Goodwin2014

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Goodwin2014
BibType INCOLLECTION
Key Goodwin2014
Author(s) Charles Goodwin
Title The intelligibility of gesture within a framework of co-operative action
Editor(s) Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Marianne Gullberg
Tag(s) Gesture, EMCA
Publisher John Benjamins Publishing Company
Year 2014
Language English
City Amsterdam
Month
Journal
Volume
Number
Pages 199–216
URL Link
DOI 10.1075/z.188.10goo
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title From Gesture in Conversation to Visible Action as Utterance: Essays in Honor of Adam Kendon
Chapter

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Abstract

Gesture-first theories of language propose the transparent intelligibility of deictic and iconic gestures. The gestures of a man with a three-word vocabulary are used to investigate gesture without accompanying language. Rather than being transparent, the rich intrinsic meaningfulness of deictic and iconic gestures produces a surplus of possible referents. The task of working out their meaning delays movement to subsequent action, and thus creates selective pressure for the emergence of arbitrary, rather than inherently meaningful, signs. Analysis then turns to Kendon’s argument that meaning and action are accomplished through the way in which talk, gesture, and phenomena in the environment mutually elaborate each other, with the semiotic possibilities of each of these resources mutually constraining the others.

Notes