36.2345, Reviews: The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2345. Mon Aug 04 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2345, Reviews: The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies

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Date: 04-Aug-2025
From: Lauren Gawne [L.Gawne at latrobe.edu.au]
Subject: The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies


Reviewer: Lauren Gawne

EDITOR: Alan Cienki
TITLE: The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2024
SUMMARY
The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies is a fitting encapsulation
of the state of a relatively young, interdisciplinary field of
enquiry. Alan Cienki has managed the difficult task of distilling the
topic while also reflecting a well-curated range of methods, voices
and perspectives. An understanding of the vital role of gesture in
language is essential for any linguist who studies interaction, and
this handbook provides a clear, authoritative introduction to key
approaches. I read a physical hardback copy for this review, but also
made use of a few downloaded PDF chapters while out and about. With 26
chapters and almost 700 pages, the Cambridge Handbook of Gesture
Studies is a hefty tome, but not completely unmanageable.
The table of contents is the second reassurance, after the editor,
that these twenty-six chapters have the reader in capable hands. There
are lots of names that are familiar, including those whose work has
been foundational to Gesture Studies over the last four decades, but
also researchers who have come up in the scholarly tradition and those
whose work intersects with Gesture Studies. It is particularly
bittersweet that two of these chapters are some of the final scholarly
contributions that Adam Kendon and Janet Bavelas made, and that the
handbook was printed after their deaths.
The introduction from Cienki sets out his intention for the handbook.
This includes an intentionally light touch with regard to
regularisation of any terminology or perspective. Instead, Cienki
respects the plurality of perspectives in the field, and his
curatorial hand is evident in the selection of topics, the ordering of
chapters, and the thematic structuring across the five sub-sections.
Part I focuses on the forms and functions of gestural types, a
concrete and bounded way into the topic of gesture, and a useful way
to build up an understanding of the scope of enquiry in the field.
Categories covered include emblems (Chapter 1, Payrató), recurrent
gestures (Chapter 2, Ladewig), iconic gestures (Chapter 3, Mittelberg
& Hinnell), deictic gestures (Chapter 4, Fricke) and the rather novel
inclusion of facial gestures as a distinct category and chapter
(Chapter 5, Chovil). The chapter on emblems is a good high-level
summary of Payrató and Clemente’s (2020) book-length treatment of the
topic. The chapter on recurrent gestures has immediately become my new
go-to reference for an overview of these pragmatic gestures. Ladewig
draws on literature from a diverse range of languages, including
signed languages, and draws on the key works of all major contributors
on this topic. Mittleberg and Hinnell’s discussion of iconicity
includes metaphoric gestures, and the way iconicity is more generally
a motivating ground for gesture formation. This chapter also serves as
an introduction to Peircean semantics and its utility for the study of
gesture. Like Mittleberg and Hinnell’s expansive treatment of
iconicity, Fricke’s approach to indexicality includes grounding in the
historical context of the disciplines that introduced these concepts
to Gesture Studies. While this chapter suffers from a lack of curation
in the referencing, it is a useful introduction to the referential
space that can be used, solo and collaboratively, in the production of
gesture. The chapter on facial gestures draws on parallels with manual
gesture, while focusing on the specific, unique contribution of the
face. In this chapter Chovil does important work in emphasising that
gesture is not just a product of the hands, while also moving the
study of facial expressions away from the emotive to the linguistic.
Part II is a series of seven chapters on ways that gesture analysis
can be approached. This section in particular will be of great use to
those who may be new to the analysis of gesture, and is of great
utility in the absence of a textbook on the topic. These chapters act
as a set of master classes in how key scholars have approached the
analysis of gesture. This section opens with a chapter from Adam
Kendon (Chapter 6), reflecting on half a century of work on what he
calls “visible action as utterance”. For those new to the field, it
provides a useful way into a rich and varied body of work. Those
familiar with Kendon’s research will appreciate the way Kendon lays
out his research path, from early days of working on Birdwhistle's
data, to Australia, Papua New Guinea and Italy. All readers will value
the narrative thread in this chapter that teases out the
intentionality of gesture. With this context, Bressem (Chapter 7)
provides a clear and highly useful introduction to gesture coding and
annotation. This Chapter does a good job of offering a great deal of
actionable advice, while also explaining why it is not feasible to
prescribe a single process. Instead, Bressem explores some of the key
questions researchers need to ask themselves to set up individual
projects well, using existing examples of research. If Bressem
considers the macro-issues for analysis, Müller (Chapter 8) focuses on
the detailed task of analysis, drawing on a worked example from her
own data and established Method for Gesture Analysis (MGA). I
particularly appreciate the demonstration of how this approach has
utility for cognitive linguistics, metaphor studies and pragmatics.
Calbris and Copple (Chapter 9) introduce an analytical schema that
makes use of embodied cognitive schemas to make sense of the
form/meaning relationship in the semiotics of gesture. Chapter 10 is
an introduction to Ekaterina Rakhilina’s work, until this date only
published in Russian, on the method of building a Russian multimedia
corpus for the study of gesture. This Chapter has much to offer those
interested in developing corpus methods for gesture analysis. In a
similar vein, Chapter 11 is the most extensive translation to date of
the work of Dominique Boutet, who adopted a kinesiological approach
that took a biophysical rather than observer basis for gesture
analysis. Both Chapters 10 and 11 are welcome contributions
representing work from scholars who passed while undertaking this
work, and thanks to Cienki’s translation and summary it is some of the
most important editorial work in this handbook. As someone new to the
work of both Rakhilina and Boutet, I think that both chapters provide
great value to established gesture scholars as well as those new to
the field. The final chapter of this section (Chapter 12) is an
incredibly useful high-level introduction to the use of
motion-tracking technology as a tool for gesture analysis. I
appreciated that in this chapter Trujillo focuses on explaining the
merits of different types of motion-tracking (markered, visual, and
AI), providing an introduction that will still be informative even as
specific tools come and go. This chapter also looks at the use of
these tools in both qualitative and quantitative research to answer
complex questions about gesture in interaction, where meaning making
happens with small changes over a multitude of parameters.
Part III includes five chapters that touch on the topic of gesture and
language from a variety of perspectives. Żywiczyński and Zlatev
(Chapter 13) look at the role of gesture in debates over the origins
of language. Although much of this chapter reads as a typology of
great men and their theories, it is a good introduction to a thorny
debate that has very few points of concrete agreement. Chapter 14 is
an introduction to the multimodal nature of first language
development, drawing on examples from Morgenstern’s own research to
illustrate key findings from across the literature. Second/foreign
language acquisition follows in Chapter 15, with Gullberg covering
cross-linguistic influence, gesture across the proficiency journey,
teacher and learner gesture and the effect of seeing and using gesture
on language acquisition. Gullberg acknowledges the complexity of
at-times contradictory evidence across a wide literature. Wilcox looks
at the relationship between gesture and signed languages (Chapter 16),
contextualising this in historically problematic understanding of both
gesture and signed languages before exploring contemporary
understandings. The final chapter in this section (Chapter 17) focuses
on gestures associated with negation, providing something of a case
study as an introduction to the relationship between grammar and
gesture. Harrison presents a thorough typology of existing work on
this topic, and outlines important ways gesture contributes to the
multimodality of grammar.
Part IV explores gesture in relation to cognition across four
chapters. This section starts with a chapter from McNeill (Chapter 18)
outlining the concept of the ‘growth point’ as a cognitive model for
the integration of gesture and speech, a topic developed across his
work. While this chapter is a synthesis of his own research, I
appreciate that it includes contextualisation with the scholarship
McNeill used as the basis for this approach. Chapter 19 provides an
introduction to a wide range of cognitive models and their points of
differentiation. Alibali and Hostetter look at information processing
and embodiment perspectives, and while they do introduce their own
Gesture as Simulated Action approach, they also provide a great survey
of the literature. In Chapter 20 we move from cognitive models to
neuroscience and the physical brain. Lausberg looks at the role of
each hemisphere in the production of gesture, and the relationships of
gesture to motor action, emotion and language in the brain. This
chapter also provides a critical introduction to key research methods
and the challenges that come with interpreting the results of each.
Chapter 21 covers cognitive topics under the broad category of
learning. Novack & Goldin-Meadow cover similar first language
acquisition ground to Chapter 14, from a developmental psychology
rather that interactional linguistic perspective, and also look at
learning for children beyond language acquisition.
The final section of the handbook (Part V) looks at gesture and
interaction, broadly construed. The first chapter in this section
(Chapter 22) is an outstanding contribution from Bavelas that looks at
the role of gesture for the addressee in interaction. This chapter
provides a targeted survey of interactional experimental study of
gesture, an area where Bavelas has made key contributions, identifying
and outlining six ways speakers modify gesture for the addressee. The
additional value of this chapter is the way in which Bavelas takes
social psychology to task for not treating interaction as the natural
unit, leaving experimental work out of step with key anthropological
insights. Chapter 23 provides an introduction to philosophical
treatments of intersubjectivity, which Cuffari notes have not entirely
accounted for gesture. The second half of this chapter is an
exploration of research that illustrates the contribution Gesture
Studies has to make to intersubjectivity. In Chapter 24 Brookes
provides an introduction to variation in gesture, particularly at the
socio-cultural level rather than at the level of individual variation.
This chapter raises the important question of gestural ecology, and
whether traditional linguistic and cultural boundaries have utility in
understanding the gestures of multivariate individuals. The last two
chapters in the handbook sit well together as a pair. The first
(Chapter 25) is the role of gesture in interaction with robots. In
this chapter Jokinen looks at both humans gesturing to robots and
robots gesturing to humans, and considers the technical and social
elements of making these interactions work. The final chapter (Chapter
26) looks at human-computer interaction, and particularly the role of
gesture interfaces. With technological advances happening rapidly in
this space, the focus on how user experience (UX) research is executed
means the contribution made by Stec and Larsen in this chapter will
have utility for gesture researchers interested in computer interfaces
for some time.
EVALUATION
The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies is a welcome contribution,
both as a summation of key insights from the field of Gesture Studies
to date, and an indication of where there is scope for progress. The
gaps in the range of languages referenced and the inconsistency with
which signed languages were considered were both notable as I read
through. Authors in the handbook also noted this; Morgenstern (Chapter
14) was open about the very Western skew of the literature she had to
present, and Harrison (Chapter 17) explicitly mapped out the languages
referenced in research regarding negation, with a strong western
Europe clustering. Some chapters used the handbook as an opportunity
to set the course of future research. Gullberg (Chapter 15) called for
more work in a greater range of second language learning contexts,
with more transparent methods and data required to move the field
forward. Novack and Goldin-Meadow (Chapter 21) have a whole section on
open questions, looking at the questions that remain regarding the
ways gesture indexes and changes knowledge. The savvy reader will also
find many other less explicitly stated avenues for future research
across the chapters.
For those already familiar with the general field, targeted chapters
on methods or perspectives outside their direct research areas will be
useful for expanding horizons, such as motion capture or UX design in
human-computer interaction. And Cienki’s service in bringing
Rakhilina’s (Chapter 10) and Boutet’s (Chapter 11) research into
translation means that there is something new for the English reader
even amongst the many familiar names and contributions. There are also
many charming moments where practitioners situate their own work;
Kendon’s chapter is a standout, but I also enjoyed learning that
Calbris (Chapter 9) became aware of the multimodality of language
through teaching French to migrants using fancy, new (at the time)
audiovisual methods.
The only other comparable text to this handbook is the two-volume
behemoth Body –Language – Communication from around a decade ago
(Müller et al. 2013, 2014). While I do appreciate the very short
chapters of those two volumes, they come in at three times the length
of this new handbook and can be bewildering to those new to the field.
The longer, sustained chapters in this handbook mean many will become
citational mainstays when introducing key topics, methods and concepts
in the field of Gesture Studies. I’ve already recommended several of
the chapters on analysis to research students. The Cambridge Handbook
of Gesture Studies is a fitting encapsulation of research in the area
and is a great starting point for linguists to get to know key
research in this field.
References
Müller, Cornelia, Alan J. Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva Ladewig, David
McNeill, and Sedinha Tessendorf (Eds). (2013). Body - Language -
Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human
Interaction., Vol. 1. De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110261318
Müller, Cornelia, Alan J. Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva Ladewig, David
McNeill, and Sedinha Tessendorf (Eds). (2014). Body - Language -
Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human
Communication., Vol. 2. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110302028
Payrató, Lluís, and Ignasi Clemente. (2020). Gestures we live by: the
pragmatics of emblematic gestures. De Gruyter Mouton.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Dr. Lauren Gawne is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at La Trobe
University. Lauren’s current research focus is the cross-cultural
variation in gesture use. Lauren also works on the grammar of
Tibeto-Burman languages, emoji use online and communicating
linguistics to a general audience.



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