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Gesture

Sometimes the title "Gesture," that accompanies a work of art in a gallery, typically is associated with "hand." Or, one tends to think of "gesture" as "hand" movement. To disclaim this fallacy that gesture tends to be equated with the hand, my videoaudio Gesture deconstructs this tendency.

This videoaudio work Gesture contains nothing but a black screen and the audio of auditory gesture. It plays sounds which were emitted from my hands, breaths, and vocalized gesture, when manually speaking in my expressive poetry performance, Ameslan, coughing English, Ameslan. My body moved in synchronization with my vocal gestures. In a complementary sense, vocal-auditory speakers speak with manual gesture.

"Despite the consensus among research pioneers that (manual) gesture and (speech) language are inextricably interwoven, a number of logocentric views remain in literature. In this Logocentric Model, (speech) language and (manual) gesture are regarded as integral but physically separate, whereas sign language is regarded as linguistically derived from (manual) gesture. Speech language and manual gesture use different parts of the body, which gives the illusion that language and gesture are separate, whereas sign language and manual gesture use the same parts of the body and naturally integrate in the same way that hearing people integrate speech language and vocal gesture."

-- Source of the partial excerption: Lapiak, Jolanta. "Gesture and Language." and/or: literature and art. MFA Thesis, 2007.

Adam Kendon describes the following continuum of gesture, known as Kendon Model:

This continuum somehow feels awkward. I proposed the following non-phonocentric continuum of manual gesture along with the vocal gesture continuum below. The terms phonomatopoeia and visonomatopoeia (or also manumatopoeia were coined by myself (see "onomatopoeia" for more information).

Vocal Gesture-Language Model

Manual Gesture-Language Model

David Armstrong, William C. Stokoe, and Sharman E. Wilcox (ASW for short), authors of the Gesture and the Nature of Language, defines gesture as follows:

"neuromuscular activity (bodily actions, whether or not communicative);
as semiotic (ranging from spontaneously communicative gestures to more conventional gestures);
and as linguistic (fully conventionalized signs and vocal articulations)." (p. 38)

Contrary to the mainstream view of "language and gesture" as two separate, distinct things, ASW posits that "language is based in gesture" from a biological and evolutionary perspective. [Armstrong, et al. p 3.] They argue for "language as gesture" (or interchangeably "gesture as language") from a field-theory based view.

In my illustration "Gesture-Language Model" (right) developed from my interpretation of the definition and concept, the square represents the human body. The red diagonal shade depicts the integration of speech language and vocal gesture with manual gesture among vocally-tended speakers. The blue diagonal shade represents the integration of sign language and manual gesture with vocal gesture among optically-oriented speakers. The box/body suggests a whole integration rather than gesture and language in dichotomy.

-- Partial excerption: Lapiak, Jolanta. "Gesture and Language." and/or. MFA Thesis, 2007.

Recommended Readings

David Armstrong, William C. Stokoe, and Sharman E. Wilcox. Gesture and the Nature of Language.