Book contents
- Pointing
- Pointing
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction to Pointing:
- Part One Culture and Development
- 1 Pointing at, Talking about, and Looking Away:
- 2 The Design of Pointing
- 3 Development of Pointing in Toddlers:
- 4 Attention Management by Deictic Gestures and Demonstratives:
- 5 Pointing to Dinner Participants in Deaf and Hearing Children’s and Adults’ Signing and Gesturing
- 6 The Cultural Nature of Early Social Communication
- 7 Pointing at Local Knowledge:
- 8 The Role of Infant Pointing in Child-Led Caregiving:
- 9 How Infants Learn to Follow Attention from Gaze-Direction and Pointing Gestures
- 10 Touch, Pointing and Mind-Reading
- 11 Socially Signaling Robotics:
- 12 Developmental Significance of the Human Pointing Gesture
- Part Two Evolutionary Perspectives
- Index
- References
4 - Attention Management by Deictic Gestures and Demonstratives:
Analysis of the Wayfinding Practices of the Gǀui/Gǁana in the Kalahari
from Part One - Culture and Development
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2026
By
Book contents
- Pointing
- Pointing
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction to Pointing:
- Part One Culture and Development
- 1 Pointing at, Talking about, and Looking Away:
- 2 The Design of Pointing
- 3 Development of Pointing in Toddlers:
- 4 Attention Management by Deictic Gestures and Demonstratives:
- 5 Pointing to Dinner Participants in Deaf and Hearing Children’s and Adults’ Signing and Gesturing
- 6 The Cultural Nature of Early Social Communication
- 7 Pointing at Local Knowledge:
- 8 The Role of Infant Pointing in Child-Led Caregiving:
- 9 How Infants Learn to Follow Attention from Gaze-Direction and Pointing Gestures
- 10 Touch, Pointing and Mind-Reading
- 11 Socially Signaling Robotics:
- 12 Developmental Significance of the Human Pointing Gesture
- Part Two Evolutionary Perspectives
- Index
- References
Summary
The field of anthropology provides an approach that focuses on interaction (the anthropology of interaction) by incorporating communication studies and conversational analysis commonly used in linguistic anthropology. However, because previous studies have focused mainly on how conversations are temporally organised, there is still insufficient research on how broader forms of interaction, including gestures, are organised to use resources distributed in the environment. The chapter presents an interactional analysis of how deictic gestures and demonstratives manage the attention of interactional participants during the wayfinding practices in the bush among the G|ui/Gǁana, a hunter-gatherer and Indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert. Furthermore, through such attention management, the chapter discusses the process by which the G|ui/Gǁana engage with their environment by involving people from different socio-cultural backgrounds into their culturally distinctive social situations.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- PointingCulture, Development, and Evolution, pp. 73 - 88Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
References
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Nice, R., trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. Nice, R., trans. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butterworth, G., & Jarrett, N. (1991). What minds have in corninon is space: Spatial mechanisms serving joint visual attention in infancy. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9, 55–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifford, J. (1986). On Ethnographic Allegory. In Clifford, J. & Marcus, G. E., eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 98–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duranti, A. (1997). Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E. (1964). The Neglected Situation. American Anthropologist, 66(6), 133–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and Embodiment within Situated Human Interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1489–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, C. (2007). Environmentally Coupled Gestures. In Duncan, S. D., Cassell, J., & Levy, E. T., eds., Gesture and the Dynamic Dimension of Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 195–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, M. H. & Cekaite, A. (2018). Embodied Family Choreography: Practices of Control, Care, and Mundane Creativity. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanks, W. F. (1996). Language and Communicative Practices. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Howes, D. (2005). Introduction: Empire of the Senses. In Howes, D., ed., Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg, pp. 1–20.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kita, S. (2002). Why Do People Gesture? In Saito, H. & Kita, S., eds., Gesture, Action and Meaning. Tokyo: Kyoritsu Shuppan, pp. 2–23. (in Japanese)Google Scholar
Koyama, W. (2008). The Genealogy of Signs: The Scope of Socio-semiotic Linguistic Anthropology. Tokyo: Sangensha. (in Japanese)Google Scholar
Koyama, W. (2009). The Thought of Silverstein: Society and Signs. In Koyama, W., ed., The Thought of Signs: A Trajectory of Contemporary Linguistic Anthropology – Silverstein’s Essay. Tokyo: Sangensha, pp. 11–233. (in Japanese)Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). The Phenomenology of Perception. Smith, C., trans. London: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Nakagawa, H. (1997). Two Dialects of |Gui and Their Sociolinguistic Aspects. Asian & African Linguistics, 26, 33–40. (in Japanese)Google Scholar
Nakagawa, H., Sugawara, K. & Tanaka, J. (2024). Gǀui Dictionary. Unpublished Manuscript.Google Scholar
Nishizaka, A. (1997). Perspectives on Interaction Analysis: A Sociological Description of Culture and Mind. Tokyo: Kaneko Shobo. (in Japanese)Google Scholar
Ochs, E., Solomon, O. & Sterponi, L. (2005). Limitations and Transformations of Habitus in Child-Directed Communication. Discourse Studies, 7(4–5), 547–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peirce, C. S. (1992). Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Between Micro and Macro: Contexts and Other Connections. In Alexander, J. C., Giesen, B., Münch, R. & Smelser, N. J. eds., The Micro-Macro Link. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 207–34.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis: Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sidnell, J. & Enfield, N. J. (2012). Language Diversity and Social Action: A Third Locus of Linguistic Relativity. Current Anthropology, 53(3), 302–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silberbauer, G. B. (1965). Report to the Government of Bechuanaland on the Bushman Survey. Gaborone: Bechuanaland Government.Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. (1987). Cognitive Implications of a Referential Hierarchy. In Hickmann, M. ed., Social and Functional Approaches to Language and Thought. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, pp. 125–64.Google Scholar
Strathern, M. (1988). The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strathern, M. (1990). Negative Strategies in Melanesia. In Fardon, R. ed., Localizing Strategies: Regional Traditions of Ethnographic Writing. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, pp. 204–16.Google Scholar
Takada, A. (2005). The Importance of Gesture and Grammar in Displaying Directional Markers: Evidence from the San of the Central Kalahari. In Sugawara, K. ed., Construction and Distribution of Body Resources: Correlations between Ecological, Symbolic and Medical Systems. Kyoto: The Head Office of the Project on “Distribution and Sharing of Resources in Symbolic and Ecological Systems: Integrative Model-Building in Anthropology”, pp. 31–55.Google Scholar
Takada, A. (2006). Explaining Pathways in the Central Kalahari. Senri Ethnological Studies, 70, 101–27.Google Scholar
Takada, A. (2008). Recapturing Space: Production of Inter-subjectivity among the Central Kalahari San. Journeys: The International Journal of Travel & Travel Writing, 9(2), 114–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Takada, A. (2016a). Employing Ecological Knowledge during Foraging Activity: Perception of the Landform among the Gǀui and Gǁana. African Study Monographs, Supplementary Issue, 52, 147–70.Google Scholar
Takada, A. (2016b). Unfolding Cultural Meanings: Wayfinding Practices among the San of the Central Kalahari. In Lovis, W. A. & Whallon, R. eds., Marking the Land: Hunter-Gatherer Creation of Meaning in Their Environment. London: Routledge, pp. 180–200.Google Scholar
Takada, A. (2019). Anthropology of Interaction: Places Where “Mind” Meets “Culture”. Tokyo: Shinyosha. (in Japanese)Google Scholar
Takada, A. (2020). Deepening the Engagement with the Environment: A Case Study of Wayfinding Practices among the G|ui/Gǁana. Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology, 84(4), 443–62. (in Japanese)Google Scholar
Tanaka, J. (2017). African Cultural Expeditions: From Half a Century of History to the Future. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press. (in Japanese)Google Scholar
Accessibility standard: WCAG 2.2 AAA
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
The HTML of this chapter
complies with version 2.2 of the
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG), offering more comprehensive accessibility measures for a broad range
of users and attains the highest
(AAA)
level of WCAG compliance, optimising the user experience by meeting the most extensive
accessibility guidelines.
Content Navigation
Index navigation
Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.
Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.
Reading Order & Textual Equivalents
Single logical reading order
You will encounter all content (including footnotes, captions, etc.) in a clear, sequential flow, making it easier to follow with assistive tools like screen readers.
You will encounter all content (including footnotes, captions, etc.) in a clear, sequential flow, making it easier to follow with assistive tools like screen readers.
Short alternative textual descriptions
You get concise descriptions (for images, charts, or media clips), ensuring you do not miss crucial information when visual or audio elements are not accessible.
You get concise descriptions (for images, charts, or media clips), ensuring you do not miss crucial information when visual or audio elements are not accessible.
Full alternative textual descriptions
You get more than just short alt text: you have comprehensive text equivalents, transcripts, captions, or audio descriptions for substantial non‐text content, which is especially helpful for complex visuals or multimedia.
You get more than just short alt text: you have comprehensive text equivalents, transcripts, captions, or audio descriptions for substantial non‐text content, which is especially helpful for complex visuals or multimedia.
Visualised data also available as non-graphical data
You can access graphs or charts in a text or tabular format, so you are not excluded if you cannot process visual displays.
You can access graphs or charts in a text or tabular format, so you are not excluded if you cannot process visual displays.
Visual Accessibility
Use of colour is not sole means of conveying information
You will still understand key ideas or prompts without relying solely on colour, which is especially helpful if you have colour vision deficiencies.
You will still understand key ideas or prompts without relying solely on colour, which is especially helpful if you have colour vision deficiencies.
Structural and Technical Features
ARIA roles provided
You gain clarity from ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles and attributes, as they help assistive technologies interpret how each part of the content functions.
You gain clarity from ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles and attributes, as they help assistive technologies interpret how each part of the content functions.