The Impulse to Gesture: Where Language, Minds, and Bodies Intersect

· Cambridge University Press
Ebook
231
Pages
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About this ebook

Gestures are central to the way people use language when they interact. This book places our impulse to gesture at the very heart of linguistic structure: grammar. Based on the phenomenon of negation - a linguistic universal with clear grammatical and gestural manifestations - Simon Harrison argues that linguistic concepts are fundamentally multi modal and shows how they lead to recurrent bindings between grammar and gesture when people speak. Studying how speakers express negation multi modally in a range of social and professional contexts, Harrison explores how and when people gesture, what people achieve linguistically and discursively with their gestures, and why we find similar uses of gesture in different languages (including spoken and signed language). Establishing the inseparability of grammar and gesture, this book is an important reference for any researcher interested in the relation between language, gesture, and cognition.

About the author

Simon Harrison is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of English at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. His research has played a central role in bridging the divide between grammar and gesture.

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