Individuals differ in how frequently they gesture. It is not clear whether gesture frequency is related to culture, since varied results have been reported. The purpose of this study was to test whether the frequency of representational gestures is linked with story-telling style. Previous research showed individual and cross-cultural differences in story-telling style, some preferring to tell a chronicle (how it happened) or an evaluative story (why it happened). We hypothesized that high gesture frequency might be strongly associated with using a chronicle style, since both rely on visuospatial imagery. Four groups of bilinguals, English as their second language (L2) participated. Their first language (L1) was one of: Mandarin, Hindi, French, or Spanish. Participants watched a cartoon and told the story, once in English, once in L1. The results showed group differences in the rate of gesture use: the Chinese and Hindi L1 participants gestured less frequently than the French and Spanish L1 participants. The participants from Asian cultures were more likely to tell an evaluative story and the Romance-language L1 participants a chronicle. We conclude that these culture/language groups differ in story-telling style. A chronicle style is associated with more gesture production than an evaluative style.

Gestures serve many functions, including aiding language access and message construction, particularly in spatial tasks. Some researchers have argued that gesture frequency is linked to proficiency in bilinguals, although results have been inconsistent. We tested Nicoladis’ (2007) proposal that bilinguals’ proficiency interacts with task: namely, more spatial tasks elicit greater proficiency effects. French–English bilinguals completed a cartoon-retell task (high spatial) and an interview task (low spatial) in both languages. We measured bilingual proficiency categorically by first language (L1) and continuously by assessing receptive vocabulary, oral fluency, and word types. Participants gestured more in the cartoon-retell task, but there were minimal proficiency effects and no interactions between proficiency and task. Interestingly, only participants with English as their L1 gestured more in their second language (L2), potentially due to ‘rustiness’, or lexical access difficulties in French from low usage in the majority English community.

Some studies have shown that bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals. One possible reason for the high gesture frequency is that bilinguals rely on gestures even more than monolinguals in constructing their message. To test this, we asked French–English bilingual adults and English monolingual adults to tell a story twice; on one occasion they could move their hands and on the other they could not. If gestures aid bilinguals in information packaging and/or lexical access, bilinguals should tell shorter stories with fewer word types than monolinguals when their gestures are restricted. In fact, we found that gesture restriction affected bilinguals’ stories only in French, the language in which they used more gestures. These findings challenge the interpretation that bilinguals gesture frequently as an aid in constructing their message. We argue that cultural norms in gesture frequency interact with gesture use in message construction.