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In:From Gesture in Conversation to Visible Action as Utterance: Essays in honor of Adam Kendon
Edited by Mandana Seyfeddinipur and Marianne Gullberg
[Not in series 188] 2014
► pp. 153–174

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On the lower limit of gesture

Published online: 6 August 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/z.188.08and
Where, if, and how, should researchers draw the limit between gesture proper and semiotically less complex forms of bodily conduct that do not quite qualify as gesture? This is the question of a lower limit of gesture (Andrén 2010). In accordance with a comparative semiotic approach (Kendon 2008), I suggest that the question is best understood not as a binary distinction between gesture and non-gesture but as a matter of several different semiotic properties that can vary independently of each other. This involves, in particular, different levels of representational complexity and communicative explicitness. These semiotic properties are both conceptually explicated and applied to empirical examples in this chapter, eventually leading me to propose a family resemblance conception of gesture.
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Ladewig, Silva H. & Lena Hotze
2023. From action to performative gesture: the Slapping movement used by children at the age of four to six. Semiotica 2023:250 ► pp. 91 ff. DOI logo
Streeck, Jürgen
2022. Gesture research. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 672 ff. DOI logo
Harrison, Simon & Silva H. Ladewig
2021. Recurrent gestures throughout bodies, languages, and cultural practices. Gesture 20:2 ► pp. 153 ff. DOI logo
Bolly, Catherine T. & Dominique Boutet
2018. The multimodal CorpAGEst corpus: keeping an eye on pragmatic competence in later life. Corpora 13:3 ► pp. 279 ff. DOI logo
Andrén, Mats
2014. Multimodal constructions in children. Gesture 14:2 ► pp. 141 ff. DOI logo

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