Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 9 - Language, society, and history Towards a unified approach?

  • from Part II - Process and formation
  • Edited by N. J. Enfield, Paul Kockelman, Yale University, Connecticut, Jack Sidnell, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology
    Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    11 September 2014, pp 227-249

  • Summary

    This chapter describes what happens to the manual modality under two distinct circumstances: (1) when it accompanies speech, and thus forms part of language; and (2) when it is used instead of speech as the primary modality for communication, and thus is itself language. It turns to the form co-speech gesture assumes and then explores its communicative and cognitive functions. Co-speech gesture is thus not structured like a conventional linguistic system. It has its own representational properties, which work together with speech to form an integrated system. The information gesture conveys can be quite different from the information conveyed in the speech it accompanies. The chapter describes the hand movements people produce in the absence of speech, deals with conventional sign languages created by deaf communities. Sign languages of the deaf are autonomous languages, independent of the spoken languages of hearing cultures.