Cover not available

In:Handbook of Pragmatics: 22nd Annual Installment
Edited by Jan-Ola Östman and Jef Verschueren
[Handbook of Pragmatics 22] 2019
► pp. 3–30

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Gesture research

 | The University of Texas at Austin
Published online: 23 December 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.22.ges1
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The attraction of gestures
  • 3.Contemporary research on gesture
  • 4.Gestures’ environments
  • 5.Indexical gesture
  • 6.Depiction
  • 7.Conceptual action
  • 8.Gesturing the search for a word: Two perspectives
  • 9.Pragmatics
  • 10.The view from cognitive linguistics
  • 11.An anthropological perspective on gesture
  • Notes
  • References
References (111)
References
Aarsleff, H. 1974. “The tradition of Condillac: The problem of the origin of language in the eighteenth century and the debate in the Berlin Academy before Herder.” In Studies in the History of Linguistics, ed. by D. Hymes, 93–156. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Andrén, M. 2014. “On the lower limit of gesture.” In From Gesture in Conversation to Visible Action as Utterance, ed. by M. Seyfeddinipur and M. Gullberg, 153–167. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barash, M. (1987). Giotto and the Language of Gesture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bateson, G. 1972 [1956]. “A theory of play and fantasy.” In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 177–193. New York: Ballantine.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baxandall, M. 1972. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Birdwhistell, R. L. 1970. Kinesics and Context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1979. “Toward analyzing American movement.” In Nonverbal Communication: Readings with Commentary, ed. by S. Weitz. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blom, P. 2010. A Wicked Company : The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boas, F. 1932. “Rasse und Charakter.” Anthropologischer Anzeiger 8: 280–284.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bressem, J. and C. Mueller. 2014. “The family of away gestures: Negation, refusal, and negative assessment.” In Body Language Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction (Vol. 2), ed. by C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S. H. Ladewig, D. McNeill and J. Bressem, 1592–1604. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brilliant, R. 1963. Gesture and Rank in Roman Art (Vol. XIV). New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, J. L. 1998. “Cognitive processes in grammaticalization.” In The New Psychology of Language (Vol. 2), ed. by M. Tomasello, 145–168. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cienki, A. 2008. “Why study metaphor and gesture?” In Metaphor and Gesture, ed. by A. Cienki and C. Müller, 5–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Condillac, E. 1746. An Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, Being a Supplement to Mr. Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding. London: J. Noursse.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cuffari, E. and Streeck, J. 2017. “Taking the world by hand: How (some) hand gestures mean.” In Intercorporeality: Emerging Socialities in Interaction, ed. by C. Meyer, J. Streeck and J. S. Jordan, 173–202. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Day, D. & J. Wagner (Eds.). 2019. Objects, Bodies, and Work Practice. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Jorio, A. 2000 [1832]. Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donald, M. 1991. Origins of the Modern Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Efron, D. 1972 [1941]. Gesture, Race and Culture. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2003. “Demonstratives in space and interaction: data from Lao speakers and implications for semantic analysis.” Language 79(1): 82–117. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2004. “On linear segmentation and combinatorics in co-speech gesture: A symmetry-dominance construction in Lao fish trap descriptions.” Semiotica 149 (1): 57–123.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2009. The Anatomy of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fischer, J. 2006. Philosophische Anthropologie: Eine Denkrichtung des 20. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Karl Alber.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fuchs, T. and H. De Jaeger. 2009. “Enactive intersubjectivity: Participatory sense-making and mutual incorporation.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8: 465–486. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gehlen, A. 1988 [1958]. Man: His Nature and Place in the World. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibson, J. J. 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, E. 1963. Behavior in Public Places. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1971. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. 2003. Hearing Gesture: How our Hands Help us Think. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gombrich, E. H. 1982. The Image and the Eye. London: Phaidon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goodwin, C. 1986. “Gesture as a resource for the organization of mutual orientation.” Semiotica 62(1–2): 29–49. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1994. “Professional vision.” American Anthropologist 96(3): 606–633. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2003. “Pointing as situated practice.” In Pointing: Where Language, Culture and Cognition Meet, ed. by S. Kita, 217–242. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007. “Environmentally coupled gestures.” In Gesture and the dynamic dimension of language: Essays in honor of David McNeill, ed. by S. D. Duncan, J. Cassell and E. T. Levy, 195–212. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2018. Co-Operative Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goodwin, C. and M. H. Goodwin. 1986. “Gesture and coparticipation in the activity of searching for a word.” Semiotica 62(1–2): 51–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haviland, J. B. 1993. “Anchoring, iconicity, and orientation in Guugu Yimidhirr pointing gestures.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 3: 3–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heath, C. 1982. “The display of recipiency: an instance of a sequential relationship in speech and body movement.” Semiotica 42(2–4): 147–167. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1992. “Gesture’s discreet tasks: Multiple relevancies in visual conduct and in the contextualisation of language.” In The Contextualization of Language, ed. by P. Auer and A. di Luzio, 101–128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heidegger, M. 1962 [1926]. Being and Time. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Humboldt, W. v. 1988 [1836]. On Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keller, R. 1994. On Language Change : The Invisible Hand in Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kendon, A. 1967. “Some functions of gaze direction in two-person conversation.” Acta Psychologica 26: 22–63.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1972. “Some relationships between body motion and speech.” In Studies in Dyadic Communication, ed. by A. Seigmann, 177–210. Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1980. “Gesticulation and speech: Two aspects of the process of utterance.” In The Relationship between Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior, ed. by M. R. Kay. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1981. “The organization of behavior in face-to-face interaction: Observations on the development of a methodology.” In Handbook of Research Methods in Nonverbal Behavior, ed. by P. Ekman and K. Scherer, 440–505. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1983. “Gesture and speech: How they interact.” In (Eds.), Nonverbal Interaction, ed. by J. M. Wiemann and R. P. Harrison, 13–45. Beverly Hills: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1990. Conducting Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1993. “Gesture and Environment in Naples.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C.
1995. “Andrea de Jorio  – The first ethnographer of gesture?” Visual Anthropology 7: 371–390. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2004. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2017. “Pragmatic functions of gestures: Some observations on the history of their study and their nature.” Gesture 16(2): 157–175.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kita, S. 2003. Pointing: Where Language, Culture, and Cognition Meet. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kita, S., M. W. Alibali and M. Chu. 2017. “How do gestures influence thinking and speaking? The gesture-for-conceptualization hypothesis.” Psychological Review 124(3): 245–266. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lane, H. L. 1976. The Wild Boy of Aveyron. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leroi-Gourhan, A. 1993 [1964]. Gesture and Speech. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. 2003. Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mallery, G. 1978 [1880]. “Introduction to the study of sign language among the North American Indians as illustrating the gesture speech of mankind.” In Aboriginal Sign Languages of the Americas and Australia, ed. by D. J. Umiker-Sebeok and T. A. Sebeok, 291–31). New York: Plenum Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McNeill, D. 1985. “So you think gestures are nonverbal?” Psychological Review 92(3): 350–371. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1992. Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mead, G. H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1964. “The philosopher and his shadow.” In Signs, ed. by M. Merleau-Ponty Evanston. IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meyer, C., J. Streeck and J. S. Jordan (Eds.). 2017. Intercorporeality: Emerging Socialities in Interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morris, D., P. Collet, P. Marsh and M. O’Shaugnessy. 1979. Gestures: Their Origin and Distribution. London: Cape.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Müller, C. 2003. “Forms and uses of the Palm Up Open Hand.” In The Semantics and Pragmatics of Everyday Gestures: The Berlin Conference, ed. by C. Müller and R. Posner, 234–256. Berlin: Weidler.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nuñez, R. and E. Sweetser. 2006. “With the future behind them: Convergent evidence from language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial construals of time.” Cognitive Science 30: 401–450. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Olson, D. 1994. The World on Paper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peirce, C. S. 1995 [1940]. Philosophical Writings. New York: Dover.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pike, K. 1967. Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behavior. The Hague: Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plessner, H. 1975. Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch. Berlin: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quintilianus, M. F. 1922 [100]. The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian (H. E. Butler, Trans., Vol. IV). London: Heinemann.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rahaim, M. 2012. Musicking Bodies: Gesture and Voice in Hindustani Music. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ryle, G. 1949. The Concept of Mind. London.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, H., E. A. Schegloff and G. Jefferson. 1974. “A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation.” Language 50: 696–735. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sapir, E. 1991 [1927]. “The unconscious patterning of behavior in society.” In Selected Writings of Edward Sapir, ed. by D. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scheflen, A. E. 1964. “The significance of posture in communication system.” Psychiatry 27(4): 316–331. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1973. Communicational Structure. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schmitt, J.-C. 1991. “The rationale of gestures in the West: third to thirteenth centuries.” In A Cultural History of Gesture, ed. by J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg, 59–70. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schütz, A. 1945. “On multiple realities.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 5(4): 533–576. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sheets-Johnstone, M. 2012. The Primacy of Movement (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sinclair, N. & E. de Freitas. 2014. “The haptic nature of gesture: Rethinking gesture with new multitouch digital technologies.” Gesture 14(3): 351–374.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sittl, C. 1890. Die Gebärden der Griechen und Römer. Leipzig: Teubner.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. 1987. “Thinking for speaking.” In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, ed. by J. Aske et al., 435–445. Berkeley: University of California.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steinberg, L. 2001. Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1993. “Gesture as communication I: Its coordination with gaze and speech.” Communication Monographs 60(4): 275–299. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2008. “Gesture in political communication: A case study of the democratic presidential candidates during the 2004 primary campaign.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 41(2): 154–186. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013. “Praxeology of gesture.” In Handbook Body Laguage Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction (Vol. 10), ed. by C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S. Ladewig, D. McNeill and S. Tessendorf, 674–685. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2015. “Embodiment in human communication.” Annual Review of Anthropology 44: 419–438. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2017. Self-Making Man: A Day of Action, Life, and Language. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(forthcoming). “Gesture, mimesis, and the linguistics of time.” In Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT 2018), ed. by C. Gordon. Washington, DC: Georgetown University.
Streeck, J. and U. Hartge. 1992. “Previews: Gestures at the transition place.” In The Contextualization of Language, ed. by P. Auer and A. di Luzio, 138–158. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Streeck, J. and W. Kallmeyer. 2001. “Interaction by inscription.” Journal of Pragmatics 33(4): 465–490. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, E. 2007. Mind in Life. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tomlinson, G. 2015. A Million Years of Music: The Emergence of Human Modernity. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tylor, E. 1856. Researches into the Early History of Mankind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wehling, E. 2017. “Discourse management gestures.” Gesture 16(2): 245–275. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilkins, D. 2003. “Why pointing with the index finger is not a universal (in sociocultural and semiotic terms).” In Pointing : Where Language, Culture, and Cognition Meet, ed. by S. Kita, 171–216. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wollheim, R. 1987. Painting as an Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wundt, W. 1975 [1911]. Völkerpsychologie: Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus und Sitte. Aalen: Scientia Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Harrison, Simon
2021. The feel of a recurrent gesture. Gesture 20:2 ► pp. 254 ff. DOI logo
Hofstetter, Emily & Leelo Keevallik
2020. Embodied interaction. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue