Gestures: the fuel of speech

Gestures are an important part in the speech that we often overlook, for that reason, David
Mcneill proposes whit his book gesture & thought (2005) to study the relation between these
movements, speech and thought. McNeill is professor emeritus of linguistics and psychology at
the University of Chicago, he wrote books like The acquisition of language (1970), The
conceptual basis of language and Hand and Mind (1992) which is the predecessor of gesture &
thought.

Now, this review aims to present the first chapter called “Why gestures”. In this one, the
psychologist explains the objective of the book, which is emphasize how gestures fuel thought
and speech. Then he develops how is the dialectic formed by the ‘dynamic dimension’ and the
‘static dimension’ and he poses that this dialectic is an interaction between unlike modes of
thinking, but that combine in every speech event (2005). Be important to understand that the
‘dynamic dimension’ is conformed by imagery/gestures. Unlike what some people think,
gestures are not a ‘body language’ unrelated to spoken language, gestures are part of language;
Mcneill presents evidence of how imagery (a type of visually descriptive language) shares
linguistic properties, conventions and semiosis.

Next, McNeill carry forward the ‘Kendon’s continuum’ in order to explain different kinds of
gestures following the example of Adam Kendon (1988). In first place are the ‘gesticulations’,
the most common gestures, it is motion made with the arms, hands or another body part, it have
got a meaning like the accompanying speech; then the ‘speech-linked gestures are gestures that
occupy a grammatical slot and completes the structure sentence; in third place, ‘emblems’ such
as thumbs- up are conventionalized signs; ‘pantomime’, it is gestures conveying a narrative line,
in Spanish is ‘mimica’; finally, the ‘signs’, it takes form in a different kind of language with their
own linguistic structures, grammatical patterns and words. The relations with the language are
explained below.

First of all, the relationship with speech. From gesticulation to sign language the presence of
speech decreases. At the first is obligatory the presence of speech for understand the gesture, at
the emblems is optional the speech because emblems are conventionalized, at the pantomime is
obligatory the absence of speech such as sign language because doing that a disruptive effect on
both speech and sign. In a second moment, McNeill reviews the relationship to linguistic
properties. At the ‘gesticulation’ and ‘pantomime’ there are not linguistic properties but it
increases from emblems to sign language; at the emblems there are some linguistic properties
like morphology, but at sign language there is morphology and syntactic combinations. For now,
McNeill has achieved to explain the relationship between ‘static dimension’ (morphology,
sintax, phonology) and ‘dynamic dimension’ (gestures); but what says McNeill about social
dimension of language?

He only says about the conventions but it is obvious that the fewer linguistic properties, the
lower the degree of convention. For example, gesticulations are not conventionalized (the same
pantomime) because it hasn’t got linguistic properties; on another hand, sign language is fully
conventionalized because it has got linguistic properties present.

At the last continuum, the psychologist studies the characters of semiosis with the following
categories: Global, synthetic, analytic and segmented. Global refers when the meanings of the
‘parts’ of the gesture are determined by the meaning of the whole ( McNeill, 2015, p. 10).
Synthetic means that a single gesticulation carry distinct meanings that might be spread across
the entire surface of the accompanying sentence. Segmented is the linguistic mapping and
analytic means that the semantic functions could be separated. Now, ‘gesticulation’ is global and
synthetic; ‘pantomime’ is global and analityc; ‘emblems’ are segmented and synthetic and
finally, ‘sign language’ is segmented and analytic.

To sum up, McNeill not only develops and explaining how takes form the dialectic between
‘dynamic dimension’ and ‘static dimension’, he does a summary of different kinds of gestures
and relate it with language’s characters, furthermore he affirms the independence of ASL or sign
languages of speech language.

Sebastian Martínez