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Pointing has captured the interest of scholars from various fields who study communication. However, ideas and findings have been scattered across diverse publications in different disciplines, and opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange have been very limited. The editor's aim is to provide an arena for such exchange by bringing together papers on pointing gestures from disciplines, such as developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, sign-language linguistics, linguistic anthropology, conversational analysis, and primatology. Questions raised by the editors include: *Do chimpanzees produce and comprehend pointing gestures in the same way as humans? *What are cross-cultural variations ...
Each of the 21 chapters in this volume reflects a view of language as a dynamic phenomenon with emergent structure, and in each, gesture is approached as part of language, not an adjunct to it. In this, all of the authors have been influenced by David McNeill's methods for studying natural discourse and by his theory of the human capacity for language. The introductory chapter by Adam Kendon contextualizes McNeill s research paradigm within a history of earlier gesture studies. Chapters in the first section, Language and Cognition, emphasize what McNeill refers to as the intrapersonal plane. Many of the chapters adduce evidence for McNeill's claim that gestures can serve as a window onto the speaker's mind. Chapters in the second section, Environmental Context and Sociality, emphasize the interpersonal plane and exemplify McNeill's focus on how moment-to-moment language use is determined by contextual factors. The final section of the volume, Atypical Minds and Bodies, concerns lessons to be learned from studies of aphasic patients, autistic children, and artificial humans.
The chapters in this book are the product of an international conference organised in Lisbon to mark the closure of the TKB project “A Transmedia Knowledge-Base for Performing Arts”. Under the title “Multimodal Communication: Language, Performance and Digital Media”, this conference provided a forum for researchers and artists from different research fields, interested in the study and documentation of the performing arts. The book offers contributions on issues of multimodality in human interaction and performance, embodied cognition and metaphor, gesture studies, video annotation for creative processes, and performance and digital media.
Volume II of the handbook offers a unique collection of exemplary case studies. In five chapters and 99 articles it presents the state of the art on how body movements are used for communication around the world. Topics include the functions of body movements, their contexts of occurrence, their forms and meanings, their integration with speech, and how bodily motion can function as language. By including an interdisciplinary chapter on ‘embodiment’, volume II explores the body and its role in the grounding of language and communication from one of the most widely discussed current theoretical perspectives. Volume II of the handbook thus entails the following chapters: VI. Gestures acros...
A bold new book reveals how we can tap the intelligence that exists beyond our brains--in our bodies, our surroundings, and our relationships
Descriptive grammars are our main vehicle for documenting and analysing the linguistic structure of the world's 6,000 languages. They bring together, in one place, a coherent treatment of how the whole language works, and therefore form the primary source of information on a given language, consulted by a wide range of users: areal specialists, typologists, theoreticians of any part of language (syntax, morphology, phonology, historical linguistics etc.), and members of the speech communities concerned. The writing of a descriptive grammar is a major intellectual challenge, that calls on the grammarian to balance a respect for the language's distinctive genius with an awareness of how other ...
The aim of this volume is to bring together the research in gestural communication in both nonhuman and human primates and to explore the potential of a comparative approach and its contribution to the question of an evolutionary scenario in which gestures play a signuificant role.
In this wide-ranging collection, contributors present examples of multimodal discourse analysis in practice. The book illustrates new theoretical, methodological and empirical research into new technologies such as the internet, software, CD-ROM, video, and older technologies such as film, newspapers, brands or billboards. Each chapter demonstrates how aspects of multimodal theory and method can be used to conduct research into these and other multimodal texts.
The contributions to this volume focus on what language and language use reveals about cognitive structure and underlying cognitive categories. Wide-ranging and thought-provoking essays from linguists and psychologists within this volume investigate the insights conceptual categorization can give into the organization and structure of the mind and specific mental states. Topics and linguistic phenomena discussed include narratives and story telling, language development, figurative language, linguistic categorization, linguistic relativity, and the linguistic coding of mental states such as perceptions and beliefs. With contributions at the forefront of current debate, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in language and the cognitive structures that support it.
A research subject is shown a cartoon like the 1950 Canary Row--a classic Sylvester and Tweedy Bird caper that features Sylvester climbing up a downspout, swallowing a bowling ball and slamming into a brick wall. After watching the cartoon, the subject is videotaped recounting the story from memory to a listener who has not seen the cartoon. Painstaking analysis of the videotapes revealed that although the research subjects--children as well as adults, some neurologically impaired--represented a wide variety of linguistic groupings, the gestures of people speaking English and a half dozen other languages manifest the same principles. Relying on data from more than ten years of research, McNeill shows that gestures do not simply form a part of what is said and meant but have an impact on thought itself.