| Previous studies in the fields of linguistics, communication, and psychology have suggested that gesture is utilized as a communicative resource for speakers and also as cognitive mediation. They have also shown that gesture is a window on the developmental stages of children. However, due to the lack of studies of gesture by second language (L2) speakers, not much is known about how gesture functions for L2 acquisition. In this study, I examine the functions of gestures of bilinguals and the relationship between gesture and L2 proficiency.;Thirty-two Korean-English bilinguals studying at a U.S. university participated in this study. All were native speakers of Korean and constituted two separate groups according to their knowledge of English: One group consisted of intermediate speakers of English, who arrived here in their early 20s, and another group consisted of advanced speakers, who arrived in the U.S. as teenagers and attended high school here. At the time of the study, participants' ages ranged from 19 to 30. Participants watched the same cartoon movie and then related the movie in English and then in Korean to a Korean interlocutor. Half of the participants in each proficiency group communicated with a screen obscuring the interlocutor; the other half communicated with a visible interlocutor. Participants were videotaped and gestures were coded as representational or beat.;There were three main findings: (1) Gestures were utilized as a communicative resource and as cognitive mediation; (2) Gestures served as a window on L2 speakers' mental processes by showing that the developmental stages of intermediate L2 speakers were similar to the early first language (L1) developmental stages of children; (3) Gestures showed that whereas intermediate speakers were still thinking in L1 while speaking L2, advanced speakers exhibited L2 thinking-for-speaking patterns by developing L2 conceptual meanings.;This study contributes to our understanding of gesture by L2 speakers. It shows that gesture functions both as a communicative resource and cognitive mediation. This study also provides a different interpretation of L2 proficiency, showing that L2 attainment is not only indexed by grammatical and phonological ability, but it also entails the appropriation of new conceptual meanings. |
