Gesture's Role in Speaking, Learning, and Creating Language

Abstract

When speakers talk, they gesture. The goal of this chapter is to understand the contribution that these gestures make to how we communicate and think. Gesture can play a role in communication and thought at many timespans. We explore, in turn, gesture’s contribution to how language is produced and understood in the moment; its contribution to how we learn language and other cognitive skills; and its contribution to how language is created over generations, over childhood, and on-the-spot. We find that the gestures speakers produce when they talk are integral to communication and can be harnessed in a number of ways. (1) Gesture reflects speakers’ thoughts, often their unspoken thoughts, and thus can serve as a window onto cognition. Encouraging speakers to gesture can thus provide another route for teachers, clinicians, interviewers, etc., to better understand their communication partners. (2) Gesture can change speakers’ thoughts. Encouraging gesture thus has the potential to change how students, patients, witnesses, etc., think about a problem and, as a result, alter the course of learning, therapy, or an interchange. (3) Gesture provides building blocks that can be used to construct a language. By watching how children and adults who do not already have a language put those blocks together, we can observe the process of language creation first hand. Our hands are with us at all times and thus provide researchers and learners with an ever-present tool for understanding how we talk and think.

Animation Stimuli System for Research on Instructor Gestures in Education

“…Math and science teachers frequently use their hands to depict information [2], [3], [4], [5]. Gesture in instruction has been shown to increase learning of a wide variety of mathematical concepts, including mathematical equivalence [6], [7], [8]. For example, a study of Piagetian conservation [9] compared instruction with gesture to instruction without gesture and found that instruction with gesture led nearly two times as many students to demonstrate deep learning.…”

A Literature Analysis of Themes in Paediatric Cochlear Implant Research

“…Early gesture use has been found to be important for language processing [62], attention control in early word learning [63], and early pointing gestures have been found to be connected to both word and sign development [64]. Gesture use is suggested to be an early connection between language and thought, in that infants from their earliest pointings share common conceptual contexts with their parents [33,53,65]. Gestures do not just reflect thought but have an impact on thought [65], without gestures thought would be altered or incomplete [53].…”

“…Gesture use is suggested to be an early connection between language and thought, in that infants from their earliest pointings share common conceptual contexts with their parents [33,53,65]. Gestures do not just reflect thought but have an impact on thought [65], without gestures thought would be altered or incomplete [53]. Gestures bridge the transition from pre-linguistic to more symbolic communication [66].…”

Imitation of a Pedagogical Agent’s Gestures Enhances Memory for Words in Second Language

“…Pointing is a well investigated precursor to words in a number of communicative situations between children and care-givers [39]. Also, when adults speak, they tend to gesture in order to express their thoughts in a more comprehensible way and to enhance access to their cognitive resources [40]. Speech and gesture interact in order to enhance communication [41].…”