Iconic and representational gestures
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1732 VIII. Gesture and language
Wilcox, Sherman 2004. Conceptual spaces and embodied actions: Cognitive iconicity and signed
languages. Cognitive Linguistics 15(2): 119⫺147.
Wilcox, Sherman in press. Signed languages. In: Dagmar Divjak and Ewa Dabrowska (eds.), Hand-
book of Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
Zlatev, Jordan 2005. What’s in a schema? Bodily mimesis and the grounding of language. In: Beate
Hampe (ed.), From Perception to Meaning: Images Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics, 313⫺342.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Irene Mittelberg, Aachen (Germany)
131. Iconic and representational gestures
1. Introduction
2. Iconic gestures, dimensions, and patterns
3. Mimicry: Intersubjective alignment and understanding
4. Representational and referential gestures
5. Concluding remarks
6. References
Abstract
The construct of iconic gestures, those gestures understood as sharing certain form features
with the object, action or scene they represent, has traditionally proven to be a useful tool
for scholars to classify this subset of gestures, distinguishing them from other types such as
indexical or emblematic gestures. More recent approaches prefer to avoid discrete catego-
ries and rather speak in terms of dimensions or principles, such as iconicity or indexicality,
in order to highlight the fact that gestures tend to perform multiple functions at once. Iconic
co-speech gestures are semiotically conditioned not only by the particular language spoken,
but also by the pragmatics of situated, multimodal language use, thus being cognitively,
intersubjectively and socio-culturally motivated. Iconic patterns of gesture production iden-
tified within individual as well as across various languages and language families have
provided valuable insights into the intimate interrelation of thought, gesture and speech in
face-to-face interaction as well as other kinds of multimodal communication. This chapter
reviews both production- and comprehension-oriented research on iconic gestures, including
examples from cross-cultural, clinical, and forensic studies. Ways in which iconic gestures
pertain to related terms, such as representational and referential gestures, are also ad-
dressed.
1. Introduction
Iconicity, in broader terms, is understood as the relationship between a sign and an
object in which the form the sign takes is perceived and interpreted to be similar in some
Müller, Cienki, Fricke, Ladewig, McNeill, Teßendor (eds.) 2014, Body Language Communication (HSK 38.2), de Gruyter, 17321746131. Iconic and representational gestures 1733 way to the object it is representing (Peirce 1960). Because representation tends to be partial, iconicity interacts with the principles of metonymy (i.e., a part stands for a whole; see Mittelberg and Waugh this volume). Since gesture is characterized by the extraordinary affordance of spatially and dynam- ically encoding visual information and kinetic action, questions gesture researchers have dealt with have been whether people produce iconic gestures (i) a) based on what visual information they have available, (ii) b) if they are motivated by the particular language they cogesture with, or (iii) c) a combination of the two. Moreover, because the driving principle of iconicity is generally assumed to be based on similarity (and not conventionality), the role that social and individual practices play in the creation and use of these semiotic forms can be easily misunderstood. Semiotic foundations of iconicity are discussed in detail in Mittelberg this volume (see also, e.g., Andrén 2012; Fricke 2012; Lücking 2013; Sonesson 2008). This chapter will focus on (predominantly) iconic gestures, both from a production and a comprehension perspec- tive, as they are linked to speech, to social practices, and how they pertain to related terms, i.e., representational and referential gestures, in the literature. 2. Iconic gestures, dimensions, and patterns Among the established gesture typologies, the one most strongly associated with the notion of iconic gestures is the one proposed by McNeill and Levy (1982) and then extended by McNeill (1992: 12). According to this Peirce-inspired taxonomy, iconics en- compass gestures illustrating aspects of what is conveyed in speech through actional and visuo-spatial imagery primarily based on memories and other kinds of mental represen- tations. Iconic gestures imply a correspondence between the form a gesture takes, e.g., a body posture, hand shape and/or the trajectory and manner of a hand movement, and the person, concrete object, action, or motion event it depicts. Put differently, “in an iconic gesture there is a certain degree of isomorphism between the shape of the gesture and the entity that is expressed by the gesture” (Kita 2000: 162). Iconics also reflect the viewpoint from which the speaker portrays a scene, e.g., character or observer viewpoint. Metaphorics are related to iconics in that they are “like iconic gestures in that they are pictorial, but the pictorial content presents an abstract idea rather than a concrete object or event” (McNeill 1992: 14). Both sets of representational gestures tend to be produced in a more central gesture space, as opposed to others, for example, indexical gestures which are produced more peripherally (McNeill 1992: 89⫺94), which arguably accentu- ates their relatedness. Examples of the kinds of abstract ideas referred to here are “knowledge, language itself, the genre of the narrative, etc.” (1992: 80). In a well-known example of an iconic gesture, a speaker describes a scene in the animated cartoon “The Canary Row” (McNeill 1992: 12). When saying he grabs a big oak tree and he bends it way back, the speaker simultaneously performs with his right arm and hand a grabbing and pulling action backward. According to McNeill (2005: 6⫺7), “the gesture has clear iconicity ⫺ the movement and the handgrip; also a locus (starting high and ending low) ⫺ all creating imagery that is analogous to the event being described in speech at the same time”. As becomes apparent in this quote, in his more recent work McNeill
1734 VIII. Gesture and language (2005: 41⫺43) has moved away from the original categories (i.e. iconics, deictics, meta- phorics, beats, and cohesives) in preference to dimensions such as iconicity, indexicality, and metaphoricity (see also Duncan, McNeill, and McCullough 1995). 2.1. Production o iconic gestures Exploring patterns in the production of iconic gestures has allowed valuable insights into the intimate interrelation of thought, gesture and speech, positing “gesture and the spoken utterance as different sides of a single underlying mental process” (McNeill 1992: 1). Iconic gestures have been shown to enhance both speaking and thinking, in particular analytical and spatio-motoric thinking (e.g., Kita 2000). In the Vygotsky-inspired con- cept of growth point, gestural imagery also plays an important role, “since it grounds sequential linguistic categories in an instantaneous visuospatial context” (McNeill 2005: 115). Fig. 131.1: Enactment of Fig. 131.2: Paul Klee, Dance figure’s posture of a Mourning Child (1922) Not unlike pointing and other indexical gestures, iconic gestures can be produced to fill a semantic gap in speech, especially when representing spatial imagery like size, shape, motion, or other schematic, partial images which take advantage of the affordances of gestures versus speech. For example, the participant shown in Fig. 133.1 ephrastically describes a painting by Paul Klee (Dance of a Mourning Child, 1922, Fig. 133.2; adapted from Mittelberg 2013) through a full-body enactment of the figure’s stance including the tilted head and arm configuration, as well as its position of the legs and the eye-gaze directed downward. She also evokes the flowing skirt by repeated manual up-and-down movements around her hips and upper legs. Keeping character viewpoint all through the sequence, she extends her arms to the side while saying her head was turned to this side … if I were mirroring what she was doing … and her arms were like this …. Then, on and her mouth was almost in the shape of a heart, she draws an icon of the figure’s heart- shaped mouth onto her own lips and two lines imitating its eye slits onto her own eyes (I kept trying to see if her eyes were open or closed, and it looked like they were just slits). Although in the speech modality she’s using a deictic in “like this”, bringing the listener’s attention to her body and gestures, the full meaning of the speech-gesture utterance is
131. Iconic and representational gestures 1735 understood via her iconic bodily gestures, an image clearly easier to produce via gesture than via speech (see Fricke 2007 and Streeck (2009: 108⫺118) on gestures performing attributive and adverbial functions). A host of studies involving typologically different languages have provided ample insights into how processes of thinking for speaking (Slobin 1996) may on a moment-to- moment basis shape not only the linguistic, i.e. lexical and grammatical, encoding of motion events, but also the tightly interwoven gestural imagery especially exhibiting manner and/or path information. Initial observations put into relief a “high degree of cross-linguistic similarity” in gestures about the same content and “accompanying lin- guistic segments of an equivalent type, in spite of major lexical and grammatical differ- ences between the languages” (McNeill 1992: 212). Subsequent research has produced converging “evidence for language specificity of representational gestures” (Kita 2000: 167; see e.g., Kita and Özyürek 2007; McNeill and Duncan 2000; Müller 1998a; Özyürek et al. 2005). For example Kita and Özyürek (2007) found that speakers of satellite- framed languages (e.g., Germanic and Slavic languages, which encode path separately from the main motion verb) were more likely to iconically represent path and manner of motion actions conflated in the same gestures as opposed to speakers of verb-framed languages (e.g., Romance and Semitic languages, where path is expressed in the main verb and manner of motion expressed by other means) who tend to gesture manner and path as separate gestures. Following this line of research, these gestures appear to be motivated by the iconicity of the linguistic-conceptual representation and not of the visual-spatial imagery. However, as Duncan (2002: 204) points out regarding gestural imagery and verb aspect, this claim “is not the same as saying that gestures merely mirror linguistically codified aspect contrasts. Rather, different verb aspects appear ex- pressive of fundamental distinctions in the ways we can ‘cognize’ an event during acts of speaking” (see also Cienki in press on representational gestures’ connection to grammar). Besides single gestures exhibiting a structural resemblance with the entities or actions they portray, and supporting the argument that gestures are semiotically linked not only to the language used but to language use, there are also discourse-internal iconic pat- terns, so-called catchments: “[a] catchment is recognized from a recurrence of gesture features over a stretch of discourse. It is a kind of thread of consistent visuo-spatial imagery running through a discourse segment that provides a gesture-based window into discourse cohesion” (McNeill 2000: 316; the notion is inspired by Kendon’s (1972) idea of locution clusters). Hence, iconicity here pertains to how gestures resemble (in part) other, preceding gestures in the semiotic neighborhood (see also Jakobson 1960 on the principle of equivalence and the poetic function in language). A common denominator for this research strand, which has resulted in a wealth of iconic gestures, is the employed semi-experimental method of data elicitation: partici- pants are asked to retell the aforementioned animated cartoon “The Canary Row”, in which the protagonists Tweety Bird and Sylvester undergo all kinds of adventures while chasing each other around town. This particular kind of stimulus consisting of two- dimensional cartoon action movies with numerous motion events unfolding up, down and along various kinds of spatial structures is reflected in the iconic gestures produced by a large and diverse group of study participants. While this approach limits the range of gestures as well as the kind of iconic gestures (i.e., based on the medium cartoon) that might occur, it has the advantage, as opposed to naturalistic conversations for
1736 VIII. Gesture and language
instance, that based on the stimulus material the gesture analyst is able to reconstruct
scene by scene what the participants’ gestures are iconic of. This also allows researchers
to compare gesture production patterns not only across speakers of a single language or
across different languages, but also across different age and clinical groups. Investiga-
tions into language acquisition have revealed particular stages in cognitive and language
development, including transition points and gesture-speech mismatches (e.g., Goldin-
Meadow 2003; McNeill 2005; McNeill and Duncan 2000). Generally, work on aphasia
and other communication disorders evidences their impact on forms and functions of
iconic gestures and also provide a window onto the workings of the non-disturbed
multimodal language system (e.g., Caldognetto, Magno, and Poggi 1995; Cocks et al.
2011; Cocks et al. 2013; Duncan and Pedelty 2007; Goodwin 2011; Hogrefe et al. 2012;
McNeill 2005). The large body of work reviewed above has presented ample evidence
that iconic gestures are cognitively and communicatively extremely versatile, fulfilling a
broad range of functions that go well beyond facilitating lexical retrieval during word-
searching processes (e.g., Hadar and Butterworth 1997; see Krauss, Chen, and Gottes-
man 2000: 263 on the category of lexical gestures).
2.2. Comprehension o iconic gestures
Taking the perspective of gesture comprehension, a body of research has evidenced the
communicative significance of iconic gestures, that is, their contribution to the address-
ee’s understanding of what the speaker is conveying multimodally. In an intercultural
study, Calbris (1990) explores how iconic and cultural facets of a set of French gestures
ranging from highly motivated examples to others implying a cultural cliché was inter-
preted by a group of Hungarian and a group of Japanese speakers respectively. Some of
what is called “cliché” here compares to the kinds of culturally-defined gestures now
known as emblems (McNeill 1992). In reference to Saussure’s (1986) notion of the arbi-
trariness, the author stresses the point that “gestures are not arbitrary signs, but conven-
tional and motivated (Fónagy 1956, 1961⫺1962)” (Calbris 1990: 38). The more conven-
tional gestures, such as the cliché Ceinture, evoked by a transverse line drawn at waist
level to indicate privation, were not understood equally well by the two groups: the
Hungarians were better at guessing and reconstructing their meaning than the Japanese.
More universal motivations appear to facilitate intercultural comprehension, as in a
gesture consisting of a hand placed on the belly expressing, in conjunction with a corre-
sponding facial expression, disgust or nausea (Calbris 1990: 39). It is concluded that
“[l]ess linked to a cliché, less symbolic, less polyvalent, motivation seems to be all the
more natural and transparent as it approaches depiction, or simple reproduction of
movement. It seems all the more direct as it is narrowly linked with what is concrete”
(Calbris 1990: 40; see also Andrén (2010) and Bouvet (1997, 2001) on the transparency
of iconic gestures and signs).
In a serious of experimental studies investigating the communicative functions of co-
speech gestures, Beattie and Shovolton (1999) found, for instance, that participants who
had listened to retellings of a cartoon story gave a more accurate summary by ten per-
cent if they could see the iconic gestures accompanying the verbal retellings. In a study
focusing on gestures presented without speech (Beattie and Shovolton 2002), a correla-
tion was found between the viewpoint with which a scene was portrayed multimodally
and the communicative effectiveness of the gestures. Gestures produced from character
viewpoint were more informative than those embodying observer viewpoint (see e.g.,131. Iconic and representational gestures 1737
McNeill 1992; Dancygier and Sweetser 2012). Looking at the interaction of speech and
gesture in the communication of specific semantic features, it was further demonstrated
that character viewpoint gestures were more communicative when conveying features
pertaining to relative position and character viewpoint gestures where more effective in
conveying speed and shape features (Beattie and Shovolton 2001). Moreover, it was
suggested that the effectiveness of TV advertisements may be increased by integrating
spontaneous gestures considering their temporal and semantic properties (Beattie and
Shovolton 2007; see also Beattie 2003). Studies on iconic gestures and speech integration
in aphasics have shown that if comprehension is impaired on the verbal level, gestures
are more heavily relied upon to decode messages. In addition, aphasia may have a dis-
turbing effect on the multimodal integration of information presented in speech and
iconic gestures (Cocks et al. 2009). Eye-movement studies are a way to find out what
kinds of gestures addressees tend to notice more than others, and what they note about
them. Gullberg (2003) found that listener-observers pay particular attention to gestures
representing objects or actions and that the attentive direction of the participants eye-
gaze on the gestures had both cognitive and social motivations (see also Gullberg and
Holmqvist 2006; Gullberg and Kita 2009).
With regards to gestures in the field of forensics, Evola and Casonato (2012) have
suggested that legal transcripts of interviews and interrogations can be compromised by
not taking into account the gestures produced (both by the interviewer and the inter-
viewee) in the interrogation setting. Indeed, gestures are not usually transcribed in de-
posed transcripts. In particular iconic gestures (for example, ones produced during state-
ments of physical descriptions), if properly interpreted, are useful in forensic and psycho-
logical evaluations, in that they may reveal extra information not encoded in speech;
however, ultimately this information often goes unnoticed or unrecorded in the legal
deposition. Moreover, children being interviewed may tend to prefer gesturing over ver-
balizing, especially with regards to taboo topics. In one dispute, for example, a pre-teen
girl being interviewed in an alleged child molestation case is asked by the adult in-
terviewer to describe “what she felt”. Upon insistent questioning, the girl hedges the
question and repeatedly touches her forehead with her straight index finger for almost
four minutes before verbally admitting she felt “a big finger” against her head. By paying
more attention to the interviewee’s gestures, especially iconic ones, the authors suggest
that “hidden” information is revealed, and the child’s own way of communicating is re-
spected.
3. Mimicry: Intersubjective alignment and understanding
A kind of socially oriented, intersubjective iconicity in co-speech gestures may reside in
the ways in which speakers interpret and partly imitate the gestural behavior of their
interlocutors (e.g., McNeill 2005: 160⫺162; see also Calbris 1990: 104⫺153 on the moti-
vated, conventional and cultural aspects of mimetic gestures and Müller (2010a) on the
notion of mimesis as applied to gesture). Kimbara (2006: 41) defines gestural mimicry
as the “recurrence of the same or similar gestures across speakers” and “as an instance
of jointly constructed meaning” (Kimbara 2006: 42). Gesture, like speech, contributes
both form and meaning as shared cognitive and semiotic resources on the bases of which
co-participants build up common ground and unify cultural patterns (Clark 1996). Ges-
tural mimicry is not an automatic or exact duplication of an interlocutor’s behavior, but1738 VIII. Gesture and language
a collaboratively achieved “representational action mediated by meaning” (Kimbara
2006: 58), reinforcing one’s identity of inclusion or exclusion within a social and cultural
setting. In the process, the reoccurrence of particular gesture form features may “make
salient […] those aspects of what is being talked about, and […] influence the way in
which the interlocutor comes to represent and so to conceive of the same referent”
(Kimbara 2006: 58; see also Evola 2010; Parrill and Kimbara 2006). A study by Mol,
Kramer, and Swerts (2009: 4) investigates whether speakers mimic gestures of their inter-
locutors that are inconsistent with the accompanying speech (evidence for “perception-
behavior link”) or those consistent with the representations in speech (evidence for “lin-
guistic alignment”). Results show that almost only gestures that matched the concurrent
speech were repeated. Moreover, participants who had seen inconsistent gestures per-
formed fewer gestures overall. This indicates that “the copying of a gesture’s form is
more likely a case of convergence in linguistic behavior (alignment) than a general in-
stance of physical mimicry” (Mol, Kramer, and Swerts 2009: 7).
Comparing gestural mimicry in face-to-face situations to situations with an invisible
interlocutor, Holler and Wilkin (2011) not only consider shared formal and semantic
features as criteria for gestural mimicry, but also the use of the same mode of representa-
tion. The authors further posit three functions of mimicked gestures: “presentation, ac-
ceptance, and displaying incremental understanding” (Holler and Wilkin 2011: 141).
They conclude that mimicked gestures assume crucial functions in the incremental cre-
ation of mutually shared understanding and “are both part of the common ground
interactants accrue, as well as part of the very process by which they do so” (Holler and
Wilkin 2011: 148; see also Bergmann und Kopp 2010 and Kopp, Bergmann, and Wachs-
muth 2008 on questions of alignment and iconic gestures from the perspective of com-
puter modeling).
4. Representational and reerential gestures
Gesture scholars have proposed various other terms to capture as well as highlight cer-
tain nuances of the kinds of semiotic processes referred to as iconic gestures above. Here,
a selective overview of some of the prominent accounts will be provided in chronological
order, not laying out the complete taxonomies, but focusing on underlying questions of
iconicity and representation instead.
Early on Wundt (1921) divided referential gestures into two different kinds:a) gestures
imitating an object or concept or gestures mimicking an action, for instance by drawing
with the index finger its contours in the air or by evoking through a specific hand config-
uration the plasticity of its characteristic shape (e.g., a cupped hand imitating a small
bowl; andb) connotative gestures that pick out a characteristic feature to refer to the
object or action in its entirety. While both of these processes imply partial representation
and thus metonymy (Mittelberg and Waugh this volume), it is Wundt’s category of sym-
bolic gestures in which figurative aspects and especially metaphor come to the fore (see
also Wundt 1973). Efron ([1941] 1972: 96) distinguished between several types of object-
related gestural behaviors, only some of which have the capacity for pictorial, physio-
graphic representation: “depicting either the form of a visual object or a spatial relation-
ship (iconographic gesture), or that of a bodily action (kinetographic gesture)”. Hence, a
difference is made between what could also be called object images and bodily motor
images; Efron assigns the function of a true icon only to the iconographic type. Building131. Iconic and representational gestures 1739
on Efron (1972), Ekman and Friesen (1969) attribute considerable importance to the
idea of representation. In their classification of nonverbal behaviors, they distinguish,
inter alia, gestural acts that stand, either iconically or arbitrarily, for something else (i.e.
extrinsically coded acts) from those being significant in and of themselves (i.e. intrinsi-
cally coded acts). Among the various subtypes of speech-accompanying illustrators, three
may fulfill iconic functions (i.e. are extrinsically coded): pictographs, spatial illustrators
and kinetographs; however, only the first type always is iconic: “Pictographs (…) are
iconic because by definition a picture must resemble but cannot be its significant” (1969:
77; see also Fricke 2007; Kendon 2004; Müller 1998a for overviews).
In her work of mimic representations, Calbris (1990: 104⫺115) demonstrates that re-
gardless of the motivated, i.e. iconic, nature of mimetic gestures, they are always also
conventional in the sense that they portray cognitive schemata or cultural practices. That
is, there are cultural differences in which features of a reference object or scene are
selected and encoded for gestural representation, and how exactly one imitates an every
action involving objects such picking up the phone or raising a glass. The author also
draws attention to the schematicity of such gestures afforded by the “powers of abstrac-
tion. […] Even in evoking a concrete situation, a gesture does not reproduce the concrete
action, but the idea abstracted from the concrete reality” (Calbris 1990: 115). Motivation
may also manifest itself in the form of analogous relationships between the meaning (the
signified) and the gesture (the signifier) through isomorphism (see also Fricke 2012;
Lücking 2013; Mittelberg 2006, this volume).
In her functional classification system, Müller (1998a: 89f.) draws on Bühler’s ([1934]
1982) model of communication with its three functions: expressive, referential, and ap-
pellative. Müller (1998a: 110⫺113) accounts for predominantly referential gestures by
making a distinction between those that refer to concrete reference objects, such as physi-
cal entities, behaviors and events, and those that refer to abstracta such as timelines or
financial transactions. She further stresses the fact that the same kind of gesture, e.g., a
tracing gesture outlining a rectangular-shaped structure, may, depending on the concur-
rent speech content, refer to a physical picture frame or a theoretical framework (see
also Müller 2010a; Müller and Cienki 2009). Whether concrete or abstract reference
objects and actions, referential gestures involve abstraction of relevant aspects or a gene-
ral idea. In addition, hand movements may shape and create referential gestures in dif-
ferent ways, thus bringing about iconicity in gestural gestalts. To account for this, Müller
(1998a: 114⫺126; 1998b: 323⫺327) introduced four modes of representation in gesture:
drawing (e.g., tracing the outlines of a picture frame), molding (e.g., sculpting the form
of a crown); acting (e.g., pretending to open a window), and representing (e.g., a flat
open hand with the palm turned up stands for a piece of paper).
According to Kendon (2004: 160), referential gestures may point to what the utterance
is about or represent certain aspects of the propositional content of an utterance. In the
group of manual actions that serve purposes of representation, Kendon (2009) distin-
guishes between two distinct uses. First, there are uses of manual action that “provide
dynamic movement information about the properties of objects or actions the speaker
is talking about”. These may fulfill an adverbial or adjectival function communicating
aspects of the manner of an action or the shape or relative dimensions of a given object
(see Fig. 131.1). Second, manual actions may suggest the presence of concrete objects,
e.g., by placing the items being talked about in space or highlighting aspects of their
relationships (comparable to diagrams or drawings); these uses do not add anything to1740 VIII. Gesture and language
the propositional content of the utterance. In addition, Kendon (2004) distinguishes
different techniques of representation, namely modeling a body part to stand for some-
thing else, enacting certain features of an action pattern, or depicting objects in the air
through movements recognized as sketching or sculpting the shape of something (see
also Streeck 2008, 2009 on depicting by gesture; see also Mittelberg this volume).
While responding to the need of categorizing gestures for the purpose of analysis,
many gesture scholars have come to realize that working with categories, even if seen as
not absolute, poses problems in light of the dynamic, polysemous and multifunctional
nature of gestural forms (cf. Kendon 2004; McNeill 2005; Müller 2010b). This implies,
in principle, that there are no iconic or metaphoric gestures as such, but that these
semiotic principles interact to a certain degree in a given gestural sign and that one needs
to establish, in conjunction with the concurrent speech and other contextual factors,
which one actually determines its local function. The latter understanding expresses, in
alignment with Peirce (1960) and Jakobson (1987), a hierarchical view on processes of
association and signification (e.g., Mittelberg 2008, volume 1; Mittelberg and Waugh
2009, this volume). One should also keep in mind that motivated iconic signs tend to
involve habit and conventionality and could not unfold their meaning if not understood
as indexically embedded in utterance formation, performances, and intricate structures
of embodied interaction with the material and cultural world (e.g., Calbris 1990, 2011;
Streeck, Goodwin, and LeBaron 2011; Sweetser 2012).
5. Concluding remarks
In light of the research reviewed in this chapter, it is useful to take note that the terms
iconic gestures and iconics come from traditional semiotics and as such have their own
specific, and at times complex, meaning in the history of ideas (for details see Mittelberg
this volume; see also Jakobson 1966; Jakobson and Waugh 2002; Sonesson 2008). The
subjective and interpretative nature of iconic gestures, as with icons in other modalities,
is important to keep in mind in order to understand that, when attempting to classify
gestures as such, there can be ambiguity. As to their interpretative aspect, gestures can
be classified as iconics, or as predominantly iconic bodily signs, when there is some form
of similarity between the sign-vehicle (the gesture) and the object which can be seized
by and is salient to an interpretant. The examples provided in the chapter dealing with
cultural iconics, which although are socially motivated, address to what extent they are
habitual, conventional or conventionalized albeit based on similarity. The way people
use their language(s) in their diverse settings motivates their thinking for speaking and
for gesturing (e.g., Slobin 1996; Cienki and Müller 2008; McNeill 2005). As evidenced
by the work reviewed in this chapter, bodily iconic signs metonymically foreground cer-
tain aspects of an object, an idea, or even another gesture and translate them cognitively
and gesturally in a way that may enhance both the speaker’s own understanding of what
s/he is trying to convey as well as the interlocutor’s interpretation. Iconic kinetic action
features, often only consisting of minimal motion onsets or schematic images furtively
traced in the air, thus help co-participants to arrive at shared understandings in dynami-
cally evolving “contextures of action” (Goodwin 2011: 182; see also Enfield 2009, 2011).
In this fashion, different meanings expressed in diverse sign systems (e.g. speech, art, a
scene on the street) become multimodally comprehensible and mutually interpreting,
also allowing people to refer to something outside their own gestural system (cf. Mann-
heim 1999).131. Iconic and representational gestures 1741
Although iconic gestures occupy a struggled place in the literature, the following
intermodal, cross-modal, interpersonal, intramodal, and intertextual iconic relations and
patterns can be devised: iconic relations between
(i) an individual gestural sign carrier and what it evokes or represents (e.g., iconic
gestures, representational gestures);
(ii) gestures and the concurrent speech content as well as prosodic contours;
(iii) gestural behavior of interlocutors (e.g., mimicry (Kimbara 2006)); as well as iconic
patterns emerging from gestural forms recurring
(iv) within the same discourse (e.g., catchments (McNeill and Duncan 2000) or locution
clusters (Kendon 1972));
(v) across discourses and speakers (e.g., recurrent gestures (Bressem volume 1; Lade-
wig 2011, this volume; Müller 2010b) and geometric and image-schematic patterns
in gesture space (Cienki 2005; Mittelberg 2010, 2013);
(vi) across different languages; and
(vii) across different age groups, clinical groups, social groups, or cultures (see sec-
tion 2).
It seems worthwhile to bring into the picture additional theoretical approaches that
might account for certain properties and functions of gestures more effectively than
similarity and iconicity can (see Fricke 2012; Lücking 2013; Streeck 2009). Contiguity
relations between the communicating body and its material and social habitat also play
an important role in sensing and interpreting the meaning of bodily signs which most of
the time subsume iconic and indexical (and symbolic) functions (Peirce 1960; see Mittel-
berg and Waugh this volume). It thus seems crucial to further examine how gestural
icons are indexically anchored in their semiotic, material and social environment, thus
revealing their subjective and intersubjective dimensions (e.g. Haviland 1993; Streeck,
Goodwin, and LeBaron 2011; Sweetser 2012). One way to do this is to continue compar-
ative semiotic studies investigating the interplay of iconic and other semiotic principles
interacting in both co-speech gesture and signed languages to arrive at a fuller under-
standing of the cognitive, physical, pragmatic and socio-cultural forces that drive proc-
esses of conventionalization and grammaticalization in bodily signs and their grounded,
richly contextualized usage (e.g., Andrén 2012; Goldin-Meadow 2003; Grote and Linz
2003; Kendon 2004; Perniss et al. 2010; Sweetser 2009; Wilcox in press; Zlatev 2005).
Considering the interdependent factors of communicative human action and interac-
tion addressed throughout this chapter, the following observations Lévi-Strauss made
decades ago may serve as an interim conclusion, since they not only provide historical
anchorage, but may also inspire future work:
both the natural and the human sciences concur to dismiss an out-moded philosophical
dualism. Ideal and real, abstract and concrete, ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ can no longer be opposed to
each other. What is immediately ‘given’ to us is neither the one nor the other, but something
which is betwixt and between, that is, already encoded by the sense organs as by the brain.
(Lévi-Strauss [1972] cited in Jakobson and Waugh 2002: 51)
Acknowledgements
The preparation of the article was supported by the Excellence Initiative of the German
State and Federal Governments and the Bonn-Aachen International Center for Informa-
tion Technology (B-IT).1742 VIII. Gesture and language
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