Communicating vagueness by hands and face Isabella Poggi Dipartimento di Scienze dell!Educazione Università Roma 3 Via Milazzo 11 B – 00185 Roma – Italy 0039 338 9943352 poggi@uniroma3.it Laura Vincze Dipartimento di Scienze dell!Educazione Università Roma 3 Via Milazzo 11 B – 00185 Roma – Italy 0039 0657339136 laura.vincze@gmail.com ABSTRACT This paper investigates the bodily signals of vagueness. After presenting the conceptual notion of vagueness by contrasting with uncertainty, approximation, confusion and ambiguity, the notion of “metadiscursive vagueness signal” is presented, a case of metadiscursive signals that convey “I am being vague”. Then a qualitative analysis of bodily signals of vagueness is presented, while singling out their physical features and outlining a typology of signals and a typology of reasons to be vague. Categories and Subject Descriptors Multimodal interaction about specific meanings General Terms Theory. Keywords Multimodality, gestures, gaze, face, vagueness, precision, metadiscursive signals. 1. INTRODUCTION When people talk to each other, whether they are telling a story, reporting facts, or arguing in a discussion, they accompany their words with gestures, gaze, facial expressions, postures, all bearing a contribution to the global meaning conveyed. These signals can be distinguished in terms of various criteria, such as their context (whether they are autonomous or they necessarily accompany the verbal message), or their semiotic status (e.g., iconic vs. arbitrary), while on a semantic level they differ for the type of information conveyed. Literature on facial expression has stressed the function of face in expressing emotions [1], studies on gestures distinguish those conveying referential [2, 3] vs. performative information [4], or fulfilling other pragmatic functions [5]; gaze and head movements often regulate turn-taking and provide backchannel [6] A relevant distinction in gesture literature is one between representational gestures (i.e., iconic and abstract deictic gestures [2]; [7] that convey referential information) and gestures with a pragmatic function [4]. While talking of these latter gestures, [4] proposes the notion of “gesture family”, i.e., “a group of gestures that have in common certain kinesic features”(p. 281). For example, several types of gesture constitute a family if they share some kinesic features. [4] illustrates two gesture families: Open Hand Prone and Open Hand Supine. The kinesic feature these two families have in common is the hand shape: open, i.e. with extended and more or less adducted digits. Within each of these two families, several groups of gestures can be singled out. For instance, the groups of gesture belonging to the Open Hand Prone family gesture (Vertical Palm gestures and Horizontal Palm gesture) have similar contexts of occurrence: they are employed where reference is made to an intention to halt/suspend/interrupt a line of action either of the speaker or of the interlocutor. Within gestures with a pragmatic function, a type of signals that have not been thoroughly investigated are those conveying meta-cognitive and meta-discursive information about how much the communicator believes in the information s/he is providing, how specific or generic, precise or vague it is, and what is its relevance for ongoing discourse. These signals are important for the Sender’s framing of one’s message and for the Addressee’s comprehension, and their investigation within multimodality research is profitable both for a better understanding of human communication and for its processing and simulation in Human Computer Interaction. This paper presents a preliminary study on “vagueness signals”: a category of signals stating that the information conveyed during discourse is vague. In Section 2 we present the notion of “mind markers”, the category of signals to which those signals belong; in Sect. 3 we define the notion of vagueness from a cognitive point of view, and in Sections 4 and 5 we analyze features and cases of vagueness signals and the reasons that motivate their production. 2. VAGUENESS SIGNALS: A TYPE OF MIND MARKERS “Vagueness signals” can be considered as a subset of “mind markers” [8], the signals conveying the Sender’s mental states concerning ongoing discourse. According to [8], any word or signal in another modality conveys one of three types of information: 1. Information on the World (concerning states and events occurring outside the Sender: the “referential” information of other authors); 2. Information on the Sender’s Identity (his/her gender, age, ethnicity, self-presentation); and 3. Information on the Sender’s Mind, namely on the beliefs, goals and emotions presently occuring in the Sender’s mind with regard to the discourse s/he is delivering. The signals about the Sender’s Mind, called “Mind Markers”, include various subclasses: within “belief markers” there are “certainty” ones, informing on the level of certainty of the information being conveyed (certain, likely, not at all, or a slight frown in stating something); “metacognitive” ones, marking the source of mentioned information, (perception, communication or long-term memory), e.g. gazing downward while trying to remember. “Goal markers” include “performative markers” (similar to illocutionary gestures), that specify the intention of a sentence, e.g. a head canting signalling imploration; “sentence markers”, like prosodic and intonational signals that