A repertoire of Yoruba hand and face gestures

Agwuele, Augustine

doi:10.1075/gest.14.1.04agw

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…The shrug-as described originally by Darwin (1998Darwin ( /1872 and by several observers since (Givens, 1977(Givens, , 2016Streeck, 2009;Debras, 2017;Jehoul et al, 2017)-is a multifaceted display that very often involves rotating the forearms so that the palms turn upward. It has been attested in a range of cultures, in both speakers (e.g., Creider, 1977;Feldman, 1986;Agwuele, 2014) and signers (e.g., Zeshan, 2006b;McKee and Wallingford, 2011;Schuit, 2014), and is sometimes considered a "candidate gesture universal" (Streeck, 2009, p. 189). Interestingly, the meanings of the shrug are less controversial than the meanings of palmups.…”

Section: The Reduced Shrug Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Palm-Up Puzzle: Meanings and Origins of a Widespread Form in Gesture and Sign

2018

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During communication, speakers commonly rotate their forearms so that their palms turn upward. Yet despite more than a century of observations of such palm-up gestures, their meanings and origins have proven difficult to pin down. We distinguish two gestures within the palm-up form family: the palm-up presentational and the palm-up epistemic. The latter is a term we introduce to refer to a variant of the palm-up that prototypically involves lateral separation of the hands. This gesture-our focus-is used in speaking communities around the world to express a recurring set of epistemic meanings, several of which seem quite distinct. More striking, a similar palm-up form is used to express the same set of meanings in many established sign languages and in emerging sign systems. Such observations present a two-part puzzle: the first part is how this set of seemingly distinct meanings for the palm-up epistemic are related, if indeed they are; the second is why the palm-up form is so widely used to express just this set of meanings. We propose a network connecting the different attested meanings of the palm-up epistemic, with a kernel meaning of absence of knowledge, and discuss how this proposal could be evaluated through additional developmental, corpus-based, and experimental research. We then assess two contrasting accounts of the connection between the palm-up form and this proposed meaning network, and consider implications for our understanding of the palm-up form family more generally. By addressing the palm-up puzzle, we aim, not only to illuminate a widespread form found in gesture and sign, but also to provide insights into fundamental questions about visual-bodily communication: where communicative forms come from, how they take on new meanings, and how they become integrated into language in signing communities.

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Section: The Reduced Shrug Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Palm-Up Puzzle: Meanings and Origins of a Widespread Form in Gesture and Sign

2018

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“…This has been both in the context of major studies of gesture, most prominently by Kendon (2004) McNeill (2005, and Streeck (2009) and, as independent studies, by Müller (op.cit) and Cooperrider et al (2018). All of these studies testify to the pervasiveness of the PU across the languages of the world; indeed Cooperrider et al, in an extensive overview of past work on the PU in both spoken and sign language, document the PU across sixteen spoken languages (op.cit: 6) including Yoruba (Agwuele, 2014), Brazilian Portugese (Rector, 1986) and in Syuba, spoken in Nepal (Gawne, 2018). Furthermore, work by Chu et al (2013) attests to the pervasiveness of the PU solely in English; their analysis of 8000 gestures established that two PU gesture variants together accounted for 24% of all gestures.…”

Section: The Palm-up: the Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 92%

Stability and visibility in embodiment: The ‘Palm Up’ in interaction

Clift

2020

Journal of Pragmatics

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This paper identifies hitherto unidentified aspects of the relationship between language and bodily behaviour by examining the production of a recognisable embodied practice in interaction -the 'palm up' (PU), by which the palms of the hands are turned in parallel to face towards the recipient. Two features turn out to be central to understanding both this practice and, by extension, embodied action in interaction generally. The first is the 'held' element, iconically indicating disruption to the progressivity of the interaction. The second is the production of the PU at particular positions in sequences of talk. Using multi-modal Conversation Analysis to examine two contexts in English -pursuits and challenges -reveals that it is analytically insufficient to focus on solely the embodied action and its affiliated utterance without considering its wider sequential context. Rather, any account of embodied action should in the first instance investigate its temporal and sequential production to identify its pragmatic function in interaction.

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“…Note that some of these points on the map represent linguistic/cultural areas that have received sustained attention (e.g., Italy), while others represent a small study involving emblem decoding only (e.g., 10 participants from Burma in Kanayama 1999). Many works also acknowledge their partial or preliminary nature (Olofson 1974;Agwuele 2014), so even those areas with a pin are not necessarily well-documented. Spanish speaking world (15 pins); and Kanayama's (1999) survey of Asia and Europe (13 pins).…”

Section: Documenting Emblem Repertoiresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…to meticulous and detailed inventories (de Jorio 1832de Jorio /2000 P. A. Harrison 1983;Agwuele 2014). In Appendix 2 we include all studies regardless of quality, as even the barest treatment may lay important groundwork for future research.8 …”

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confidence: 99%

Emblems: Gestures at the interface

Gawne¹,

Cooperrider²

2022

Preprint

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Emblems—the THUMBS UP, the HEADSHAKE, the PEACE SIGN, the SHHH—are communicative gestures that have a conventional form and conventional meaning within a particular community. These and other features make them more “word-like” than other gestures. It also positions them at the interface between different communicative phenomena—language and gesture, speech and sign—and between different fields. Here we provide an overview of this recurring feature of the human communicative toolkit. We first discuss the major defining features of emblems, and their points of commonality and difference with neighbouring communicative phenomena. Next, we review efforts to document emblems around the world. Our survey highlights the patchiness of global coverage, as well as strengths and limitations of approaches used to date. Finally, we consider a handful of open questions about emblems, including how they mean, how they are learned, and why they exist in the first place. Addressing these questions will require collaboration among linguists, lexicographers, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, and others. It will also deepen our understanding of human semiotic systems and how they interface with each other.

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A repertoire of Yoruba hand and face gestures

Cited by 8 publications

References 22 publications

The Palm-Up Puzzle: Meanings and Origins of a Widespread Form in Gesture and Sign

The Palm-Up Puzzle: Meanings and Origins of a Widespread Form in Gesture and Sign

Stability and visibility in embodiment: The ‘Palm Up’ in interaction

Emblems: Gestures at the interface

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