Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure 03 (2005): 199–244 Ishihara, S., M. Schmitz, and A. Schwarz (eds.): ©2005 Jannedy & Mendoza-Denton Structuring Information through Gesture and Intonation * Stefanie Jannedy & Norma Mendoza-Denton Humboldt Universität zu Berlin & University of Arizona Face-to-face communication is multimodal. In unscripted spoken discourse we can observe the interaction of several “semiotic layers”, modalities of information such as syntax, discourse structure, gesture, and intonation. We explore the role of gesture and intonation in structuring and aligning information in spoken discourse through a study of the co-occurrence of pitch accents and gestural apices. Metaphorical spatialization through gesture also plays a role in conveying the contextual relationships between the speaker, the government and other external forces in a naturally-occurring political speech setting. Keywords: Gesture, Intonation, Spoken Discourse, Narrative Structure, Political Speech, Affect. 1 Introduction It has been widely accepted that the gesture and intonation systems correlate, both aiding in the structuring of verbally rendered discourse (Cassell, 2000; * Many thanks to Emily Kidder, Ashley Stinnett, Mourad Mjahed, Bernd Pompino- Marschall & Ulrike Kölsch for valuable comments. Video fieldwork assistance was provided by Ashley Stinnett and Aomar Boum. Labelers at the University of Arizona included Ruby Basham, Jason Haugen, Hannah Jones, Emily Kidder and Heidi McLaughlin for ToBI Labelling; Natasha Gibson, Kerry Murray, and Cara O’Connor for gesture labelling. Bryce Coughlin generated the lexical transcription. This research would not have been possible without the consent and cooperation of Congressman Jim Kolbe, his staff in Tucson, Arizona and in Washington, D.C., and anonymous constituents at various Town Hall Meetings from 2000-2001. This research was supported by the University of Arizona Vice Provost Faculty Research Grant (to Mendoza-Denton), the University of Arizona Department of Anthropology Riecker Grant Program (to Mendoza-Denton), and the University of Arizona Undergraduate Honors Program Grant (to Stinnett for fieldwork). Further support comes from SFB632- D3 (to Jannedy) and from the German Research Foundation/Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.