On 6 November 2019 Professor Sotaro Kita from the University of Warwick discussed how co-speech (i.e., speech-accompanying) gestures relate to language and conceptualisation underlying language. The discussion focused on “representational gestures”, which can depict motion, action, and shape or can indicate locations (i.e., “iconic” and “deictic” gestures in McNeill’s 1992 classification). Evidence was provided for the following two points:
Various aspects of language shape co-speech gestures. Conversely, the way we produce cospeech gestures can shape language. These issues were discussed in relation to manner and path in motion event descriptions, clause-linkage types in complex event descriptions, and metaphor. Prof Kita concluded that gesture and language are parts of a "conceptualisation engine”, which takes advantage of unique strengths of spatio-motoric representation and linguistic representation.
