Speakers’ Gestures and Semantic Analysis

The fact that an increasing number of scholars are approaching linguistic analysis from a multimodal perspective raises theoretical and methodological questions for the study of semantics. Taking a usage-based perspective, and the position that semantics is based in conceptual structures and processes, we see that gesture use relates to some key notions in cognitive linguistics. Gesture provides cues of possible mental simulation of concepts, it inherently involves spatial imagery, and gestures frequently objectify abstract concepts (through metonymy and metaphor). Both spoken language and gesture are dynamic phenomena, but gesture use relates to the accompanying speech on several time scales at once—concerning the level of words, of phrases, and of larger discourse units. Taking gesture into consideration in semantic analysis calls for rethinking the theoretical models for cognitive semantics, the methods of analysis we use, and the means of presenting those analyses. Currently this rethinking is still in its infancy.