Gesture - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2003

Performing an action and concurrently describing it creates possibilities for observing how speech and action are synchronized and mutually shape each other. The results to be described show that iconicity is an organizing principle of motion control — actions are performed in relation to speech in such a way as to create an image of the meaning in part. Four English-speaking subjects described their goal-directed actions, step by step, as they assembled a small aquarium. Among the factors observed to have an impact on synchrony are, in speech, perfectivity (imperfective or perfective) and, in action, the logical form of the action (Vendler’s activities, accomplishments and achievements). These factors must be considered jointly. Depending on the logical form, speakers placed the linguistic center (‘L-Center’) of the description — the satellite or a preposition in the case of activities and accomplishments; the verb itself in the case of achievements — in such a way as to recreate the aspectual viewpoint concurrently encoded in speech. Imperfective aspect was indexed with progressive verbs. L-Centers with this aspect were placed inside or prior to the completion of the action. Perfective aspect was indexed with non-progressive verbs. L-Centers of this kind were placed after the action. In addition, the actions themselves were longer with imperfective aspect, even when the same logical form of action was involved. Non-functional movements were added to goal-directed actions to help create the imperfective aspect, and both speech and action timing were adjusted to create the aspectual viewpoint. These patterns are reminiscent of the perfectivity differences in gesture performance described by S. Duncan (2003) for Mandarin and English. Motor movements adapt to language in a way similar to gestures. Theoretically, there is a three-sided synchrony of two forms of motor action (speech, manual manipulation) and the logical form of the action. The theoretical discussion considers two ramifications: the implications for ‘cognitive being’ of building aspect into action, which suggests a mechanism of the mutual shaping of speech and action; and the brain organization that might underlie the three-sided synchrony, with emphasis on the role of BA 44 and BA 45 (‘mirror neurons’), collectively ‘Broca’s Area’, in the orchestration of actions under some meaning (actions of gesture, manipulation, and speech); these areas include language but are broader in function than the classical term ‘language area’ implies.

The representation of the concrete world is an abstraction. The elements that are physically pertinent to reality are synthesized in a gestural, schematic and ergonomic representation. Although schematic, this representation is nuanced: the gestural variants are numerous in order to account for the way we cut things: differences in size and configuration of blades as well as in their manipulation in a single or repeated movement. Representing an abstract notion derived from the act itself, gesture evolves towards increasing simplification and integrates the representation of other notions that enrich the first: cf. the semantic nuances supplied by the plane of the hand and the orientation of the palm in order to evoke ‘cut plus division’, ‘cut plus obstacle’, etc. Moreover, on the semantic level one witnesses a process of generalization: the passage from concrete to abstract, and in the abstract world, from one domain to another: the individual knows how ‘trancher / to decide’ and is ‘tranchant / abrupt’. From the physical and symbolic comparison of the gestural variants referring to all kinds of cuts, a common percept emerges: a gap in a continuum, a representative schema explaining the cut as an interruption. The question addressed is: does gesture not directly account for the abstract schema loaded with imagery from diverse perceptual experiences (representation of acts and their results) at the basis of the concept (representation of the notion)?

The role of gesture in Leroi-Gourhan’s theory of the origin of language is portrayed in its historical context and in view of recent research to allow a balanced appraisal of his contribution to the debate. Written in the mid-1960s, his Gesture and Speech offers a vivid contrast to Chomsky’s contemporary mentalist view of language that espoused Cartesian rationalism with its barriers between man and beast, and between body and mind. On the contrary, Leroi-Gourhan takes an integrated approach to human evolution: gesture (conceived of as ‘material action’) and speech are seen as twin products of an embodied mind that engendered our technical and social achievements. His explanation of the evolutionary association between the hand and the face provides a biological basis for cognitive as well as communicative aspects of gesture, with culture emerging as an extension of our zoological foundation. He asserts that the liberating of the hand from locomotion led to the liberating of the face from prehension, thus creating the duality of instrument and symbol whereby human beings physically and mentally grasp the world in which they live.

This paper discusses J.J. Engel’s theory of mimicry, which is part of a broad discussion within German philosophy in late 1700 about physiognomics i.e. human bodily expression and perception. The core of Engel’s investigation consists in a theory of human gesture which avoid both the conventional and the physiological elements and focuses on the semantic and reflective components. The author shows how this reflection about the symbolic devices involved in gestural comprehension and communication develop a parallel reflection about the origin and functioning of verbal processes of communication.