How recurrent gestures mean

Abstract

AbstractDrawing upon corpus analyses of recurrent gestures, a pragmatics perspective on gestural meaning and conventionalization will be developed. Gesture pragmatics is considered in terms of usage-based, embodied and interactively emerging meaning. The article brings together cognitive linguistic, cognitive semiotic and interactional perspectives on meaning making.How the interrelation between different types of context (interactional, semantic/pragmatic/syntactic, distribution across a corpus) with the embodied motivation of kinesic forms in actions and movement experiences of the body might play out in the process of conventionalization is illustrated by discussing threerecurrent gestures: thePalm-Up-Open-Hand, theHolding Away, and theCyclic gesture. By merging conventional and idiosyncratic elements recurrent gestures occupy a place between spontaneously created (singular) gestures and emblems as fully conventionalized gestural expressions on a continuum of increasing conventionalization (cf. Kendon’s continuum:McNeill, 1992,2000).Recurrent gestures are an interesting case to study how processes of conventionalization may involve emergent de-compositions of gestural movements into smaller concomitant Gestalts (cf.Kendon, 2004, Chapters 15 & 16). They are particularly revealing in showing how those de-compositional processes are grounded experientially in contexts-of-use and remain grounded in conventionalized, yet still embodied, experiential frames.