Question

Whats a verbal and non verbal example of a behavior exemplifying an instrumental pragmatic function?

Answer 1

The below article will explain you better regarding the examples of verbal and non-verbal behaviour exemplified by an instrumental pragmatic function:

Sedinha Tessendorf Pragmatic functions of gestures: The case of the brushing aside gesture in Spanish conversation

The field of linguistic pragmatics is concerned with the pragmatic features of spoken language. But the verbal side of the utterance is only one facet of face-to-face conversation. Co-speech gestures have to be regarded as a fundamental part of human communication and language use (see McNeill1992; 2005; Kendon 2004; Müller 1998) for they contribute not only to the propositional side of the utterance, but play a crucial role in understanding of how an utterance is to be understood, what kind of speech act is performed, how turn taking is organized, etc. in short: the pragmatic side of natural discourse.

The research presented in this talk shows an example of a conventionalized so-called pragmatic gesture (see Kendon 1995), or to be more precise, a conventional gesture specialized in pragmatic functions: the brushing aside gesture as it is used in Spanish everyday conversations.
Within an important tradition of gesture research (McNeill 1995; 2005), co-verbal gestures have often been regarded as idiosyncratic and spontaneous, as holistic and synthetic. Within a different approach recurrent and therefore presumably conventional co-speech gestures which show a stable form-meaning pairing have so far been studied by Kendon (1995; 2004), Müller (2004), Müller & Speckmann (2002), Payrató (1993), Seyfeddinipur (2004), and Ladewig (2006).

These analyses reveal that recurrent gestures, with little variations of form, persist throughout different contexts. Furthermore they indicate, that conventionality does not depend upon the absence speech. The research to be reported here is in line with this research tradition.
The analyses are based on a corpus of videotaped Spanish everyday conversations (ca. 480 min.) and TV Talk Shows (ca. 90 min.). I first analyzed the distribution and formal structure of the brushing aside gesture. After finding about 60 tokens of this gestural form I carried out detailed microanalyses to reconstruct the different functions of this gesture.
Based on these microanalyses it is argued that the brushing aside gesture preserves the thematic core of a basic action or manipulation (Streeck 1994): brushing aside annoying objects. The gesture itself is connected to the basic instrumental action through iconicity: the form is abstracted, but the main feature of the action, the quick flick of the hand away from ones body, is preserved.

The findings of the formal and functional analyses uncover that the brushing aside gesture with its stable form and semantic core is used in different contexts as a means for organizing turn taking, structuring the utterance, or framing as a metalinguistic comment, and for evoking or performing a speech act.

It is therefore suggested that the brushing aside gesture in Spanish conversation is a multifunctional gesture specialized in pragmatic functions. When used with verbal speech, it may provide additional information to the propositional content of the utterance, when used without speech, the gesture constitutes a speech act by itself.

This research underlines that in order to fully understand the pragmatic features of human face-to-face communication it is essential to take co-verbal gestures into account.

References:

- Kendon, Adam (1995): Gestures as illocutionary and discourse structure markers in Southern Italian conversation. In: Journal of Pragmatics 23, pp. 247-279.