Journal of English for Academic Purposes 53 (2021) 101002

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Journal of English for Academic Purposes

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap

Showing as sense-making in oral presentations: The

speech-gesture-slide interplay in TED talks by Professor Brian Cox
Simon Harrison
City University of Hong Kong, Department of English, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Building on research into the visual semiotics of slides and the multimodality of oral pre­
Presentations sentations, this paper analyses the speech-gesture-slide interplay in TED talks and considers
PowerPoint implications for teaching about gesture in the academic presentation genre. Using two examples
TED
from presentations by award-winning science communicator Professor Brian Cox, an enactive-
Gesture
Depiction
ecological approach to embodied communication yields fine-grained descriptions of relations
Slides between spoken language, visuals on the slide, and gesture including depictions, eye-gaze shifts,
Visuals posture, and footwork. These demonstrate how the speaker’s activity of showing slides is a
Sense-making person-environment dynamic of sense-making with the audience, and more specifically, how the
Skilled practice speaker’s speech-gesture-slide interplay animates, discloses, and decomposes aspects of the vi­
Brian Cox suals on his slides while keeping his audience’s attention intact. Whereas researchers of English
for Academic Purposes have recommended raising students’ awareness of multimodality or body
language, this paper’s findings suggest ways to sensitivise and engage students more directly and
implicitly with the ecology of oral presentations.

1. Introduction

How can some students begin their oral presentation with seemingly proficient speech and naturalistic gestures, but ruin their
opening by standing in the way of their powerpoint beamer, their slides projecting onto their shirt? How can other students seem to
confidently pull off the knowledgeable TED-style delivery replete with stock interactive gestures and a backdrop of attractive slides,
and yet they obviously have not researched their topic and are waffling? The first mishap might stem from a perceived lack of
awareness of different modes (Morell, 2015; Morell, Garcia, & Sanchez, 2008; Morton, 2006; Valeiras-Jurado, 2019), but the second
one indicates a potentially larger problem (which would also underwrite the first): misunderstandings about the ecology of oral
presentations and the dynamism of person-environment relations. If such fundamental aspects of embodied sense-making are not also
addressed, I contend, then raising students’ awareness of different modes and their combinations may be insufficient for guiding
students towards skilled practice.
As a prestigious academic genre, TED talks have received scholarly attention evaluating their potential as a pedagogical resource
for teaching novice communicators about spoken language presentations (Coxhead, 2018; Wingrove, 2017). Studying the TED Talk
genre multimodally has highlighted the centrality to this genre of gestures (García Pinar & Pallejá López, 2018; Masi, 2019, 2020;
Valeiras-Jurado, 2019; Wu & Qu, 2020). TED Talk studies join other strands of research examining the role of gesture in oral pre­
sentations, including studies of gesture in assessed expository speeches for foreign language classes (Busà, 2015; Carney, 2013;

E-mail address: sharriso@cityu.edu.hk.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2021.101002
Received 16 October 2020; Received in revised form 29 March 2021; Accepted 18 April 2021
Available online 26 April 2021
1475-1585/© 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
S. Harrison Journal of English for Academic Purposes 53 (2021) 101002

Tabensky, 2008), multimodal discourse analyses of conference-style presentations (Hood & Forey, 2005; Morell, 2015; Morell et al.,
2008), and analyses of presenters’ embodied interaction with visuals from other semiotic and interactional perspectives (Morton,
2006; Rendle-Short, 2006; Knoblauch, 2008, 2013). Taken together, this research could guide the study of gestures in other academic
genres (such as the 3 MT; Carter-Thomas & Rowley-Jolivet, 2003) and inform the design of pedagogical materials that embrace
embodied views of language. However, there is little evidence that the teaching, learning, and assessment of gesture in (EAP) speaking
activities is currently informed by such research, though a systematic materials analysis is lacking.
The current paper focuses on an under-studied aspect of TED Talk multimodality and academic presentations more generally – the
speech-gesture-slide interplay (which is an aspect of a wider speaker-audience-slide interplay).1 Features of this interplay have been
addressed in previous studies of visual semiotics, multimodality, gesture, and performance studies. However, its dynamicity as a
complex system awaits further study. Here, I propose to analyse the speech-gesture-slide interplay through an explicitly relational
ontology, viewing the academic presentation as an ongoing dynamic or ecology in which presenters and their material and social
environment are fundamentally entangled and continuously interact (Goodwin, 2018; Streeck, 2017; Di Paolo, Cuffari, & De Jaegher,
2018; Ingold, 2011; Thibault, 2020; Harrison, 2020, in preparation).
To illuminate the interplay between language, gestures, slides, and the audience more specifically, I draw on a situated practice of
embodied sense-making called ‘showing’ (Streeck, 2017). Initially articulated in micro-ethnographic analyses of “the ways in which
one man copes with the communicative tasks of an average workday” (Streeck, 2017, p. xxviii), ‘showing’ is put to work here in
analysing the speech-gesture-slide interplay in academic oral presentations. Examples from the TED Talks of an award-winning science
communicator have been chosen for their high quality, accessibility online, and their capacity to illustrate the ‘showing’ of a highly
skilled practitioner: astrophysicist Professor Brian Cox. The findings open a perspective from which to consider previous proposals for
enhancing presentation skills that involve gesture. Whether or not courses that prioritize students’ identification of modes and
combinations (Morell, 2015; Morell et al., 2008) ensure a sufficient understanding of the speech-gesture-slide interplay will be dis­
cussed at the end of the paper. Showing as sense-making, I argue, can guide us in developing additional or alternative activities.

1.1. Visual semiotics in oral (academic) presentations

The importance of slides to the genre of oral academic presentation has been established at least since Dubois (1980), who observed
the use of slides as “a kind of clothesline on which the components of the speech are strung” (p. 46). By analysing biomedical papers
collected from a conference in the U.S., Dubois (1980) described the major slide content as being either linguistic or photographic and
observed that slides could have several functions, such as presenting information “quickly and successfully” (p. 48), assisting retention,
reinforcing information, and providing “additional interest, even diversion” (p. 49). Dubois also saw that speakers could “call attention
to the general content of the slide” or “restate the key information” (Dubois, 1980, p. 49). Commenting briefly on embodied inter­
action, Dubois observed how in presenting slides “the speaker ordinarily moves from the lectern and faces slightly toward the screen”
(p. 46). However, actual video footage was not analysed, her study being prior to the field’s “full engagement with multimodal and
semiotic practices” (Prior, 2012, p. 520).
The visual semiotics and periodicity of slides observed during academic conference presentations have also been analysed
(Rowley-Jolivet, 2000, 2002, 2004; Carter-Thomas & Rowley-Jolivet, 2003). By treating the academic presentation as a prototypical
multimodal genre and introducing a social semiotics perspective, Rowley-Jolivet and colleagues have demonstrated the importance of
spatio-temporality in visuals as a generic feature, elaborated on the different semiotic types of visuals, and analysed the role of visuals
as a resource for situated meaning-making. The relation between the spoken verbal and visual components of slides is characterized as
“one of synchronicity” (Rowley-Jolivet, 2002, p. 21) and of “close correlation” (Rowley-Jolivet, 2004, p. 158), with the researcher
often noting how the “co-existence of the two channels of communication creates a single textual space … which has to be processed as
an integrated whole by the audience” (Rowley-Jolivet, 2002, p. 21; cf. Rowley-Jolivet, 2000, 2004). This research has improved our
understanding of the relation between visual semiotics and spoken language in the academic conference presentation, though without
the data or methodology required to highlight the importance of gesture and the speaker’s embodied interaction with the audience.

1.2. Gesture and multimodality in oral (academic) presentations

Much research has reported observations of gesture in the oral academic presentation with varying attention to gesture’s relation to
modalities like speech and visuals. Studies of gesture in rehearsed expository speeches by students in the context of EFL and other
foreign language classes, for instance, have focused on the form, timing, and function of gestures (Busà, 2015; Carney, 2014; Tabensky,
2008). Research into academic presentation skills from the perspective of multimodal communication has situated gesture within
patterns of orchestration between modes. Several studies have aimed, for example, to operationalise systemic functional linguistics
theory through the construct of ‘body language’ (Hood & Forey, 2005; cf.; Hao & Hood, 2019), to highlight the persuasive potential of
certain combinations of semiotic modes as a presentation skill (Valeiras-Jurado & Ruiz-Madrid, 2019), and to distinguish between the
different uses and combinations of modes that characterize levels of expertise in academic presentations (Morell, 2015; Morell et al.,
2008). These findings have informed the design of courses in presentation skills that promote raising students’ awareness of multi­
modality as conducive to effective presentations (Morell et al., 2008; Morell, 2015; see Discussion). Other research analysing the

1
I thank Sotaro Kita for suggesting ‘the speech-gesture-slide interplay’ to effectively denote the phenomenon under study.

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interrelations between spoken language, gesture, and visuals from different semiotic and semantic perspectives helps to elaborate on
this multimodal view.

1.3. The speech-gesture-slide interplay

A dynamic interplay between speech, gestures, and slides has come into focus in a number of lines of research (Knoblauch, 2008,
2013; Masi, 2020; Morton, 2006). Joining research analyzing the multimodality of TED Talks (e.g., Masi, 2019; Valeiras-Jurado, 2019;
Wu & Qu, 2020), Masi (2020) has demonstrated how “the speaker’s attitude or stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about what is
being talked about” (p. 163) may be realized multimodally through carefully timed combinations of spoken language, gesture, and
slides. Specifically, the researcher offered two examples of what she described as “complex ensembles consisting of adjective-ges­
ture-visual” (p. 166), demonstrating how the meanings of one element in the ensemble may emphasize, reinforce, or restate the
meanings of another.
Research in performance studies by Knoblauch indicates that the intimacy with which presenters may interact with their visuals is a
property inherent to the powerpoint presentation format (Knoblauch, 2008, 2013). “[I]nsofar as they use such equipment” Knoblauch
(2008) writes, “whatever speakers say may be understood as relating to whatever they show” (p. 88). Focusing on the multitude of
ways in which speakers point to their slides (including with different hand shapes, postural orientations, and pointing technologies),
Knoblauch’s research contests both the perceived objectivity of visuals (their ‘technical visuality’) and the classification of gestures as
functionally complementary. In a key example, a speaker uses the laser pointer on relevant parts of the image to overlay movement
patterns that iconically represent the semantics of co-occurring verbal descriptors. For Knoblauch (2008), “while the slide represents a
static view of various objects”, the various gestures with the laser pen serve to “turn the static elements and the parts of the talk into a
dynamic process” (p. 83). An open question is how such relationality or ‘dynamic process’ creates meaning with other kinds of gestures
and visuals with the audience’s attention intact.

1.4. Enactive-ecological approaches and ‘showing’ as sense-making

Perspectives on embodied interaction known as ‘enactive’ or ‘ecological’ view person-environment relations as an ongoing dy­
namic in which people and their material and social environment are fundamentally entangled and continuously interact (Goodwin,
2018; Streeck, 2017; Di Paolo et al., 2018; Ingold, 2011; Thibault, 2020; Harrison, 2020, in preparation). Micro-ethnographer Streeck
(2017), for instance, has established why “meaning does not inhere in forms (of speech and body motion) but is a relationship between
form and context”, illustrating how for workers gathered on an automotive shop floor, “each moment of understanding is the result of a
local montage of heterogeneous resources” (p. xxviii). Goodwin (2018) refers to this person-environment relation as an ‘embodied
participation framework’, “a small ecology in which different signs in different media (talk, the gesturing body and objects in the
world) dynamically interact with each other” (Goodwin, 2018, p. 199). In Goodwin’s (2018) studies at an archeological excavation
site, “actions are examined that cannot be understood without simultaneous orientation to 1) language, 2) deictic gestures, and 3)
structure in the environment … as well as the mutual orientation of participants’ bodies that create a shared focus of attention”
(Goodwin, 2018, p. 221; emphasis added). Though working in different environments or ecologies, the practices observed by these
researchers provide inroads to the relational dynamics of academic presentations.
‘Showing’, for instance, was the term used by Streeck’s (2017) own research participant – the manager of an automotive garage
shopfloor in Texas – to refer to his practice of “explaining something to a customer or technician in the immediate presence of a car (or
car-related object)” (p. 166; emphasis original). This immediacy of material structures associated with the explicandum is a charac­
teristic of academic presentations too, and both Rowley-Jolivet (2002, p. 25) and Knoblauch (2008, p. 88) have evoked the importance
of ‘showing’ to this genre, though using this term non-technically. Streeck (2017) has theorised ‘showing’ as sense-making and, with his
focus on the garage owner’s embodied, environmentally-coupled interactions with others, identified a “battery of practiced methods of
showing at his disposal” (p. 164).2 However, ‘showing’ as sense-making remains to be explored in the widely-recognized (but less-well
understood) speech-gesture-slide interplay.

2. Methodology

Examples of the speech-gesture-slide interplay were sampled from two of three TED Talks by astrophysicist Professor Brian Cox:
CERN’s Supercollider (2008) and What Went Wrong at the LHC (2009). Cox has won awards for his work as a science communicator;
his TED talks are publicly available on the official TED channel and permission can be requested for use in research and teaching
purposes.3 In both talks, Cox’s speech, gesture, and slide continuously interact in ways that implicate his audience’s attention. The
proposed boundary of analysis for this paper is the onset and offset of different visuals, identifiable by a change in visual operated with
a clicker and the speaker’s segues.
Two examples of speech-gesture-slide interplay were selected based on their quality in terms of visibility (TED edits its videos for

2
As can be distilled from Streeck’s (2017) chapter on showing, these practiced methods include: explaining, pointing, gazing, manipulating,
repeating, investigating, disclosing, elaborating, transforming, making, decomposing, synthesizing, and reconfiguring.
3
TED Talk videos are licensed under CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). I am grateful to
the TED Media Team for granting permission for the current usage.

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entertainment not for research; Xia, 2021) and their potential to inform our understanding of ongoing dynamics at play in Cox’s two
talks.4 This potential was operationalized as those moments in which the relations between speech, gesture, and slide were being made
salient for the audience. Salience is indicated, for example, by a tell-tale pattern of eye-gaze shift in which speakers shift gaze from their
audience to focus mutual attention on gestures performed with speech (Streeck, 2009, ch. 5), which in this case is describing aspects of
visuals being shown on the slide. To indicate the commonality of the speech-gesture-slide interplay across Cox’s talks and topics
(within the domain of science), the two examples were taken from different talks.
Transcription and analysis were carried out in a Word document. The speech corresponding to the given visuals (including segues
in and out of the visual) was copied from the transcript available on the TED website. This was checked for accuracy and laid out in a
traditional transcript format with numbered lines corresponding to intonation units (Chafe, 1988). The transcript was then enhanced
for basic features of spoken language, including verbal stress on syllables (Celik, 2004, pp. 28–29) and micro-pauses within intonation
units indicated with a full-stop between parentheses (.). Cox’s operation of the slide clicker is visible in the recordings and indicated in
the transcript between double parentheses ((click)). His laughter was transcribed as ‘hah’, while the timing and extent of audience
laughter is shown in the line below Cox’s speech between square parentheses [hahah]. The slide’s type of semiotic could be classified
following Rowley-Jolivet (2000, 2002, 2004).
The two selected episodes were examined for gestures (Harrison, 2018; Kendon, 2004; McNeill, 1992). Manifestly central to both
examples was a gestural practice called ‘depiction’ (Streeck, 2009, chap. 6; see also; Clark, 2016; Stevens & Harrison, 2019; Hsu,
Brône, & Feyaerts, 2021). As can be distilled from Streeck’s accounts of depiction (Streeck, 2008, 2009), describing, analyzing, and
interpreting depictions requires attention to the interplay of several features. These include the speaker’s creation of an attentional
focus or ‘stage’ for the gestures. This is dynamically created, maintained, and adjusted to over the course of a depiction through gaze
orientation, head movements, posture shifts and linguistic devices like deictic pronouns and pauses. Useful descriptors for gaze can
include the elements of the environment towards which eye-gaze is visibly directed, such as the audience (‘mutual gaze’), the projected
slides, regions of space (in front/to the side), and the gesturing hands. Head movements (sideways, upwards, downwards, etc.) are part
of gaze shifts but may also result in stance-taking gestures and perspectival shifts such as the ‘head tilt’ or ‘head cock’ (Calbris, 1990).
In addition to gaze and head movement, the speaker’s footwork relative to the audience show changing bodily orientations and
positioning during an episode of depiction (stepping forwards, backwards, sideways, towards, etc.).
Interwoven with these dynamically embodied configurations, we may attend specifically to manual gestures. Several represen­
tational devices are known to take part in depictions. Müller, Bressem, and Ladewig (2013) usefully advocate asking “what are the
hands actually ‘doing’ when they are transformed into gesture?” (p.712). Answers may include: acting, molding, drawing or tracing, and
representing (Müller et al., 2013). Streeck (2009) demonstrates that elaborate depictions often “build up imagery of a setting over
extended sequences” involving several spoken utterances with which the gestures ‘collaborate’ (p. 122; Stevens & Harrison, 2019). In
oral presentations, the ‘setting’ being depicted by the speaker’s gesture may also be related to (i.e. collaborating with) the visuals on
the slide (Knoblauch, 2008; Masi, 2020; Morton, 2006). The analysis of depictions thus takes into account relations between the
gestures, the co-occurring speech, the details of the visual, and the attentional focus or ‘stage’ being created, adjusted, and maintained
with respect to the audience. The temporal and structural details of these relations can also be examined. As explained in the Linguistic
Annotation System for Gestures (Bressem, Ladewig, & Müller, 2013), a close analysis of gesture’s timing with speech requires attention
to gesture units and phases (preparation, stroke, retraction and holds), while distinctions in gesture’s structure can be described where
helpful in terms of form features (handshape, palm orientation, location, and motion). In addition to depictive episodes, the speaker in
my examples performed some gestures whose forms and functions are well-documented as ‘recurrent gestures’ (Harrison, 2018;
Ladewig, 2014).
A final methodological stage involves preparing these analyses for presentation within the manuscript. For both examples, the
verbal transcripts of speech are first presented in full, then analysed in more detail throughout the relevant section, which is inter­
spersed with framegrabs from the video on the TED website. Reproduction of all images in this paper is licensed under CC BY–NC–ND
4.0 International and permission for the current usage was granted by the Media Request Team at TED.5 Links to the videos are
provided for readers to experience the examples first-hand.

3. Analysis

The examples to be shown illustrate different methods of ‘showing’ (Streeck, 2017), which are ways in which the speaker, through
depictions in this case, “makes objects intelligible, discloses their dispositions and hidden features, reveals how they behave within
their material and practical contexts, and prefigures actions to be taken on them ….” (p. 202). The ‘objects’ being shown are projected
onto the visuals on a large screen behind Cox – a piece of scientific equipment in example 1 and a graph in example 2. Streeck (2017)
identified several methods of ‘showing’ in his data, of which two will guide my analyses of the examples: disclosing and decomposing
(Streeck, 2017, Ch.4). When speakers disclose, their sense-making behaviors make “apparent or transparent” certain features of objects
and settings that might not be visible to their addressee (p. 171). When they decompose, they show that something seemingly whole or
intact can be “indexically or figuratively” decomposed, that is, shown to be “made of separate parts” (Streeck, 2017, p. 185).

4
While we cannot see the audience often (or sometimes at all) in TED talks online, I think it is safe to assume (a) they are there, (b) at least some
of them (and probably most of them) are focused on the speaker and/or his or her slides, and (c) audience attention is guided to some extent by the
speaker’s embodied activity including verbal and gestural deixis.
5
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

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3.1. Disclosing features and behaviors of LHC magnets

Our first example runs from 01:19 to 01:57 in the talk What Went Wrong at the LHC. Having introduced the scientific experiment
underway at CERN (the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), in this segment Cox is showing and explaining the
manufacturing defect at the origin of the problem. This defect occurred because of wiring between two large magnets, which Cox
presents to the audience on his slide with a visual we can class following Rowley-Jolivet (2004) as a figurative semiotic involving
scientific apparatus (Fig. 1).
At 01:19, Cox has not yet shown this slide, but segues into it by saying “about a week later we had a problem with the machine
related actually to these bits of wire here (.) these gold wires” (Transcript 1, L1-2). During this segue, the TED video is focused on the
slides so we cannot see what Cox is doing or where he is looking, but in the pause between “here” and “these”, the slides change
(operated by Cox’s clicker), and as he says “these gold wires”, an animation occurs which places a yellow spotlight over the wires (cf.
bottom right of Fig. 1). With the timing of Cox’s slide change, his use of deictic pronouns (“these”), and his slide animation, we perceive
the speaker ‘doing deixis’ (Rendle-Short, 2006), which means bringing “both talk and nonverbal actions” into relation in order “to
invite the audience to focus on a particular part of the image” and in doing so, incorporating “the relevant part of the image … into the
ongoing talk” (p. 108).
Cox spends the next 20 s explaining the technical properties of the wires (01:25 to 01:44). During this explanation, he is gazing at
the audience and gesturing. Since this explanation is a side note addressed to “the engineers” in the audience, and Cox’s gestures are
mostly out of shot, I elide it from my transcript (Transcript 1).
Transcript 1. Manufacturing Defect (What Went Wrong at the LHC; 01:20).

1 about a WEEK later we had a PROblem with the machine

2 related actually to these (.) bits of WIRE here ((click)) these gold wires
⋅ (8 utterances explaining how the wires carry electrical current)
3 in ONE of the joins between over NINE thousand MAgnets in the LHC
4 er there was a manuFActuring defect so the wire heated up slightly
5 and its THIRteen thousand amps suddenly enCOUNtered electrical resistance
6 erm (.)((click)) THIS was the result hah
7 [hahahahaha]
8 now (.) THAT’s more impressive when you consider those MAGnets weigh over 20 TONs

In line 3, Cox reverts to explaining the manufacturing defect. He starts by saying “in one of the joins”, begins to gesture, and shifts
his eye-gaze from the audience to his hands (Fig. 2). This is the start of a depictive gestural sequence that will represent the magnets,
and in conjunction with speech, will disclose features of their problem.
As can be seen in Fig. 2, both hands are in a flapped hand shape, positioned so that the finger tips are opposite each other almost in
contact. Timed to occur with “in one of the joins” and montaged with his picture on the slide, the gesture form can be interpreted as
depicting a miniature of the machinery, each hand representing a magnet, the space in-between the hands being the join where wires
can be inferred. Whereas the visual depicts the machinery in two dimensions, this gesture models in three dimensions, and while the
image on the slide portrays the machinery from one perspective, Cox’s head-tilt and eye-gaze shift towards his own hands introduces
another – that of an observer standing ‘behind’ and ‘peering over’ the machine depicted gesturally. Since this gaze-shift follows from a
mutual gaze with the audience, furthermore, Cox’s “turn to the hands” (Streeck, 2009, p. 85) invites the audience to join him in
attending explicitly to the gestural depiction (on a ‘look where I look’ principle). Such perceptual nudges having implications for
mutual orientation and, accordingly, speaker-audience intersubjectivity.

Fig. 1. The image of magnets and wires on the slide behind Cox.

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Fig. 2. “in ONE of the joins”.

Holding this gesture momentarily, Cox looks back at the audience and says “between over 9,000 magnets in the LHC” (line 3),
offering this background information whilst rhythmically beating his gesture on the four syllables of “thou-sand mag-nets” (Fig. 3).
He is now going to develop the gestural depiction to show precisely what that problem with the magnets was, and thereby, animate
the two-dimensional picture on the slide with his three-dimensional modelling through gesture.
As Cox says “there was a manufacturing defect” (line 4), he shifts gaze (and plausibly audience attention) back to the gesture. This
time, he tilts his head to the opposite side to be looking at the gesture from yet a new angle, and he raises the gesture into a higher, more
salient space. With the words “manufacturing defect”, he rotates his wrists clockwise/anti-clockwise (Fig. 4).
If Cox’s hands are depicting the machine – as the gesture’s iconicity, co-occurring speech and slide would suggest – then rotating
the wrists discloses a certain play between the magnets. Taken in conjunction with co-occurring speech, a new meaning potentially
emerges: the “manufacturing default” was related to (and possibly caused by) the play between the two magnets. Yet if accepted, this
relation is neither mentioned in speech nor visible on the slide. The play of rotating wrists could alternatively be only metonymic of
some instability or a problem, rather than depicting the way the magnets actually moved.
Cox continues “so the wire heated up slightly” (line 4). With this utterance he shifts gaze from his hands to the audience and
performs a different gesture. His hands are kept in the same location but change shape from flat to ‘precision grip’ configurations (pads
of index and thumb are in contact), which are moved horizontally away from each other (Fig. 5).
Because Cox is talking about “the wire”, a feature of the machine highlighted on the visual behind him, we can explore the
interpretation of the gesture as representing the wire. Whereas in the previous gesture, the flat hands were iconic of the magnets, the

Fig. 3. “between over NINE thousand MAgnets in the LHC”.

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Fig. 4. “There was a manuFActuring defect”.

precision grip enacts holding a small object and the horizontal movement conveys the spatial extent of this object, namely a wire. Note
how the wire inferred by Cox’s precision grip gesture is of equal size to the previously depicted machinery, meaning the gesture
operates a zoom, again not present on the slide. With the word “slightly”, Cox’s hands are held at the end of this trajectory and
rhythmically beat with each of the two syllables (“slight-ly”) before being retracted.
Cox completes his explanation of this defect by saying “and its THIRteen thousand amps suddenly enCOUNTered electrical
resistance” (line 5). With this utterance, his gesturing undergoes a shift in functionality. On “and its THIRteen thousand amps”, Cox is
looking at a different region/person of his audience and performs a ring gesture often associated with the rhetorical aim of ‘making
precise’ (Kendon, 2004), a meta-pragmatic use of gesture to ‘handle speech’ (Streeck, 2009, chapter 8) (Fig. 6). Then, with “suddenly
encountered (electrical resistance)”, he performs a gesture with both arms sweeping outwards from the space in front of his body
(Fig. 7). The movement and acceleration of this gesture convey the sense of (and would be sensed by the audience as) the sudden force
with which the encounter took place, and in doing so, they set the scene for his imminent segue.
As Cox completes this utterance with the words “electrical resistance”, he is shifting his gaze to the clicker in his right hand on
“electrical” and then, having presumably checked his thumb is in the right place for a click, back to the audience on “resistance”. He
now says “erm (.) THIS was the result hah” (line 6). With the stressed deictic “THIS”, he clicks to show the next slide which reveals an
image of the mangled magnets (Fig. 8). The audience laugh (line 7), and Cox continues with an utterance in which “that” and “those”
now refer to what is being shown on the new slide (line 8).
Masi (2019) observed that for some visuals in TED Talks, “the function was found to be contextually determined, e.g. through a

Fig. 5. “So the wire heated up slightly”.

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Fig. 6. “And its THIRteen thousand amps”.

Fig. 7. “Suddenly enCOUNtered (electrical resistance)”.

contrast with a former visual” (p. 165). Dubois (1980) also noted that “a change in slide most often indicates a major division of
thought, a spoken paragraph” (p. 46), while Rowley-Jolivet (2002, 2004) showed that shifts between different visuals may play
discourse marking functions. Such visual contrast, division, or conjunction is salient to Cox’s segue, which creates a ‘big reveal’ of the
impressively damaged magnets. And while fillers and hesitations are traditionally viewed with scorn by speech coaches, Cox’s “erm”
and subsequent pause during the segue contribute not only to its rhetorical effect, but also to its intersubjective affect (judging by
audience laughter).

3.2. Decomposing the standard model of forces

The second example is from the talk CERN Supercollider delivered by Cox at an official TED conference in 2008. In the segment
under study, Cox will be showing the Standard Model of particle physics on the slide behind him with a graphical semiotic (Row­
ley-Jolivet, 2002), a classic line graph well known to physicists. The graph plots three fundamental forces of nature: the electro­
magnetic force (red), weak nuclear force (green), and strong nuclear force (blue). As the energy of these forces increases (x-axis), their
strengths also change (y-axis). Whereas the electromagnetic force decreases, the nuclear forces increase. The graph shows at which
energy the relative strengths of all three forces intersect. Such is the explanation that Cox will (more deftly) impart on his audience
through the practice of showing, central to which is a sequence of depiction.
According to Cox, the intersection and seeming convergence of these forces is one of the “big problems” that research at the CERN

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S. Harrison Journal of English for Academic Purposes 53 (2021) 101002

Fig. 8. “erm (.) THIS was the result hah”.

supercollider is designed to address. Having segued into this slide, and without mentioning the Standard Model or explicitly asking the
audience to look at the graph, Cox is going to establish this convergence’s importance. He will first multimodally simulate the changing
of strength of the different forces over time (he ‘runs’ the model for the audience), then in a practice of showing similar to ‘decom­
posing’ (described by Streeck, 2017, pp. 185, 202), Cox will clarify the trajectory of two specific values (the electromagnetic force and
the strong force).
Transcript 2. The Standard Model (CERN Supercollider; 09:10).

1 but anyway ((click)) hahah

2 so (.) that’s one thing that’s eSSENtially a GUAranTEE about what the LHC will find
3 there are MAny other things
4 you’ve HEARd many of the big problems (.) in particle physics.
5 one of them you heard about dark matter (.) dark energy
6 there’s aNOther issue which is that the FORces in NAture
7 it’s quite beautiful actually
8 seem as you GO back in TIme (.) they seem to CHAAnge in strength

Fig. 9. “The big problems (.) in particle physics”.

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S. Harrison Journal of English for Academic Purposes 53 (2021) 101002

9 well they DO change in strength

10 so the electromagNEtic force the force that holds us together
11 gets STRONger as you go to higher temperatures.
12 the strong force (.) the strong nuclear force
13 which sticks nuclei together gets WEAker
14 and what you see is the sTANdard model
15 you can CALculate how these change
16 is the FORces the three forces other than gravity,
17 ALmost seem to come together at one point
18 it’s almost as if there was ONE (.) BEAUtiful (.) kind of SUper-force
19 back at the beginning of time (.) but they just miss
20 now there’s a theory ((click)) called SUpersymmetry

Wrapping up a joke and clicking into a new slide (line 1), Cox’s first utterance concludes his previous point about “what the LHC
will find” (line 2). He is looking at his audience and contextualising what he is about to say as among the “big problems in particle
physics” (line 4), while performing palm up open hand or ‘presentational’ gestures that associate with the giving or expecting to
receive of information (Fig. 9; see Tabensky, 2008). As he segues into the new topic, he rotates posture, gaze direction, and his
gesturing hand (now a ’Palm Addressed’ form; Kendon, 2004, p.265) towards the slide and says “there’s aNOther issue” (line 6,
Fig. 10).
Cox’s spatial positioning between audience and slide here is, for Knoblauch (2008), “an essential feature of powerpoint perfor­
mances” (p.84) showing that during a presentation, “the screen and the slide appear in the position of a third party in an interaction”
(p.85). As Cox is gesturing towards the audience, then turning to his slide and announcing “another issue”, we can recognize with
Rendle-Short (2006) that “an expectation is (being) set up that the current image visible on the screen is relevant to the talk” (p. 108).
This expectation provides an interpretive framework for the audience to perceive the forms of Cox’s speech and gestures to follow.
As he introduces the issue, he looks away from the slide and says “which is that the FORces in NAture” (line 6) while looking down
at his hands that are preparing to gesture (Fig. 11). He then looks at the audience and steps towards them uttering “it’s quite beautiful
actually” (line 7; Fig. 12). This gaze shift, approaching body, and parenthetical evaluation conspire to engage the audience’s attention,
while also projecting and justifying the speaker’s elaboration as to why the issue shown on the slide is “beautiful”. The clause-final
discourse marker actually treats this evaluation as counterpositional and thus also contributes to “performed intersubjectivity”
(Clift, 2001, p. 265).
In this new stance, Cox continues his sentence (whose grammatical subject was “the forces of nature”) by saying “seem as you GO
back in TIme (.) they seem to CHAAnge in strength” (line 8). With each of these clauses (“as you GO back in TIme” and “they seem to
CHAAnge in strength”), he performs the same gesture, once with each clause: both hands are shaped flat with the palms down, moving
diagonally inwards/upwards so as to converge (Fig. 13). Because we know he is talking about the standard model on the slide behind
him, the form of his hands could be interpreted as depicting the lines on the graph, and if that is the case, then by moving his hands
together he is animating the model. Taking the precise content of speech into account, this movement would first show the forces going
back in time (clause 1) and thereby compress 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang into a split second. Repeating the movement with the
elongated “CHAAnge in strength” would then show the forces strengthening or weakening (clause 2). Keeping his audience’s attention
bound up with this depiction, note that Cox also shifts gaze orientation (head tilt and eye direction) with each performance: first from
the audience to the gesture with clause 1 (Fig. 13), then back to the audience with clause 2 (Fig. 14). As he clarifies “well they DO
change in strength” (line 9), he interrupts this depiction with a palm up open hand gesture, further inviting his audience to bodily
engage with this proposition (Fig. 15).
The graph Cox is explaining is static and time invariant, but in this depictive segment, Cox has animated the graph, introduced time,
and ‘run’ the model twice – correlating time with strength. By introducing time as a factor (facilitated by the affordances of gesture to
compress time), furthermore, he has hinted at the relevance of the CERN supercollider, which aims to recreate the conditions present in
the universe immediately after the Big Bang. Note also the “intersemiotic parallelism”, the angular form of the gesture and the lines on
the graph showing a “cohesive relation that interconnects both language and images when the two semiotic components share a similar
form” (Liu & O’Halloran, 2009, p. 372).
In the next stage of his explanation, which also enfolds with the same visual, Cox will now treat each of the forces individually. The
method of showing that Streeck (2017) terms ‘decomposing’ may guide us here in referring to the way speakers often explain how “an
object might be divided up or taken apart” (p. 202). He begins with “so the electromagNEtic force” (line 10), stepping his right foot
back and rotating his body so as to open a space on his left where he is going to gesture, while shifting eye-gaze to his hand, which has
adopted the shape used in the previous sequence to depict the lines (Fig. 16). He momentarily interrupts this configuration to interject
a definition of the electromagnetic force as “the force that holds us together” (line 10), with which he shifts gaze to the audience and
gestures with both fists clenched – a kinesthetic image of something being held together or more abstractly a sense of force (Fig. 17).
Returning his gaze to the gesture, his left hand traces a diagonal line from bottom right to top left while Cox says “gets STRONger as you
go to higher temperatures” (line 11). This line is traced with a precision grip hand shape (pads of thumb and index in contact) moving
diagonally upwards. With “gets STRONger”, he is gazing at this gesture (Fig. 18), then while he is completing the gesture with “as you
go to higher temperatures”, he shifts gaze back to his audience, as if to gauge their attention (Fig. 19).
Cox is now going to introduce one of the two forces that illustrate the opposite trend. Still looking at his audience, he says “the
strong force” (line 12) while adjusting his forelimbs to adopt the reverse configuration – lowering his left hand, raising his right hand,

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S. Harrison Journal of English for Academic Purposes 53 (2021) 101002

Fig. 10. “There’s aNOther issue”.

Fig. 11. “Which is that the FORces in NAture”.

and tilting his head to the opposite side (Fig. 20). He quickly clarifies he means “the strong nuclear force” (line 12) and pre-empts the
gesture he is going to make by bringing the hands together along the diagonal axis opposite to that used in the last gesture. He
abandons the gesture momentarily, dropping his hands and clarifying “which sticks nuclei together” (Fig. 21), then redoes the gesture
with “gets weaker” (line 13), this time tracking his hands with eye-gaze and accordingly tilting his head backwards (Fig. 22).
Note how the speech is characterized by a parallel structure “the electromagnetic force … gets stronger”/“the strong force … gets
weaker”, while a similar parallelism is also exhibited in the gestures in terms of axes and movement. The fact he completely interrupts
this depiction to parenthetically clarify part of his explanation (“which sticks nuclei together”; Fig. 21) portrays the speech-gesture-
slide interplay as dynamically adaptive to the needs of the moment, which may include a flash decision to address an intersubjec­
tively perceived need for clarification.
Having animated the model and shown what its different components mean, Cox now relates his depiction more explicitly to the
graph on the slide behind him. Stopping gesturing and turning to the slide, he says “and what you see”, then turns back to the audience
to complete his utterance “in the standard model” (line 14). As he briefly interjects with “you can calculate how these change” (line
15), he redoes a gesture similar to the original two-handed gesture showing convergence (cf. Figs. 13 and 14). Cox continues “is the
forces, the three forces, other than gravity almost seem to come together at one point (line 16–17), though gestures are not visible now
as TED has panned to the slide. Finally, in lines 18–20, Cox makes a concluding statement, cohesively repeating his assessment about
the beauty of this phenomena, before his segue into the topic’s next stage “now there’s a theory called SUpermmetry” (line 20), on
which he clicks after “theory” to activate the appearance of new visuals on his slide.

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S. Harrison Journal of English for Academic Purposes 53 (2021) 101002

Fig. 12. “it’s quite beautiful actually”.

Fig. 13. “As you GO back in TIme”.

Engaging in the communicative practice of showing (Streeck, 2017), Cox displayed a graph depicting the Standard Model on his
slide, and with this graph behind him, engaged his audience with the complexity of its deceptive beauty. With his speech and gesture
animating this graph, Cox first ‘ran the model’ by depicting the global trajectory of its lines whilst relating these linguistically to the
notions of time and strength. He then treated each force individually, or in terms of visual perception, elevated a figure from its ground
(Streeck, 2017, p. 186). Cox’s parallelisms in speech and gesture contributed aesthetic quality to his explanation, helping onlookers
understand and admire quantum phenomena. Observable footwork during this example, while emphasizing the whole-bodied nature
of the oral presentation genre, also highlighted the importance that Cox visibly and physically attributes to his depictive gestures.

4. Discussion

Building on research into the visual semiotics of slides and the multimodality of oral presentations, then paper identified a speech-
gesture-slide interplay as salient to the ecology of the spoken academic genre. An enactive-ecological approach to embodied
communication framed the speaker’s activity of showing slides as a person-environment process of sense-making with the audience
(Streeck, 2017; Goodwin, 2018). Analysing examples from award-winning science communicator Professor Brian Cox, fine-grained
descriptions of relations between speaker, language, slide, and gesture including eye-gaze shifts, posture, and footwork have
demonstrated how the speaker’s speech-gesture-slide interplay animates, discloses, decomposes, and otherwise analyses aspects of the

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S. Harrison Journal of English for Academic Purposes 53 (2021) 101002

Fig. 14. “They seem to CHAAnge in strength”.

Fig. 15. “Well they DO change in strength”.

visuals on his slides with his audience’s attention intact. The implications of showing as sense-making for teaching and assessing gesture
as presentation skill, however, remain yet to be explored.
Some researchers of oral presentations have suggested which forms and functions of gestures might be taught (Busà, 2015; Carney,
2014; Wu & Qu, 2020). The idea of formal instruction about spontaneously produced gestures for other researchers is “simply un­
thinkable” (Tabensky, 2008, p. 318). Where much thinking about how to teach multimodal aspects of different academic genres has
taken place is the area of ‘multimodal pedagogy’ (Hafner & Miller, 2018, Ch. 7). Several classroom activities dedicated to gesture in
oral presentations have also been proposed in the literature (see Busà, 2010; 2015; Carney, 2013; Morell et al., 2008). A detailed
discussion of one proposal in particular helps to highlight how this paper’s findings may contribute.
Multimodality researchers Morell et al. (2008), for instance, offer students explicit instruction on “the verbal and non-verbal
language that will help to link and organize our spoken multimodal discourse” (p.559). At the start of their course they elicit stu­
dents’ awareness of distinct “spoken, written, image and body language” modes, draw their intention to sequences of modes as
‘consecutive’ or ‘simultaneous’, then require peer-review of each other’s presentations following an evaluation grid. Most relevant to
the speech-gesture-slide interplay, this grid includes yes/no questions as to whether different modes were used or not and if their use
was ‘appropriate’, ‘effective’, and ‘good’ (p. 565; Fig. 23).
Triangulating their students’ peer evaluation with the researchers’ own multimodal analysis, Morell et al. (2008) found that
“speakers with a higher competence level in English tend to use a greater variety and combination of modes”, and that the speakers
using more modes “came across” to their peers “as a good communicator” (p. 564). This finding is the researchers’ basis for their main

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Fig. 16. “So the electromagNEtic force”.

Fig. 17. “The force that holds us together”.

pedagogical recommendation that “courses to aid non-native English speaking academics should emphasize the use of multimodality”
(Morell et al., 2008, p. 567; Morell, 2015; see also Busà, 2010).
Teaching students to decompose a presentation into different modes and then identify multimodal patterns, however, seems in
tension with the understanding of the person-environment relations on which practices like ‘showing’ have been demonstrated to rely
(Streeck, 2017). Consider that ‘showing’ was identified by Streeck (2017) not among patterns or configurations of modes but among
his car mechanic’s practices, that is, “methods for doing things” that were “enacted through movements of the body”, “skilled,
methodical”, “locally adaptive”, “nested” and “socially implicative” (pp.7–8). Embodied actions like gestures, eye-gaze shifts, and
postures are not seen as distinct signals or messages channeled within a body language mode (cf. Streeck, 2020, p. 15). They are
recognized as moments when “the speaker’s living body orients itself to the cognitive and social landscape at hand as an acting body”,
supporting a given practice which reveals how the speaker at that moment and with his or her audience “makes sense in the manners in
which acting in the material world makes sense” (Streeck, 2017, p. 295). What Streeck here calls the ‘cognitive and social landscape’ is
akin to Goodwin’s (2018) ‘embodied participation framework’ or ecology: person-environment relations characterized by bodies (in

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Fig. 18. “Gets STRONger”.

Fig. 19. “As you go to higher temperatures”.

the plural), language, gestures, and artefacts (like slides) being in dynamic interaction and, moreover, being adaptive to and
constitutive of the evolving situation.
With the work by Streeck, by Goodwin, and by other multimodality scholars of various stripes in mind (cf. Prior, 2012; Hafner &
Miller, 2018, Ch. 7), could it not be said that to approach the spoken oral presentation with an evaluation grid in which different
‘modes’ are split up is to process its harmonious ecology through a kind of ontological egg slice?6 The subsequent identification,
description, and teaching of the speech-gesture-slide interplay with the formula “spoken + image + body” would suggest so (Morell
et al., 2008, p. 562). Though undoubtedly offering a useful heuristic, the formula (+ … + … + …) or similar conjunctive framings
seems much less well-equipped both for handling the concrete, continuous, and evolving interplay of person-environment relations in
a practice like ‘showing’ and for appreciating the stage work of skilled practitioners like Brian Cox.
The notion of skilled practice might offer a good starting point for developing classroom activities informed by showing as sense-
making. “The skilled practitioner”, writes anthropologist Ingold (2011), “is one who can continually attune his or her movements to
perturbations in the perceived environment without ever interrupting the flow of action” (p. 94). Continuous attunement, movement,

6
In support of this view, see notions of entanglement, flux, and becoming such as in Thibault’s (2020) relational languaging, Ingold’s (2011)
meshwork/knotting ontologies, Streeck’s (2017) self-making man/gesture by auotopoesis, Di Paolo et al.’s (2018) linguistic bodies, and Author’s (in
prep) body language myth.

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Fig. 20. “The strong force”.

Fig. 21. “Which sticks nuclei together”.

perturbations, perception, and flow are useful notions here. A new slide, for instance, is a perturbation in the perceived environment to
which the presenter (and audience) must attune or risk interrupting the flow of presentation. This risk is borne out by students standing
in the way of their beamer or waffling afore their slides, to revert to real scenarios with which I opened the paper. As a warmer activity
to a lesson on the speech-gesture-slide interplay, a class of EAP students could be shown these comical scenarios or asked to act them
out. Rather than initiating students to the study of multimodality, I would then initiate them to a practice like ‘showing’ by engaging
them with some concrete examples, such as from Brian Cox (worked examples could also be adapted from Morton, 2006; Knoblauch,
2008; Masi, 2020; Harrison, in preparation). Practitioners’ choice of examples might also take into account the disciplinary back­
ground and likely audience of their students’ presentations (Tardy, 2005).
In teaching skilled practice, as Van den Herik and Rietveld (2021) remind us, “active attunement does not rely on the transmission
of (embodied) knowledge from teacher to novice, but rather consists in a teacher setting up the conditions that enable a novice to
notice and respond to what is relevant in a situation” (p. 5; see also Ingold, 2001, p. 141). The situation of interest for the class
described here is the task of showing visuals to an audience. Some pre-conditions might involve students choosing their visuals and
exploring—with highly gestural examples like those from Cox fresh in their mind—what potentialities to be animated, disclosed, or
decomposed their own visuals invite or ‘afford’. To stimulate this ‘education of attention’ (Ingold, 2001), some questions for students
at this stage – guided not only by notions of multimodality but also by theories of sense-making – might include: What matters to you
about this visual or what draws you to it? What do you want the audience to notice about it? What explanation does it facilitate? Better
still, because “problem-solving is inseparable from the actual movements of the person-acting in the settings of practice” (Ingold, 2001,

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Fig. 22. “Gets weaker”.

Fig. 23. Extract from peer-evaluation grid concerning modes (Morell et al., 2008, p. 565, p. 565).

p. 145), an oral presentation setting could be simulated in the classroom for students to discover answers to such questions through
exploratory and improvisatory practice.
With analyses of the speech-gesture-slide interplay in presentations by an award-winning science communicator, this paper con­
tributes to understanding the practice of ‘showing’ as an environmentally-situated, embodied, enlanguaged, and socially implicative
presentation skill (Streeck, 2017). It provides empirical support and suggests materials for a class on oral presentations, which, rather
than (or in addition to) explicitly raising students’ awareness of different modes and their combinations, seeks to sensitivise and engage
students more directly and implicitly with the ecology of oral presentations. Whether or not this approach leads students to deeper
understanding and/or stronger presentations, as well as what implications it holds for assessment, are subjects for future research.

Author statement

The author confirms being the sole author of this work.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Christoph Hafner, Michael Stevens Pérez, and Jürgen Streeck for reading and commenting on previous drafts of this
manuscript. I am grateful for the helpful feedback and suggestions from two anonymous reviewers. I also thank Xia Sichen for her work
on the transcripts and David Long for discussions of The Standard Model. Any shortcomings will remain my own.

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Simon Harrison is Assistant Professor and gesture researcher in the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong. His studies of gesture have explored spoken
grammar (negation), classroom interaction, and embodied cognition. He is author of The Impulse to Gesture: Where Language, Minds, and Bodies Intersect (2018), Chinese
Urban Shi-nema: Cinematicity, Society and Millennial China (with David H. Fleming, 2020) and The Body Language Myth: Understanding Gesture in Language and
Communication (in preparation).

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