Gesture, speech, and sign. Lynn Messing and Ruth Campbell (Eds.). New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 227.

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The study of gesture, especially its relationship to spoken and signed languages, has become a broadly studied topic for researchers from various fields, including neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, human development, and communication disorders. One possible reason for the wide interest in gesture is its universality. People of all ages and cultures use gestures for various purposes. Young language-learning, hearing children often use gestures alone or in combination with speech to help express themselves to their interlocutors, for example, pointing to a desired object while saying “mine.” As a more striking example, deaf children in Nicaragua who had previously been unexposed to any conventional sign language, used gestures to develop home-sign systems that eventually developed into Nicaraguan Sign Language (Kegl, Senghas, & Coppola, 1999). On the other hand, gestures are often used in situations where the underlying purpose of the gesture is less clear. For example, people who are blind from birth are nonetheless found to gesture in conversation (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 1997), and adults gesture frequently, and often subconsciously, during conversations with one another. Despite their omnipresence, we know relatively little about gestures' origins, their relationship to language, and, in some instances, the purposes they serve.