Speakers’ Gestures and Semantic Analysis

What is it about?

More and more linguists are paying attention to the gestures speakers use. This raises questions for how we analyze the meaning/ideas that speakers are expressing (that is: semantics). The field of cognitive linguistics provides some useful categories for analyzing the meaning of gestures in relation to the meanings expressed in spoken language. These include the study of how people mentally simulate concepts they are speaking about, including through using spatial images, and how people think about abstract ideas in relation to more concrete ones (through metonymy and metaphor). Looking at gesture helps linguists see how people express meanings on different time scales at once, e.g. on the level of words, phrases, and larger discourse units—each of which relates to gestures in different ways. Looking at speakers' gestures is making linguists rethink some of their theories about language.

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Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash

Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash