Written by one of the foremost authorities on the subject, this book gives a definitive account of gesture and its study. It is an excellent and thought-provoking work for all readers interested in everyday interactions across various disciplines. The book can be divided into two parts: The first six chapters present a detailed history of gesture studies dating back to Roman antiquity and continuing to the twentieth century, especially in the Western tradition. The latter half of the book provides micro-analyses of gesture practices occurring in everyday interactions in various settings.
Chaps. 1 and 2 articulate what the concept of gesture is in this book. Kendon explains that it is a set of bodily expressions employed as a component of an utterance. In other words, it is a visible bodily action that is recognized as a meaningful component in communication. In order to explicate the ways in which visible actions are recognized as gesture, he reports an experiment showing that the prototype of a gesture is a movement of deliberation, and that speakers can manage their actions depending on how they want these actions to appear in front of others. He also introduces four major themes developed in the history of gesture studies: the interrelation between gesture and speech, the significance of gesture in interaction and communication, the relation between gesture and sign, and the idea of considering gesture as the origin of language.
Chap. 3 introduces the writings of influential scholars between the time of ancient Rome and the eighteenth century. Kendon mentions each scholar's contributions in accordance with the interests and concerns of their times, including oratory, art, and philosophy. Chap. 4 centers on the nineteenth century and introduces the works of Andrea de Jorio, Edward Tylor, Garrick Mallery, and Wilhelm Wundt. Indirectly or directly, all these scholars have influenced anthropological approaches to gesture. For instance, de Jorio's work on Neapolitan gesture was perhaps the first ethnographic study to describe gesture forms and their functions. He claimed that the use of gestural expressions played an important role in communication among Neapolitan people, and that such practices were inherited from their ancestors. In the end he suggested that gestures should be always considered in context because gesture forms often share some features of movement or shape of body posture, yet their meanings lie in their contrast with other gestures.
Chap. 5 explains the decline in interest in gesture studies at the beginning of the twentieth century, followed by a return of interest toward the end of the century. With the development of structural-functional analyses of societies and cultural relativism as predominant alternative doctrines to Darwinism, there was diminished intellectual interest in natural or primitive symbols, including gesture and sign language studies, at the beginning of the century. However, during the 1970s, scholars in anthropology, psychology, and linguistics changed the intellectual climate and brought about a renewed interest in gesture studies.
Chap. 6 introduces representative schemes of gestures developed over the years, ranging from one established by Quintilian in the first century to others proposed during the eighteenth to twentieth centuries by scholars including Johann Jakob Engel, Gilbert Austin, Wilhelm Wundt, David Efron, Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen, and David McNeill. Kendon compares these scholars in terms of their analytical units (e.g., they agree that hands are different from arms) and their different views on the relationship between bodily expression and speech. His primary critique of these schemata is that they tend to be categorically organized as a reflection of the development of quantitative statistical methods in the modern era. Although he acknowledges that there is broad agreement about the ways in which gesture is embodied, he also suggests that these typological categories are not universal schemes.
Chaps. 7 and 8 explicate the mutual relationship between gesturing and speaking. Here Kendon defines two analytical units: gesture phrase and gesture unit. A gesture phrase consists of a preparation and stroke, and a gesture unit consists of a gesture phrase and recovery. In other words, the entire articulation of a gesture expression is like an excursion in which a part of the body moves away from a certain position of rest or relaxation (preparation) to a space in which a peak of the gesture is constructed (stroke), and then moves back to a rest position (recovery). By using these analytical units, Kendon shows how gestures and speech, two separate expressive modes, harmonize with each other in the process of making an utterance.
Chaps. 9 and 10 focus on representational aspects of gesture uses, such as the narrow gloss (or emblem), in relation to their referential meanings. The examples show how speakers fluently point to, depict, model, and enact the events they describe. Kendon claims that such fluency indicates that speakers smoothly shift from one representational technique to another in accordance with their semantic aims.
Chap. 11 deals with pointing gestures that index an object, a location, or a direction, or that depict the orbit of an event. Pointing gestures are conducted not only with the hands but also with the head and certain movements of the eyes, lips, elbows, and even feet. Kendon introduces seven different types of pointing gestures in terms of the shape of the hand in combination with the orientation of the forearm. The selection of types is determined by speakers' wishes about how they want the pointed objects to be perceived by hearers.
Chaps. 12 and 13 are devoted to describing the pragmatic functions of gesture. As spoken languages constitute speech acts, gestures can contribute additional meaning to propositions. Chap. 12 distinguishes between two gesture families. The G-family (or grappolo ‘finger bunch’) is a group of gesture forms in which all the fingers of a hand are gathered at their tips as if the hand makes a teardrop shape. It is usually employed when speakers construct a topic and grasp the essence of the topic. The R-family, or the ring hand shape, uses an index finger and a thumb attached at the tip making a ring shape. It is used to single out some exact fact or figure, or to make an idea very precise. The OHP (Open Hand Prone) family or the palm down family sets the forearm in a prone position, whereas the OHS (Open Hand Supine) or the palm up family sets the forearm in a supine position. Although both families use open palms, the pragmatic functions are different. The OHP is mainly employed in the context of denial, interruption, or stopping, whereas the OHS is used in the contexts of offering, giving, and receiving.
Chaps. 14 and 15 are devoted to sign languages in a broader sense. In chap. 14, two categories, primary sign languages and alternate sign languages, are introduced. Primary sign languages are codes developed in deaf communities, while alternate sign languages are the elaborate systems used in speaker-hearer communities particularly in situations where speech is not available for technical, religious, or cultural reasons. The examples include codes used between crane drivers and their guides, as well as in a sawmill and a monastery, and by the Plains Indians of North America and Aborigines in central Australia. Kendon claims that the various ways in which the alternate sign languages are developed depend on the complexity of the system and the spoken languages of its users. Chap. 15 draws parallels between gesture and sign, comparing phonological structures, the use of space, and the use of classifiers.
Chap. 16 discusses how cultural aspects influence local gesture practices by providing an ethnographic account of Neapolitan ways of gesturing. Referring to Hymes's notion of “communication economy,” Kendon concludes that researchers should take into consideration that formal varieties continuously change over time according to communicative purposes as the local environment requires.
The final chapter summarizes the book's theoretical points. At the end, two appendixes provide a detailed description of transcription conventions and ethnographic background for videotaped recordings.
Overall, this book is a complex and comprehensive survey of gesture. Both micro and macro perspectives on the subject are described in a clear, articulate, and accessible manner that, combined with the author's customary elegance of style, makes for a very enjoyable read and ensures that readers with different backgrounds can learn from it. The transcription conventions are succinct and well organized, and thus the analytical procedures and results are clearly represented. There are many categorical terms introduced, particularly in the middle of the book, but rather than treating these as necessarily definitive, Kendon suggests that the categories be considered as points on a continuum. The most useful and stimulating analytical terms might be “gesture phrase” and “gesture unit,” given that they can be widely applicable to other communicative media, such as eye gaze, for which a gesture phrase may comprise different units. In conclusion, this book is invaluable in that it offers new insights for many disciplines, including anthropology, linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, communication, and semiotics, among others.
