Gesture and Thought
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A01=David Mcneill
age
anthropology
Author_David Mcneill
Category=CFD
Category=GTC
Category=JMR
cognition
cognitive psychology
communication
consciousness
conversation
dialectic
discourse
embodiment
eq_bestseller
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
expression
function
gender
gesturing
imagery
kinetic
language
lev vygotsky
linguistics
mind and body
neurology
nonfiction
psycholinguistics
sign
social context
speech
thinking
thought
utterances
Product details
- ISBN 9780226514635
- Weight: 536g
- Dimensions: 161 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Sep 2007
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the relationship between gesture and language, here argues that gestures are active participants in both speaking and thinking. He posits that gestures are key ingredients in an "imagery-language dialectic" that fuels speech and thought. The smallest unit of this dialectic is the growth point, a snapshot of an utterance at its beginning psychological stage. In "Gesture and Thought", the central growth point comes from a Tweety Bird cartoon. Over the course of twenty-five years, the McNeill Lab showed this cartoon to numerous subjects who spoke a variety of languages, and a fascinating pattern emerged. The shape and timing of gestures depends not only on what speakers see but on what they take to be distinctive; this, in turn, depends on the context. Those who remembered the same context saw the same distinctions and used similar gestures; those who forgot the context understood something different and changed gestures or used none at all. Thus, the gesture becomes part of the growth point - the building block of language and thought.
"Gesture and Thought" is an ambitious project in the ongoing study of how we communicate and how language is connected to thought.
David McNeill is professor emeritus of linguistics and psychology at the University of Chicago and director of the Center for Gesture and Speech. He is the author of four previous books, including Hand and Mind, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and the editor of Language and Gesture.
