36.2737, Books: Language Is Gesture: McNeill (2025)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2737. Mon Sep 15 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2737, Books: Language Is Gesture: McNeill (2025)

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Date: 11-Sep-2025
From: The MIT Press [jbullent at mit.edu]
Subject: Language Is Gesture: McNeill (2025)


Title: Language Is Gesture
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: MIT Press
           http://mitpress.mit.edu/
Book URL: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262552912/language-is-gesture/

Author(s): David McNeill

Paperback  ISBN: 9780262552912  240 pp., 6 x 9 in, 56 b&w illus.
Also available in Open Access edition

Abstract:

A new way of viewing language, as a dynamic mode of meaning-making of
which gesture is a fundamental part.
When David McNeill began his work on gesture more than forty years
ago, language and the action of speaking were regarded as separate
realms. But language, says McNeill in Language Is Gesture, is dynamic
and gesture is fundamental to speaking. Central to his conception of
language, and distinct from linguistic analysis, is what McNeill calls
the “growth point,” the starting point of making thought and speech
one. He uses the term “gesture–speech unity” to refer to the dynamic
dimension of adding gesture to speaking. It is the growth point that
achieves this unity, whereby thought is embedded in gesture and speech
at the same time.
Gesture is the engine of language. It is foundational to speaking,
language acquisition, the origin of language, animal communication,
thought, and consciousness. Gesture is global and synthetic and brings
energy; speech is linear and segmented and brings cultural standards.
The growth point is a snapshot of an utterance at its beginning
psychological stage, the starting point of unifying thought and
speech. Growth points create gesture–speech unity by synchronizing a
bundle of linguistic features with a gesture that carries the same
meaning. This gesture–speech unity is a form of thought, a unique form
of cognition.

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science
                     Language Acquisition

Written In: English (eng)



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