%0 Journal Article %A Johnston, Trevor %T Towards a comparative semiotics of pointing actions in signed and spoken languages %D 2013 %J Gesture %V 13 %N 2 %P 109-142 %@ 1568-1475 %R https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.13.2.01joh %K deixis %K semiotics %K pronouns %K pointing %K symbolic indexical %K sign language %K gesture %I John Benjamins %X Co-speech pointing actions have been under-analysed or ignored in language description and linguistic theory and this has led to an over-interpretation of their role and status in signed languages as signs belonging to particular grammatical classes, such as pronouns, determiners, and locatives. I argue that the pointing signs found in signed languages are not fundamentally different from the pointing actions found in the composite utterances of spoken languages in their face-to-face mode. I show how pointing signs and pointing actions are both symbolic indexical signs (signs that have partly conventional elements and partly contextual elements and are thus hybrids of conventional and non-conventional signs). I conclude that pointing signs are not a fundamentally different kind of phenomena when they occur in signed language composite utterances (so-called ‘linguistic’ pointing) compared to when they occur in spoken language composite utterances (so-called ‘gestural’ pointing). %U https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/gest.13.2.01joh