Follow the hands of the interlocutor! (on strategies for the distribution of visual attention)

Abstract

This article contributes to the development of multichannel linguistics — a new approach that explores the interaction of multiple informational channels between interlocutors, including verbal units, prosody, gestures, facial expressions, direction of gaze. The study was carried out on the material of the Russian multichannel resource “Russian pear chats and stories”, collected with the help of modern equipment, including industrial video cameras and eyetrackers for registering eye movements. Based on the quantitative and qualitative results of the study, the authors describe the distribution of visual attention of the Narrator in the situation of perception of information from two gesticulating interlocutors, as well as various styles of oculomotor activity of the Narrator.