Review of research on gesture

Johanna Rubba jrubba at calpoly.edu
Fri May 9 16:50:00 UTC 2014


Language "not at all necessary for communication"?  I'd like to ask Randy to define communication. Certainly language isn't the only form of communication, but I can't imagine how people would build a society without being able to communicate about abstractions, hypotheticals, inner thoughts and feelings, the past, and the future. I guess it would be helpful also for Randy to define gesture. He says that it isn't sign language, and indeed that it isn't language. But I don't know of any non-language communication system that deals with abstractions, which are certainly essential to human culture. And, although media like phones and writing lack gesture, communication can still happen through them, albeit incomplete.

Fundamentally, if language (as opposed to gesture) isn't at all necessary to communication, why did it evolve?  It is a pretty elaborate system to have evolved in the absence of a need for it.

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Professor, Linguistics       
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
Tel. 805.756.2184
Dept. Tel 805.756.2596
E-mail:  jrubba at calpoly.edu
URL: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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On May 8, 2014, at 8:28 PM, "Everett, Daniel" <DEVERETT at bentley.edu> wrote:

> Randy,
> 
> You should read more about gesture. What you stated is quite a ways off the mark However it is exactly what I would have said myself before undertaking this project.
> 
> Not only is gesture important for the evolution of grammar, without it there is no language. But there is communication.
> 
> This is all I will say here. One could read my 13,000 word review article. Or better yet the primary sources.
> 
> Dan
> 
> 
> 
> On May 9, 2014, at 5:21, "Randy LaPolla" <randy.lapolla at gmail.com<mailto:randy.lapolla at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> This goes to the issue of how one sees linguistics. If one sees linguistics as about language, then it is easy to ignore gesture. If one sees linguistics as about communication, then language is only one way that we create communicative acts, or one part of the total communicative act, and it is not at all necessary for communication. Even some linguists who "take gesture into account" see language as the core of communication (in a coding-decoding model), and gesture as something extra, much the way pragmatics was treated before we figured out it was core to everything. If we don't take language as the core of communication, we can see that there is little difference functionally between gesture and language, and neurological studies show they are processed in the same areas of the brain.
> 
> Randy
> 
> -----
> Prof. Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA (罗仁地)| Head, Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies | Nanyang Technological University
> HSS-03-80, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332 | Tel: (65) 6592-1825 GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6795-6525 | http://sino-tibetan.net/rjlapolla/
> 
> On May 9, 2014, at 6:45 AM, Everett, Daniel wrote:
> 
> 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><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><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><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
> 
> 
> 
> 



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