Review of research on gesture

[Wallace Chafe]

I have no wish to stir up another hornet's nest on this topic, but I 
wanted to point to something I think has already been mentioned in 
passing a couple times: that is, parallels between gesture and prosody 
(pitch, volume, timing, and voice quality). At least some of the uses of 
prosody appear to have things in common with gesture, and one might even 
think of prosody as gesturing by the lungs and larynx. Speaking in a 
monotone is a little like speaking with one's hands tied behind one's back.

--Wally

On 5/12/2014 2:00 PM, Goodwin, Charles wrote:
> I think that one issue with the approach you describe might be taking gesture or gesture and language as a self-contained phenomena and as the primary way that embodied phenomena beyond the stream of speech are relevant to language. If we conceptualize language as being organized within, and emerging from, human frameworks for building action co-operatively, then  other forms of embodied action, such as as the ways in which hearers use posture, gaze etc. to demonstrate attention to, and co-participation in utterances as they emerge (which can lead to changes in the emerging structure of a speaker's sentence), might be as important to language as gesture. As noted by both Kendon and myself such participation frameworks create environments within which other forms of semiosis, such as process in which language and gesture mutually elaborate each other to build relevant action, can flourish. Focusing primarily on gesture can obscure the intrinsically co-operative sociality that is so central to how language manifests itself as one resource (with gesture and other forms of semiotic structure inherited from our predecessors) for building meaning and action in concert with others.
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> Chuck
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> ========================
> Charles Goodwin
> cgoodwinCharles Goodwin
>       Applied Linguistics
>       3300 Rolfe Hall
>       UCLA
>       Los Angeles CA 90095-1531
>
>      cgoodwin at humnet.ucla.edu<mailto:cgoodwin at humnet.ucla.edu>
> http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/clic/cgoodwin/
>
>
>
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> On May 12, 2014, at 1:15 PM, Everett, Daniel <DEVERETT at bentley.edu<mailto:DEVERETT at bentley.edu>> wrote:
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> In the review, I look at the very careful work of Kendon and McNeill on explaining the “gesture continuum.” They do a very good job of distinguishing these things.
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> In any case, those who already do work in gesture will know most of the things discussed in my review, though I do offer some interpretations that I think are novel.
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> Those who have not followed research on gesture may find it to be a concise intro to the topic, in the sense that it summarizes some of the work of Kendon and McNeill.
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> But one thing that this discussion shows, of course, is that research on gesture is not simply an add-on, of secondary importance or complexity to “real” or “core” studies of language, but that it is a vital component of a theory of human language, human grammar in fact.
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> This is not/was not intended to be news for folks already doing the research and following the debates. But it might be of use to those who, like myself, write grammars without paying attention to gesture or theorize about the evolution of language without paying attention to some of the very important findings of gesture researchers.
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> — Dan
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> On May 12, 2014, at 11:06 PM, Nick Enfield <Nick.Enfield at mpi.nl<mailto:Nick.Enfield at mpi.nl>> wrote:
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> “Might be relevant”? LOL Chuck Goodwin, here being characteristically modest (like a number of others in this thread), is a pioneer and inspiration in work on the relation between “language and gesture”.
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> I’d like to add a comment on the ‘language and gesture’ issue, related to Mike Morgan’s comments, among others. The term ‘gesture’ is hopelessly ambiguous, in a way that sabotages much discussion on the topic. Sometimes it means ’the communicative movements people make with their hands when talking’. Other times it means ‘the “imagistic, gradient, holistic” component of an utterance’. It’s often the case that these two things correlate, but they are not equivalent. The same ‘semiotic continuum’ from symbolic to ‘imagistic’ is seen within the modality of visible bodily movements as is seen within audible vocalisation (from lexical items to ‘tone of voice’). One cannot equate ’the visible part of the spoken language utterance’ with ‘the non-linguistic part of the utterance’. The problem must be approached starting with a semiotic characterisation of the whole utterance and its components, not from the idea of ‘language’ (as if any of us, when pushed, can draw a clear line between what does and does not count). From this perspective—Cornelia Müller’s work is a good example—we begin to see grammar-like properties in speakers’ co-speech hand movements. As Adam Kendon put it in 1986: “A theory of utterance should not begin with a division between ‘speech’ and ‘gesture’.” This is why he now eschews use of the term ‘gesture’ entirely.
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> Nick
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> On 12/05/14 20:08, "Goodwin, Charles" <cgoodwin at humnet.ucla.edu<mailto:cgoodwin at humnet.ucla.edu><mailto:cgoodwin at humnet.ucla.edu>> wrote:
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> A paper that might be relevant to this discussion:
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> 2007 Environmentally Coupled Gestures. In Gesture and the Dynamic Dimension of Language. Susan Duncan, Justine Cassell, and Elena Levy, eds. Pp. 195-212. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3327733/Papers PDF/Goodwin Environmentally Gestures.pdf<https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3327733/Papers%20PDF/Goodwin%20Environmentally%20Gestures.pdf>
>
> ========================
> Charles Goodwin
> cgoodwinCharles Goodwin
>     Applied Linguistics
>     3300 Rolfe Hall
>     UCLA
>     Los Angeles CA 90095-1531
>
>    cgoodwin at humnet.ucla.edu<mailto:cgoodwin at humnet.ucla.edu><mailto:cgoodwin at humnet.ucla.edu><mailto:cgoodwin at humnet.ucla.edu>
> http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/clic/cgoodwin/
>
>
>
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> On May 8, 2014, at 3:45 AM, Everett, Daniel <DEVERETT at bentley.edu<mailto:DEVERETT at bentley.edu><mailto:DEVERETT at bentley.edu><mailto:DEVERETT at bentley.edu>> wrote:
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> http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002084
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> Folks,
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> This paper reviews the very important research on gestures of David McNeill and many others, as well as  the history of gesture studies and their significance for language evolution, as well as for psycholingusitics, typology, functional and formal linguistics. The abstract:
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> "This paper is a review article about the pioneering work of G. David McNeill and various others on the interaction of gestures with human language and their vital role in the evolution of human language. McNeill argues, for example, that language and gesture must have begun together, that neither could have preceded the other. He also makes the case that the gesture-syntax connection was the most important step in language evolution and that compositionality and recursion played lesser, secondary (though extremely important) roles. I argue that McNeill's work is compatible with various papers and books of my own, especially Everett (2012). I further argue that McNeill's work supports the research program of "embodied cogntion." I argue that linguistic field researchers, theoreticians, and typologists cannot continue to work in a "gesture vacuum.”"
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> Dan
>