Review of research on gesture

[Everett, Daniel]

And I think that I mention those folks in my review. Once again, however, I am talking about the average linguist. In fact, more than that, Eve and Sherman, I am simply urging upon linguists of all persuasions the need to engage themselves in exactly what you are doing. The claim is not that all linguists everywhere are ignoring gesture. The claim is that no one interested in language should ignore it.

There is nothing in my abstract language and certainly nothing in the paper that would disagree/contradict anything you or Sherman is saying.

All best,

Dan
On May 9, 2014, at 1:42 AM, Eve E. SWEETSER <sweetser at berkeley.edu<mailto:sweetser at berkeley.edu>> wrote:

Well, although Sherman is quite right, let me emphasize that it's not ONLY sign linguists.  There are quite a few linguists in the International Society for Gesture Studies meetings, and there are now regularly sessions on co-speech gesture at cognitive linguistic meetings such as ICLC and CSDL.  It may be true that outside of functionalist and cognitivist linguistics, linguistics is done without consideration of gesture; it is even true that MOST cog and funk linguists are still ignoring gesture.  But there is a lively interdisciplinary group of linguists (sign linguists and spoken-language linguists) who do regularly and seriously consider language in multimodal context.

Eve


On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Everett, Daniel <DEVERETT at bentley.edu<mailto:DEVERETT at bentley.edu>> wrote:
Obviously I am not talking about people who have “spent their careers” doing this. I am talking to the average linguist.

However, the fact that you use sign language as your example suggests that the work of McNeill might be profitably be explored.

Dan

On May 9, 2014, at 12:30 AM, Sherman Wilcox <wilcox at unm.edu<mailto:wilcox at unm.edu>> wrote:

> On 8 May 2014, at 15:22, Everett, Daniel wrote:
>
>> This doesn't quite get the point, Sherman. Gesture is not sign language, though that is part of the continuum.
>
> My point was not that gesture is sign language. My point was that lots of people have been exploring the relation of language and gesture for a long time. Those of us who have spent our careers doing this have not been working in a gesture vacuum.
>
> --
> Sherman