Humans produce utterances intentionally. Visible bodily action, or gesture, has long been acknowledged as part of the broader activity of speaking, but it is only recently that the role of gesture during utterance production and comprehension has been the focus of investigation. If we are to understand the role of gesture in communication, we must answer the following questions: Do gestures communicate? Do people produce gestures with an intention to communicate? This Element argues that the answer to both these questions is yes. Gestures are (or can be) communicative in all the ways language is. This Element arrives at this conclusion on the basis that communication involves prediction. Communicators predict the behaviours of themselves and others, and such predictions guide the production and comprehension of utterance. This Element uses evidence from experimental and neuroscientific studies to argue that people produce gestures because doing so improves such predictions.

How do we understand what others are trying to say? The answer cannot be found in language alone. Words are linked to hand gestures and other visible phenomena to create unified 'composite utterances'. In this book N. J. Enfield presents original case studies of speech-with-gesture based on fieldwork carried out with speakers of Lao (a language of Southeast Asia). He examines pointing gestures (including lip and finger-pointing) and illustrative gestures (examples include depicting fish traps and tracing kinship relations). His detailed analyses focus on the 'semiotic unification' problem, that is, how to make a single interpretation when multiple signs occur together. Enfield's arguments have implications for all branches of science with a stake in meaning and its place in human social life. The book will appeal to all researchers interested in the study of meaning, including linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists.

TABLE OF CONTENT TOWARDS A LEXICOGRAPHY OF GESTURES MASSIMO SERENARI: The structure of dictionary entries - results of empirical investigations REINHARD KRÜGER: Fare le corna and the invention of a novel. Théophile Gautiers Gettatura (1857) and De Jorio's Mimica degli antichi (1832) or, problems of a gesture-etymology GRIGORII E. KREIDLIN: Russian gestures and Russian phraseology I. Types of lexical information and the structure of lexical entries in a dictionary of Russian gestures ISABELLA POGGI: The Italian gestionary. Meaning representation, ambiguity, and context PIO ENRICO RICCI BITTI / SILVANA CONTENTO: Symbolic gestures and gesturing in communication LLUÍS PAYRATÓ: Notes on pragmatic and social aspects of everyday gestures PETER COLLETT: Problems and procedures in the study of gestures TOWARDS A DOCUMENTATION OF GESTURE USES PENNY BOYES BRÄM / THÜRING BRÄM: Expressive gestures used by classical orchestra conductors GENEVIÈVE CALBRIS: Déixis représentative DAVID MCNEILL / KARL-ERIK MCCULLOUGH / SUSAN D. DUNCAN: An ontogenetic universal and how to explain it ADAM KENDON: Contrasts in gesticulation: A Neapolitan and a British speaker compared MONICA RECTOR / SALVATO TRIGO: Body signs: Portuguese communication on three continents MANDANA SEYFEDDINIPUR: Meta-discursive gestures from Iran: Some uses of the 'Pistol Hand' RAGNHILD NEUMANN: The conventionalization of the Ring Gesture in German discourse CHRISTINE KÜHN: Body and soul: Gestures as mediators in communication CORNELIA MÜLLER: Forms and uses of the Palm Up Open Hand: A case of a gesture family?

This book presents a repertoire of conventionalized co-speech gestures used by Hausa speakers from northern Nigeria.

Publisher Description

Language use is fundamentally multimodal. Speakers use their hands to point to locations, to represent content and to comment on ongoing talk; they position their bodies to show their orientation and stance in interaction; they use facial displays to comment on what is being said; and they engage in mutual gaze to establish intersubjectivity. This volume brings together studies by leading scholars from several fields on gaze and facial displays, on the relationship between gestures, sign, and language, on pointing and other conventionalized forms of manual expression, on gestures and language evolution, and on gestures in child development. The papers in this collection honor Adam Kendon whose pioneering work has laid the theoretical and methodological foundations for contemporary studies of multimodality, gestures, and utterance visible action.