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Gesturing is such an integral yet unconscious part of communication that we are mostly oblivious to it. But if you observe anyone in conversation, you are likely to see his or her fingers, hands, and arms in some form of spontaneous motion. Why? David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the relationship between gesture and language, set about answering this question over twenty-five years ago. In Gesture and Thought he brings together years of this research, arguing that gesturing, an act which has been popularly understood as an accessory to speech, is actually a dialectical component of language. Gesture and Thought expands on McNeill’s acclaimed classic Hand and Mind. While that earlier work demonstrated what gestures reveal about thought, here gestures are shown to be active participants in both speaking and thinking. Expanding on an approach introduced by Lev Vygotsky in the 1930s, McNeill posits that gestures are key ingredients in an “imagery-language dialectic” that fuels both speech and thought. Gestures are both the “imagery” and components of “language.” The smallest element of this dialectic is the “growth point,” a snapshot of an utterance at its beginning psychological stage. Utilizing several innovative experiments he created and administered with subjects spanning several different age, gender, and language groups, McNeill shows how growth points organize themselves into utterances and extend to discourse at the moment of speaking. An ambitious project in the ongoing study of the relationship of human communication and thought, Gesture and Thought is a work of such consequence that it will influence all subsequent theory on the subject.
A research subject is shown a cartoon like the 1950 Canary Row--a classic Sylvester and Tweedy Bird caper that features Sylvester climbing up a downspout, swallowing a bowling ball and slamming into a brick wall. After watching the cartoon, the subject is videotaped recounting the story from memory to a listener who has not seen the cartoon. Painstaking analysis of the videotapes revealed that although the research subjects--children as well as adults, some neurologically impaired--represented a wide variety of linguistic groupings, the gestures of people speaking English and a half dozen other languages manifest the same principles. Relying on data from more than ten years of research, McNeill shows that gestures do not simply form a part of what is said and meant but have an impact on thought itself.
Landmark study on the role of gestures in relation to speech and thought.
This book explores how we move our hands when we talk, and what it means when we do so. Focusing on what we can discover about speakers—adults and children alike—by watching their hands, Goldin-Meadow discloses the active role that gesture plays in conversation and, more fundamentally, in thinking.
Summarizing her pioneering work on the semiotic analysis of gestures in conversational settings, Geneviève Calbris offers a comprehensive account of her unique perspective on the relationship between gesture, speech, and thought. She highlights the various functions of gesture and especially shows how various gestural signs can be created in the same gesture by analogical links between physical and semantic elements. Originating in our world experience via mimetic and metonymic processes, these analogical links are activated by contexts of use and thus lead to a diverse range of semantic constructions rather as, from the components of a Meccano kit, many different objects can be assembled. By (re)presenting perceptual schemata that mediate between the concrete and the abstract, gesture may frequently anticipate verbal formulation. Arguing for gesture as a symbolic system in its own right that interfaces with thought and speech production, Calbris' book brings a challenging new perspective to gesture studies and will be seminal for generations of gesture researchers.
Why do we gesture when we speak? The Cognitive Psychology of Speech-Related Gesture offers answers to this question while introducing readers to the huge interdisciplinary field of gesture. Drawing on ideas from cognitive psychology, this book highlights key debates in gesture research alongside advocating new approaches to conventional thinking. Beginning with the definition of the notion of communication, this book explores experimental approaches to gesture production and comprehension, the possible gestural origin of language and its implication for brain organization, and the development of gestural communication from infancy to childhood. Through these discussions the author presents the idea that speech-related gestures are not just peripheral phenomena, but rather a key function of the cognitive architecture, and should consequently be studied alongside traditional concepts in cognitive psychology. The Cognitive Psychology of Speech Related Gesture offers a broad overview which will be essential reading for all students of gesture research and language, as well as speech therapists, teachers and communication practitioners. It will also be of interest to anybody who is curious about why we move our bodies when we talk.
In this wide-ranging and probing book Erin Manning extends her previous inquiries into the politics of movement to the concept of the minor gesture. The minor gesture, although it may pass almost unperceived, transforms the field of relations. More than a chance variation, less than a volition, it requires rethinking common assumptions about human agency and political action. To embrace the minor gesture's power to fashion relations, its capacity to open new modes of experience and manners of expression, is to challenge the ways in which the neurotypical image of the human devalues alternative ways of being moved by and moving through the world—in particular what Manning terms "autistic perception." Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis and Whitehead's speculative pragmatism, Manning's far-reaching analyses range from fashion to depression to the writings of autistics, in each case affirming the neurodiversity of the minor and the alternative politics it gestures toward.
Gesture, or visible bodily action that is seen as intimately involved in the activity of speaking, has long fascinated scholars and laymen alike. Written by a leading authority on the subject, this 2004 study provides a comprehensive treatment of gesture and its use in interaction, drawing on the analysis of everyday conversations to demonstrate its varied role in the construction of utterances. Adam Kendon accompanies his analyses with an extended discussion of the history of the study of gesture - a topic not dealt with in any previous publication - as well as exploring the relationship between gesture and sign language, and how the use of gesture varies according to cultural and language differences. Set to become the definitive account of the topic, Gesture will be invaluable to all those interested in human communication. Its publication marks a major development, both in semiotics and in the emerging field of gesture studies.
This book proposes a radical alternative to dominant views of the evolution of language, in particular the origins of syntax. The authors draw on evidence from areas such as primatology, anthropology, and linguistics to present a groundbreaking account of the notion that language emerged through visible bodily action. Written in a clear and accessible style, Gesture and the Nature of Language will be indispensable reading for all those interested in the origins of language.
Combines in one volume "Technics and Language", in which anthropologist Leroi-Gourhan looks at prehistoric technology in relation to the development of cognitive and liguistic faculties, and "Memory and Rhythms", which addresses instinct and intelligence from a sociological viewpoint.