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This volume is the first to offer an overview on metaphor and gesture - a new multi-disciplinary area of research. Scholars of metaphor have been paying increasing attention to spontaneous gestures with speech; meanwhile, researchers in gesture studies have been focussing on the abstract ideas which receive physical representation through metaphors when speakers gesture. This book presents a snapshot of the state of the art in these converging fields, offering research papers as well as commentaries from multiple perspectives. In addition to conceptual metaphor theory it includes different theoretical approaches to semiotics, and the methods used range from controlled experimentation, to cognitive ethnography, to lexical semantic analysis. The use of metaphor in gesture is shown to reflect idiosyncracies of thought in the moment of speaking as well as structural, cultural, and interactional patterns. The series of commentaries discusses the potential importance of studying metaphor and gesture from the perspectives of such fields as anthropology, cognitive linguistics, conversation analysis, psychology, and semiotics.

Table of contents

Contributors vii–viii Acknowledgements ix Introduction Alan Cienki and Cornelia Müller 1-4 Why study metaphor and gesture? Alan Cienki 5-25 From left to right...: Coverbal gestures and their symbolic use of space Geneviève Calbris 27-53 Gesture as a conceptual mapping tool Robert F. Williams 55-92 A fresh look at the foundations of mathematics: Gesture and the psychological reality of conceptual metaphor Rafael Núñez 93-114 Peircean semiotics meets conceptual metaphor: Iconic modes in gestural representations of grammar Irene Mittelberg 115-154 Unexpected metaphors David McNeill 155-170 Catchment, growth point and spatial metaphor: Analysing Derrida's oral discourse on deconstruction Jacques Montredon, Abderrahim Amrani, Marie-Paule Benoit-Barnet, Emmanuelle Chan You, Régine Llorca and Nancy Peuteuil 171-194 Form, meaning, and convention: A comparison of a metaphoric gesture with an emblem Fey Parrill 195-217 What gestures reveal about the nature of metaphor Cornelia Müller 219-245 Commentaries on the value of studying metaphor and gesture from the perspectives of different disciplines 247 Metaphoric gesture and cognitive linguistics Ronald W. Langacker 249-251 Metaphoric gestures and cultural analysis Naomi Quinn 253-257 Metaphor and gesture: A view from the microanalysis of interaction Jürgen Streeck 259-264 Implications of cognitive metaphor and gesture studies for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis and vice versa Anders Hougaard and Gitte R. Hougaard 265-272 Sign and gesture: Towards a new paradigm Sherman Wilcox 273-275 The study of metaphor and gesture: A critique from the perspective of semiotics Paul Bouissac 277-282 The neuroscience of metaphoric gestures: Why they exist George Lakoff 283-289 Metaphor and gesture: Some implications for psychology Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. 291-301 Index 303-306

"This is a wonderful, well-written and accessible collection that provides rich examples of some of the most interesting and important contemporary research on the ties between embodiment and the distinctively human infrastructure for cognition provided by metaphor." Charles Goodwin, UCLA

"This collection and the research reported in this study provide an important step forward in our understanding of the complex phenomena of metaphor and gesture." Mohammad Rasekh Mahand, Bu-Ali Sina University, Iran, on Linguist List 20.2183