Why aren’t we Saving the Planet: A Psycholotist’s Perspective (27 page)

In this second sequence Gemma is talking about the choice dilemma in supermarkets and how if one product had a high carbon footprint and one had a low carbon footprint then she would buy the low-carbon-footprint product even if the low-carbon-footprint product was more expensive (the reason she gives is that she would feel really guilty doing anything else). We know with Gemma that not only is her explicit attitude to low-carbon-footprint products positive but her implicit attitude is as well. Notice how she uses deictic gestures to refer to high- and low-carbon-footprint products in a consistent way by assigning them to a location in gestural space in gestures 19 and 20 (in this case either to her right or left) and then referring back to these concepts within the same location in gestural space in a consistent manner. So when she says that she would ‘buy the low’, her gesture (gesture 26) moves (and points) to the same location in the gestural space identified in gesture 20. In other words, in both her speech and her gesture she is being perfectly consistent. The unconscious gesture supports rather than contradicts what is being said in the speech of
this participant, whose explicit and implicit attitudes match.

Yeah [if it was like really high]
₍₁₉₎
[and something was really low]
₍₂₀₎
:: [but it was the same product]
₍₂₁₎
[er but there was a difference in price]
₍₂₂₎
::: [then I]
₍₂₃₎
::::: [probably still feel really guilty]
₍₂₄₎
[about buying the high carbon one]
₍₂₅₎
[so I would buy the low]
₍₂₆₎