17 - The status of gesture

Summary

What is the status of gesture? On the one hand it has been valued as a component of self-presentation and public performance, even cultivated as an art. On the other hand, it has been looked upon as something to be avoided, its use betraying a lack of proper self-control or an inadequate command of spoken language. At times it has been deemed worthy of scholarly attention and analysis, being viewed as a phenomenon of theoretical and philosophical importance for the light its study might throw on the nature of language, symbolic processes and expression. At other times scholars have paid it scant attention, it being dismissed as a superficial ephemera of no importance.

As we saw from our historical survey of interest in gesture in the West (Chapters 3-6), at least since the time of Quintilian, nearly 2000 years ago, gesture has been recognized as a component of human utterance. Quintilian saw it as a natural companion of speech, however he believed that it should be refined and shaped in accordance with rules and principles that would ensure that it would be an effective part of the rhetorician 's art. Gestures were seen as enriching and elaborating the audience 's experience of the orator 's speech, and if not performed correctly and with proper decorum they could have seriously negative consequences.