Esture is not part of the language proper. (Or is it

Esture is not part of the language proper. (Or is it?) But from another perspective, omitting gesture is puzzling simply because wherever people use language ?any language ?they use gesture too. Gesture is universal, just as universal as language, and, as we will see, gesture and language go hand in hand. At almost every level of analysis that linguists are interested in ?from prosody to discourse structure ?research has recently uncovered systematic and sometimes surprising relationships between language and gesture. In this review, we describe what is known about these relationships and about the properties and patterns of gesture itself.2. Defining, identifying, and classifying gesturesFirst, it may be helpful to dispel some myths about what gesture is and what it is not. Gesture is not just for Italians (though their gestures do stand out in certain respects, as we discuss below); it’s not what mimes do (that is what is called pantomime); it’s not the same*Correspondence address: Natasha Abner, Linguistics Department, Montclair State University, 1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ 07043, USA. [email protected] et al.Pageas the signs of sign languages (though there are interesting connections between the two, which we touch on later); and, finally, it’s not generally impolite (though sticking your finger in someone’s face still, in many cases, is). So what, then, is gesture? Kendon (2004:7) defines gesture as “visible action when it is used as an utterance or as part of an utterance.” Such visible actions are diverse and include: points, shrugs, and nods; illustrations of the size, shape, and location of objects; demonstrations of how to perform actions; depictions of abstract ideas and relationships; and many other everyday communicative actions of the body. Our focus here is on gestures produced during the course of spoken language production ?co-speech gesture ?but there are also interesting cases of hearing individuals using gesture in place of speech because of taboos (e.g., Kendon 1988) or noise (e.g., Meissner and Philpott 1975). Listeners seem to intuitively distinguish gestures from the stream of other motor actions performed in the course of communication (Kendon 2004), including fidgeting and functional MG-132 msds interaction with objects, such as drinking from a glass. Gesture (as we use the term here, but see Ekman and Friesen 1969) also does not include the body language or affective facial expressions or reactions that often reveal a person’s attitude or emotional state, such as moving away from one’s interlocutor, wincing in pain, or laughing. The reason for excluding these movements may be framed in terms of Lyons’ (1977) distinction between informative and communicative signals. Many of our everyday actions function as informative signals to our interlocutors even though they are not necessarily intended to communicate. Moving a glass to our mouth to take a drink, for example, informs the world that we are thirsty. Moving an empty, cupped hand toward our mouth, however, communicates the idea of taking a drink. This does not mean that we are fully aware of all of our gestures or that they all have crystal clear meanings, just that they are part of our general effort to communicate. Rhythmic “beat” gestures (Efron 1972; Ekman and Friesen 1972; McNeill 1992), for example, play an important role in language production, even though the gestural forms themselves may MG-132 web communicate nothing specific beyond emphasis. Gesture, like s.Esture is not part of the language proper. (Or is it?) But from another perspective, omitting gesture is puzzling simply because wherever people use language ?any language ?they use gesture too. Gesture is universal, just as universal as language, and, as we will see, gesture and language go hand in hand. At almost every level of analysis that linguists are interested in ?from prosody to discourse structure ?research has recently uncovered systematic and sometimes surprising relationships between language and gesture. In this review, we describe what is known about these relationships and about the properties and patterns of gesture itself.2. Defining, identifying, and classifying gesturesFirst, it may be helpful to dispel some myths about what gesture is and what it is not. Gesture is not just for Italians (though their gestures do stand out in certain respects, as we discuss below); it’s not what mimes do (that is what is called pantomime); it’s not the same*Correspondence address: Natasha Abner, Linguistics Department, Montclair State University, 1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ 07043, USA. [email protected] et al.Pageas the signs of sign languages (though there are interesting connections between the two, which we touch on later); and, finally, it’s not generally impolite (though sticking your finger in someone’s face still, in many cases, is). So what, then, is gesture? Kendon (2004:7) defines gesture as “visible action when it is used as an utterance or as part of an utterance.” Such visible actions are diverse and include: points, shrugs, and nods; illustrations of the size, shape, and location of objects; demonstrations of how to perform actions; depictions of abstract ideas and relationships; and many other everyday communicative actions of the body. Our focus here is on gestures produced during the course of spoken language production ?co-speech gesture ?but there are also interesting cases of hearing individuals using gesture in place of speech because of taboos (e.g., Kendon 1988) or noise (e.g., Meissner and Philpott 1975). Listeners seem to intuitively distinguish gestures from the stream of other motor actions performed in the course of communication (Kendon 2004), including fidgeting and functional interaction with objects, such as drinking from a glass. Gesture (as we use the term here, but see Ekman and Friesen 1969) also does not include the body language or affective facial expressions or reactions that often reveal a person’s attitude or emotional state, such as moving away from one’s interlocutor, wincing in pain, or laughing. The reason for excluding these movements may be framed in terms of Lyons’ (1977) distinction between informative and communicative signals. Many of our everyday actions function as informative signals to our interlocutors even though they are not necessarily intended to communicate. Moving a glass to our mouth to take a drink, for example, informs the world that we are thirsty. Moving an empty, cupped hand toward our mouth, however, communicates the idea of taking a drink. This does not mean that we are fully aware of all of our gestures or that they all have crystal clear meanings, just that they are part of our general effort to communicate. Rhythmic “beat” gestures (Efron 1972; Ekman and Friesen 1972; McNeill 1992), for example, play an important role in language production, even though the gestural forms themselves may communicate nothing specific beyond emphasis. Gesture, like s.