The function of the pointing gesture-speech combination in children’s story retelling

Abstract The use of multimodal communication provides information about children’s language development. From early ages, combinations of gesture and speech are part of communication and meaning processes in different discursive contexts. Our aim was to identify the types of pointing gesture-speech combinations and their communicative functions in the story retelling of 30-, 36-, 42-, and 48-month-old children. We analyzed the children’s retellings (in the context of joint attention with a book) by first identifying whether the pointing gesture-speech combinations were complementary or supplementary and then coding the communicative function of the combinations as assertive, directive, or expressive. The results showed a greater proportion of complementary combinations in all age groups, and a greater frequency of the assertive function in both complementary and supplementary combinations. This study provides evidence about the role of the pointing gesture-speech combinations in Mexican children’s story retelling and how their multimodal communication develops in this narrative context.