Reviewer: Lauren Gawne

EDITOR: Alan Cienki
TITLE: The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2024

SUMMARY

The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies is a fitting encapsulation of the state of a relatively young, interdisciplinary field of enquiry. Alan Cienki has managed the difficult task of distilling the topic while also reflecting a well-curated range of methods, voices and perspectives. An understanding of the vital role of gesture in language is essential for any linguist who studies interaction, and this handbook provides a clear, authoritative introduction to key approaches. I read a physical hardback copy for this review, but also made use of a few downloaded PDF chapters while out and about. With 26 chapters and almost 700 pages, the Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies is a hefty tome, but not completely unmanageable.

The table of contents is the second reassurance, after the editor, that these twenty-six chapters have the reader in capable hands. There are lots of names that are familiar, including those whose work has been foundational to Gesture Studies over the last four decades, but also researchers who have come up in the scholarly tradition and those whose work intersects with Gesture Studies. It is particularly bittersweet that two of these chapters are some of the final scholarly contributions that Adam Kendon and Janet Bavelas made, and that the handbook was printed after their deaths.

The introduction from Cienki sets out his intention for the handbook. This includes an intentionally light touch with regard to regularisation of any terminology or perspective. Instead, Cienki respects the plurality of perspectives in the field, and his curatorial hand is evident in the selection of topics, the ordering of chapters, and the thematic structuring across the five sub-sections.

Part I focuses on the forms and functions of gestural types, a concrete and bounded way into the topic of gesture, and a useful way to build up an understanding of the scope of enquiry in the field. Categories covered include emblems (Chapter 1, Payrató), recurrent gestures (Chapter 2, Ladewig), iconic gestures (Chapter 3, Mittelberg & Hinnell), deictic gestures (Chapter 4, Fricke) and the rather novel inclusion of facial gestures as a distinct category and chapter (Chapter 5, Chovil). The chapter on emblems is a good high-level summary of Payrató and Clemente’s (2020) book-length treatment of the topic. The chapter on recurrent gestures has immediately become my new go-to reference for an overview of these pragmatic gestures. Ladewig draws on literature from a diverse range of languages, including signed languages, and draws on the key works of all major contributors on this topic. Mittleberg and Hinnell’s discussion of iconicity includes metaphoric gestures, and the way iconicity is more generally a motivating ground for gesture formation. This chapter also serves as an introduction to Peircean semantics and its utility for the study of gesture. Like Mittleberg and Hinnell’s expansive treatment of iconicity, Fricke’s approach to indexicality includes grounding in the historical context of the disciplines that introduced these concepts to Gesture Studies. While this chapter suffers from a lack of curation in the referencing, it is a useful introduction to the referential space that can be used, solo and collaboratively, in the production of gesture. The chapter on facial gestures draws on parallels with manual gesture, while focusing on the specific, unique contribution of the face. In this chapter Chovil does important work in emphasising that gesture is not just a product of the hands, while also moving the study of facial expressions away from the emotive to the linguistic.

Part II is a series of seven chapters on ways that gesture analysis can be approached. This section in particular will be of great use to those who may be new to the analysis of gesture, and is of great utility in the absence of a textbook on the topic. These chapters act as a set of master classes in how key scholars have approached the analysis of gesture. This section opens with a chapter from Adam Kendon (Chapter 6), reflecting on half a century of work on what he calls “visible action as utterance”. For those new to the field, it provides a useful way into a rich and varied body of work. Those familiar with Kendon’s research will appreciate the way Kendon lays out his research path, from early days of working on Birdwhistle's data, to Australia, Papua New Guinea and Italy. All readers will value the narrative thread in this chapter that teases out the intentionality of gesture. With this context, Bressem (Chapter 7) provides a clear and highly useful introduction to gesture coding and annotation. This Chapter does a good job of offering a great deal of actionable advice, while also explaining why it is not feasible to prescribe a single process. Instead, Bressem explores some of the key questions researchers need to ask themselves to set up individual projects well, using existing examples of research. If Bressem considers the macro-issues for analysis, Müller (Chapter 8) focuses on the detailed task of analysis, drawing on a worked example from her own data and established Method for Gesture Analysis (MGA). I particularly appreciate the demonstration of how this approach has utility for cognitive linguistics, metaphor studies and pragmatics. Calbris and Copple (Chapter 9) introduce an analytical schema that makes use of embodied cognitive schemas to make sense of the form/meaning relationship in the semiotics of gesture. Chapter 10 is an introduction to Elena Grishina’s work, until this date only published in Russian, authored by Alan Cienki and Ekaterina Rakhilina. This chapter focuses on the method of building a Russian multimedia corpus for the study of gesture. This Chapter has much to offer those interested in developing corpus methods for gesture analysis. In a similar vein, Chapter 11 is the most extensive translation to date of the work of Dominique Boutet, who adopted a kinesiological approach that took a biophysical rather than observer basis for gesture analysis. Both Chapters 10 and 11 are welcome contributions representing work from scholars who passed while undertaking this work, and thanks to Cienki’s translation and summary it is some of the most important editorial work in this handbook. As someone new to the work of both Grishina and Boutet, I think that both chapters provide great value to established gesture scholars as well as those new to the field. The final chapter of this section (Chapter 12) is an incredibly useful high-level introduction to the use of motion-tracking technology as a tool for gesture analysis. I appreciated that in this chapter Trujillo focuses on explaining the merits of different types of motion-tracking (markered, visual, and AI), providing an introduction that will still be informative even as specific tools come and go. This chapter also looks at the use of these tools in both qualitative and quantitative research to answer complex questions about gesture in interaction, where meaning making happens with small changes over a multitude of parameters.

Part III includes five chapters that touch on the topic of gesture and language from a variety of perspectives. Żywiczyński and Zlatev (Chapter 13) look at the role of gesture in debates over the origins of language. Although much of this chapter reads as a typology of great men and their theories, it is a good introduction to a thorny debate that has very few points of concrete agreement. Chapter 14 is an introduction to the multimodal nature of first language development, drawing on examples from Morgenstern’s own research to illustrate key findings from across the literature. Second/foreign language acquisition follows in Chapter 15, with Gullberg covering cross-linguistic influence, gesture across the proficiency journey, teacher and learner gesture and the effect of seeing and using gesture on language acquisition. Gullberg acknowledges the complexity of at-times contradictory evidence across a wide literature. Wilcox looks at the relationship between gesture and signed languages (Chapter 16), contextualising this in historically problematic understanding of both gesture and signed languages before exploring contemporary understandings. The final chapter in this section (Chapter 17) focuses on gestures associated with negation, providing something of a case study as an introduction to the relationship between grammar and gesture. Harrison presents a thorough typology of existing work on this topic, and outlines important ways gesture contributes to the multimodality of grammar.

Part IV explores gesture in relation to cognition across four chapters. This section starts with a chapter from McNeill (Chapter 18) outlining the concept of the ‘growth point’ as a cognitive model for the integration of gesture and speech, a topic developed across his work. While this chapter is a synthesis of his own research, I appreciate that it includes contextualisation with the scholarship McNeill used as the basis for this approach. Chapter 19 provides an introduction to a wide range of cognitive models and their points of differentiation. Alibali and Hostetter look at information processing and embodiment perspectives, and while they do introduce their own Gesture as Simulated Action approach, they also provide a great survey of the literature. In Chapter 20 we move from cognitive models to neuroscience and the physical brain. Lausberg looks at the role of each hemisphere in the production of gesture, and the relationships of gesture to motor action, emotion and language in the brain. This chapter also provides a critical introduction to key research methods and the challenges that come with interpreting the results of each. Chapter 21 covers cognitive topics under the broad category of learning. Novack & Goldin-Meadow cover similar first language acquisition ground to Chapter 14, from a developmental psychology rather that interactional linguistic perspective, and also look at learning for children beyond language acquisition.

The final section of the handbook (Part V) looks at gesture and interaction, broadly construed. The first chapter in this section (Chapter 22) is an outstanding contribution from Bavelas that looks at the role of gesture for the addressee in interaction. This chapter provides a targeted survey of interactional experimental study of gesture, an area where Bavelas has made key contributions, identifying and outlining six ways speakers modify gesture for the addressee. The additional value of this chapter is the way in which Bavelas takes social psychology to task for not treating interaction as the natural unit, leaving experimental work out of step with key anthropological insights. Chapter 23 provides an introduction to philosophical treatments of intersubjectivity, which Cuffari notes have not entirely accounted for gesture. The second half of this chapter is an exploration of research that illustrates the contribution Gesture Studies has to make to intersubjectivity. In Chapter 24 Brookes provides an introduction to variation in gesture, particularly at the socio-cultural level rather than at the level of individual variation. This chapter raises the important question of gestural ecology, and whether traditional linguistic and cultural boundaries have utility in understanding the gestures of multivariate individuals. The last two chapters in the handbook sit well together as a pair. The first (Chapter 25) is the role of gesture in interaction with robots. In this chapter Jokinen looks at both humans gesturing to robots and robots gesturing to humans, and considers the technical and social elements of making these interactions work. The final chapter (Chapter 26) looks at human-computer interaction, and particularly the role of gesture interfaces. With technological advances happening rapidly in this space, the focus on how user experience (UX) research is executed means the contribution made by Stec and Larsen in this chapter will have utility for gesture researchers interested in computer interfaces for some time.

EVALUATION

The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies is a welcome contribution, both as a summation of key insights from the field of Gesture Studies to date, and an indication of where there is scope for progress. The gaps in the range of languages referenced and the inconsistency with which signed languages were considered were both notable as I read through. Authors in the handbook also noted this; Morgenstern (Chapter 14) was open about the very Western skew of the literature she had to present, and Harrison (Chapter 17) explicitly mapped out the languages referenced in research regarding negation, with a strong western Europe clustering. Some chapters used the handbook as an opportunity to set the course of future research. Gullberg (Chapter 15) called for more work in a greater range of second language learning contexts, with more transparent methods and data required to move the field forward. Novack and Goldin-Meadow (Chapter 21) have a whole section on open questions, looking at the questions that remain regarding the ways gesture indexes and changes knowledge. The savvy reader will also find many other less explicitly stated avenues for future research across the chapters.

For those already familiar with the general field, targeted chapters on methods or perspectives outside their direct research areas will be useful for expanding horizons, such as motion capture or UX design in human-computer interaction. And Cienki’s service in bringing Grishina's (Chapter 10) and Boutet’s (Chapter 11) research into translation means that there is something new for the English reader even amongst the many familiar names and contributions. There are also many charming moments where practitioners situate their own work; Kendon’s chapter is a standout, but I also enjoyed learning that Calbris (Chapter 9) became aware of the multimodality of language through teaching French to migrants using fancy, new (at the time) audiovisual methods.

The only other comparable text to this handbook is the two-volume behemoth Body –Language – Communication from around a decade ago (Müller et al. 2013, 2014). While I do appreciate the very short chapters of those two volumes, they come in at three times the length of this new handbook and can be bewildering to those new to the field. The longer, sustained chapters in this handbook mean many will become citational mainstays when introducing key topics, methods and concepts in the field of Gesture Studies. I’ve already recommended several of the chapters on analysis to research students. The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies is a fitting encapsulation of research in the area and is a great starting point for linguists to get to know key research in this field.

References
Müller, Cornelia, Alan J. Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva Ladewig, David McNeill, and Sedinha Tessendorf (Eds). (2013). Body - Language - Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction., Vol. 1. De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110261318
Müller, Cornelia, Alan J. Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva Ladewig, David McNeill, and Sedinha Tessendorf (Eds). (2014). Body - Language - Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Communication., Vol. 2. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110302028
Payrató, Lluís, and Ignasi Clemente. (2020). Gestures we live by: the pragmatics of emblematic gestures. De Gruyter Mouton.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. Lauren Gawne is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at La Trobe University. Lauren’s current research focus is the cross-cultural variation in gesture use. Lauren also works on the grammar of Tibeto-Burman languages, emoji use online and communicating linguistics to a general audience.

Addendum
An earlier version of this review incorrectly attributed Elena Grishina's work to Ekaterina Rakhilina, who was one of the two authors of the summary of Grishina's work. This has been amended with apologies.