Metaphor and Gesture

This volume is the first to offer an overview on metaphor and gesture — a new multi-disciplinary area of research. Scholars of metaphor have been paying increasing attention to spontaneous gestures with speech; meanwhile, researchers in gesture studies have been focussing on the abstract ideas which receive physical representation through metaphors when speakers gesture. This book presents a snapshot of the state of the art in these converging fields, offering research papers as well as commentaries from multiple perspectives. In addition to conceptual metaphor theory it includes different theoretical approaches to semiotics, and the methods used range from controlled experimentation, to cognitive ethnography, to lexical semantic analysis. The use of metaphor in gesture is shown to reflect idiosyncracies of thought in the moment of speaking as well as structural, cultural, and interactional patterns. The series of commentaries discusses the potential importance of studying metaphor and gesture from the perspectives of such fields as anthropology, cognitive linguistics, conversation analysis, psychology, and semiotics.

Table of contents

 

Contributors	vii–viii
Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction Alan Cienki and Cornelia Mьller	1–4
Why study metaphor and gesture? Alan Cienki	5–25
From left to right...: Coverbal gestures and their symbolic use of space Geneviиve Calbris	27–53
Gesture as a conceptual mapping tool Robert F. Williams	55–92
A fresh look at the foundations of mathematics: Gesture and the psychological reality of conceptual metaphor Rafael Nъсez	93–114
Peircean semiotics meets conceptual metaphor: Iconic modes in gestural representations of grammar Irene Mittelberg	115–154
Unexpected metaphors David McNeill	155–170
Catchment, growth point and spatial metaphor: Analysing Derrida's oral discourse on deconstruction Jacques Montredon, Abderrahim Amrani, Marie-Paule Benoit-Barnet, Emmanuelle Chan You, Rйgine Llorca and Nancy Peuteuil	171–194
Form, meaning, and convention: A comparison of a metaphoric gesture with an emblem Fey Parrill	195–217
What gestures reveal about the nature of metaphor Cornelia Mьller	219–245
Commentaries on the value of studying metaphor and gesture from the perspectives of different disciplines	247
Metaphoric gesture and cognitive linguistics Ronald W. Langacker	249–251
Metaphoric gestures and cultural analysis Naomi Quinn	253–257
Metaphor and gesture: A view from the microanalysis of interaction Jьrgen Streeck	259–264
Implications of cognitive metaphor and gesture studies for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis and vice versa Anders Hougaard and Gitte R. Hougaard	265–272
Sign and gesture: Towards a new paradigm Sherman Wilcox	273–275
The study of metaphor and gesture: A critique from the perspective of semiotics Paul Bouissac	277–282
The neuroscience of metaphoric gestures: Why they exist George Lakoff	283–289
Metaphor and gesture: Some implications for psychology Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.	291–301
Index	303–306