-face interaction is both audible and visible; language use in this setting includes visible acts of meaning such as facial displays and hand gestures. Several criteria distinguish these from other nonverbal acts: (a) They are sensitive to a sender-receiver relationship in that they are less likely to occur when an addressee will not see them, (b) they are analogically encoded symbols, (c) their meaning…
Linguistic influences on gesture’s form
Hand gestures in face-to-face dialogue are symbolic acts, integrated with speech. Little is known about the factors that determine the physical form of these gestures. When the gesture depicts a previous nonsymbolic action, it obviously resembles this action; however, such gestures are not only noticeably different from the original action but, when they occur in a series, are different from each other. This paper presents an experiment with two …
Form and Function in Motor Mimicry Topographic Evidence that the Primary Function Is Communicative
Journal Article Form and Function in Motor Mimicry: Topographic Evidence that the Primary Function Is Communicative Get access Janet Beavin Bavelas, Janet Beavin Bavelas 1Janet Beavin Bavelas (Ph.D., Stanford University, 1970) is professor of psychology at the University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., Canada Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Alex Black, Alex Black 2Alex Black (MA., University of Victoria, 1986…
Anomalous Language in Sexual Assault Trial Judgments
We analyzed the language in a random sample of recent Western Canadian trial judgments in cases of sexual assault. We discovered five anomalous themes: erotic/affectionate characterization of sexual assault; sexual assault as distinct from violence; appropriate resistance by the victim; the good character of the offender; and grammatically omitting the agent of the assault. These themes are illustrated in context by a detailed analysis of one of …
How people disqualify: Experimental studies of spontaneous written disqualification
Disqualification is nonstraightforward communication — messages that say something without really saying it. The four experiments described here examined whether naive, normal individuals might generate disqualified messages. The participants were presented with hypothetical communicative conflicts to which they wrote their own replies. These messages were significantly higher in quantitative measures of disqualification than were the messages wr…
Doing mutual understanding. Calibrating with micro-sequences in face-to-face dialogue
An experimental study of when and how speakers use gestures to communicate
This experiment expanded the visual availability paradigm by subsuming it under the broader principle of recipient design . We varied recipient design by asking speakers to describe a picture to someone who would see a videotape of their description or only hear an audiotape. Second, speakers described pictures that varied in verbal encodability. Finally, in addition to gestural rate, we analysed the redundancy of gestures with words. The results…
Truths, Lies, and Equivocations: The Effects of Conflicting Goals on Discourse
This article proposes a situational and discourse-oriented view of a particular class of messages, equivocations, that have usually been dismissed as ineffective or even deceptive. We distinguish between-and measure independently- what a message says (whether it is true or false) and how it is said (whether it is clear or equivocal), and we propose that the nature of the communicative situation determines the position of messages on these two coo…
Effect of Dialogue on Demonstrations: Direct Quotations, Facial Portrayals, Hand Gestures, and Figurative References
Demonstrations (e.g., direct quotations, conversational facial portrayals, conversational hand gestures, and figurative references) lack conventional meanings, relying instead on a resemblance to their referent. Two experiments tested our theory that demonstrations are a class of communicative acts that speakers are more likely to use in dialogue than in monologue. We compared speakers' rates of demonstrations in face-to-face dialogues, telephone…
How do we account for the mindfulness of face‐to‐face dialogue
(1992). How do we account for the mindfulness of face‐to‐face dialogue? Communication Monographs: Vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 301-305
Reconciling the effects of mutual visibility on gesturing: A review
Fourteen visibility experiments, which compared the overall rate of gesturing when participants could or could not see each other, have produced perfectly contradictory results: Seven found a significantly higher overall gesture rate in the visible condition, and seven found no significant difference. Experiments that used quasi-dialogues in which the addressees’ responses were experimentally constrained (e.g., using a confederate) found a signif…
Some pragmatic functions of conversational facial gestures1
Conversational facial gestures are not emotional expressions ( Ekman, 1997 ). Facial gestures are co-speech gestures – configurations of the face, eyes, and/or head that are synchronized with words and other co-speech gestures. Facial gestures are the most frequent facial actions in dialogue, and the majority serve pragmatic (meta-communicative) rather than referential functions. A qualitative microanalysis of a close-call story illustrates three…
Theoretical and Methodological Principles of the Equivocation Project
The theoretical framework of this long-term research project on equivocation includes three essential principles: (a) An interesting and unexplained phenomenon is worth studying for itself, by inductive methods; (b) communicative acts are part of a communicative sequence; and (c) the methods must keep the phenomenon in its communicative sequence. The article explicates these principles and applies them to other research, including the studies in …
Given-New Effects on the Duration of Gestures and of Words in Face-to-Face Dialogue
The given-new contract entails that speakers must distinguish for their addressee whether references are new or already part of their dialogue. Past research had found that, in a monologue to a listener, speakers shortened repeated words. However, the notion of the given-new contract is inherently dialogic, with an addressee and the availability of co-speech gestures. Here, two face-to-face dialogue experiments tested whether gesture duration als…
On Integrating Interactional Points of View
Effects of the Temporal Context of Information
Family Systems Theory: Background and Implications
Janet Beavin Bavelas, Lynn Segal; Family Systems Theory: Background and Implications, Journal of Communication, Volume 32, Issue 3, 1 September 1982, Pages
Situations That Lead to Disqualification
Disqualification is nonstraighforward communication—messages that are ambiguous, indirect, or evasive to some degree. A previous paper defined and measured disqualification as deviations from the direct "I am saying this to you in this situation"—that is, as relative ambiguity in sender, content, receiver, or context. The present article addresses the question of what causes such messages. An interpersonal, situational theory is proposed and test…
How people disqualify: Experimental studies of spontaneous written disqualification
Disqualification is nonstraightforward communication — messages that say something without really saying it. The four experiments described here examined whether naive, normal individuals might generate disqualified messages. The participants were presented with hypothetical communicative conflicts to which they wrote their own replies. These messages were significantly higher in quantitative measures of disqualification than were the messages wr…
I show how you feel: Motor mimicry as a communicative act
Political Equivocation: A Situational Explanation
Form and Function in Motor Mimicry Topographic Evidence that the Primary Function Is Communicative
Journal Article Form and Function in Motor Mimicry: Topographic Evidence that the Primary Function Is Communicative Get access Janet Beavin Bavelas, Janet Beavin Bavelas 1Janet Beavin Bavelas (Ph.D., Stanford University, 1970) is professor of psychology at the University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., Canada Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Alex Black, Alex Black 2Alex Black (MA., University of Victoria, 1986…
On Integrating Interactional Points of View
Truths, Lies, and Equivocations: The Effects of Conflicting Goals on Discourse
This article proposes a situational and discourse-oriented view of a particular class of messages, equivocations, that have usually been dismissed as ineffective or even deceptive. We distinguish between-and measure independently- what a message says (whether it is true or false) and how it is said (whether it is clear or equivocal), and we propose that the nature of the communicative situation determines the position of messages on these two coo…
How do we account for the mindfulness of face‐to‐face dialogue
(1992). How do we account for the mindfulness of face‐to‐face dialogue? Communication Monographs: Vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 301-305
Interactive gestures
Illustrators are hand gestures made during conversation. Following Bavelas, Hagen, Lane, and Lawrie (1989), we propose a new division of illustrators, into topic and interactive gestures. Interactive gestures refer to the interlocutor rather than to the topic of conversation, and they help maintain the conversation as a social system. They subsume but are not limited to the category previously called beats or batons. Three tests of this theory ar…
Equivocal Communications
Anomalous Language in Sexual Assault Trial Judgments
We analyzed the language in a random sample of recent Western Canadian trial judgments in cases of sexual assault. We discovered five anomalous themes: erotic/affectionate characterization of sexual assault; sexual assault as distinct from violence; appropriate resistance by the victim; the good character of the offender; and grammatically omitting the agent of the assault. These themes are illustrated in context by a detailed analysis of one of …
Gestures as Part of Speech: Methodological Implications
Using Face-to-face Dialogue as a Standard for Other Communication Systems
Because face-to-face dialogue is our first and most common form of communication, we can use it as a prototype to evaluate other forms of communication. Three features are fully present only in face-to-face dialogue: unrestricted verbal expression, meaningful non-verbal acts such as gestures and facial displays, and instantaneous collaboration between speaker and listener. In this paper, we explicate these three dimensions and then use them to me…
Theoretical and Methodological Principles of the Equivocation Project
The theoretical framework of this long-term research project on equivocation includes three essential principles: (a) An interesting and unexplained phenomenon is worth studying for itself, by inductive methods; (b) communicative acts are part of a communicative sequence; and (c) the methods must keep the phenomenon in its communicative sequence. The article explicates these principles and applies them to other research, including the studies in …
Come the Millennium
Come the Millennium
Listeners as co-narrators
Visible Acts of Meaning: An Integrated Message Model of Language in Face-to-Face Dialogue
The authors propose that dialogue in face-to-face interaction is both audible and visible; language use in this setting includes visible acts of meaning such as facial displays and hand gestures. Several criteria distinguish these from other nonverbal acts: (a) They are sensitive to a sender-receiver relationship in that they are less likely to occur when an addressee will not see them, (b) they are analogically encoded symbols, (c) their meaning…
Listener Responses as a Collaborative Process: The Role of Gaze
The authors examined precisely when and how listeners insert their responses into a speaker's narrative. A collaborative theory would predict a relationship between the speaker's acts and the listener's responses, and the authors proposed that speaker gaze coordinated this collaboration. The listener typically looks more at the speaker than the reverse, but at key points while speaking the speaker seeks a response by looking at the listener, crea…
An experimental study of when and how speakers use gestures to communicate
This experiment expanded the visual availability paradigm by subsuming it under the broader principle of recipient design . We varied recipient design by asking speakers to describe a picture to someone who would see a videotape of their description or only hear an audiotape. Second, speakers described pictures that varied in verbal encodability. Finally, in addition to gestural rate, we analysed the redundancy of gestures with words. The results…
Linguistic influences on gesture’s form
Hand gestures in face-to-face dialogue are symbolic acts, integrated with speech. Little is known about the factors that determine the physical form of these gestures. When the gesture depicts a previous nonsymbolic action, it obviously resembles this action; however, such gestures are not only noticeably different from the original action but, when they occur in a series, are different from each other. This paper presents an experiment with two …
Teoría de la comunicación humana: Interacciones, patologías y paradojas
Libro en PDF. La lectura de este libro nos abre las puertas de un mundo que resulta a la vez familiar e insolito. Familiar en tanto su tema es el hecho comunicacional, que pertenece a lo mas basico de la experiencia humana. E insolito porque analiza a fondo y en forma ordenada una serie de fenomenos que, pese a estar al alcance de nuestra experiencia cotidiana, pese a ser transmitidos, aprendidos, ensenados, corregidos y recogidos una y mil veces…
Reconciling the effects of mutual visibility on gesturing: A review
Fourteen visibility experiments, which compared the overall rate of gesturing when participants could or could not see each other, have produced perfectly contradictory results: Seven found a significantly higher overall gesture rate in the visible condition, and seven found no significant difference. Experiments that used quasi-dialogues in which the addressees’ responses were experimentally constrained (e.g., using a confederate) found a signif…
Psychology (24 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (19 works) · Cognitive psychology (14 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Linguistics (14 works) · Communication (12 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Gesture (10 works) · Hearing Impairment and Communication (10 works)