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9 - The Gestural Sign: A Concrete and Reasoned Analysis of Co-Speech Gesture

from Part II - Ways of Approaching Gesture Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2024

By
Geneviève Calbris  and
Mary M. Copple
Edited by
Alan Cienki
Alan Cienki
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
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Summary

Geneviève Calbris’ semiotic study of French gestures began in the 1970s and shows how gestural signs interface between the concrete and the abstract. Created by analogical links originating in physical experience of the world via processes of mimesis and metonymy, they are activated by contexts of use and constitute diverse semantic constructions: Gesture is able to evoke several notions alternatively (polysemy) or simultaneously (polysign). As expressions of perceptual schemas extracted from physical experience, they prefigure concepts. A Saussurean perspective brings to light relations between physical features of gestures (signifiers) and the notions (signifieds) they are apt to evoke; it reveals signifiers that are common to different gestures (paradigmatic axis of substitution) and how signifiers interweave in gestural sequencing (syntagmatic axis of combination). Gesture expresses, animates, explains, synthesizes information, and anticipates speech. We highlight its utterance functions, its simultaneous multireferentiality, the gestural anticipation of verbal information, and the interplay of tension-relaxation between conversation partners that this can create.

Keywords

analogical linklanguage learningsecond languagemotivated signoral communicationperceptual schemapolysemysemantic constructionssemiologysemiotics
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies , pp. 217 - 248
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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