earticle

영어

Body language is one of the non-verbal components of human social behavior. It is a crucial part of how we communicate and what we deliver in social interactions. In communicative situations involving audio description (AD), too, body language is significant in that it provides (con/co)textual information that helps the AD user better understand the unfolding event. However, the timing constraints contingent on AD make it difficult to insert a commentary describing body language. This study aims to reveal strategies for audio-describing body language in television dramas and to discuss what implications the findings have for AD practice. For this purpose, five Korean TV dramas with ADs were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. A total of 111 instances of body language use were identified and categorized according to an expanded version of Mazur’s (2014) typology ― “literalness,” “explicitation,” “generalization,” “omission,” “interpretation,” and “combination of strategies.” The findings show that literalness and combination of strategies are most pronounced in the data set and that, in the combination of strategies, explicitation is the most frequently used strategy. The study concludes with a brief discussion of implications and limitations.