Gesture in Discourse

Abstract

In this chapter we provide evidence that speech-synchronized gestures are major sources of discourse cohesion. The evidence comes from a range of gesture types, including representational, beat, and pointing gestures. Our analyses suggest that gestures mark information that is newsworthy relative to what has come before, and thus that synchronous, co-expressive gesture–speech units are equally discourse units; they have absorbed meaningful context as a matter of their formation. Of special importance to our analyses are catchments, threads of visuospatial action imagery that run through a discourse and are embodied in gesture features such as space, handedness, and hand shape. Catchments provide a gesture-based window onto discourse cohesion, and our analyses of particular instances suggest they are a locus around which discourse is organized. We conclude by exploring the origins of speech–gesture integration – early gestural catchments – in a young child's spontaneous discourse

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