ANTAS

GESPIN – GESTURE & SPEECH IN INTERACTION – Poznań, 24-26 September 2009

Gestures – Icons of Thoughts Jolanta Antas Jagiellonian University Gołębia 20, 31-007 Kraków pantas@poczta.onet.pl

Abstract Many methodological uncertainties, oversimplifications and distortions are apparent in the study of nonverbal aspects of communication. They will be pointed out and verified in this lecture. I will also define the boundaries between the competences of social psychology and linguistics, specifically between cognitive semanticists and language pragmaticists. I will show, using audiovisual material, that meaningful gestures contribute to the meaning of spoken expression on all levels of its organisation, that is - in accordance with Hallidays assumptions meaningful gestures inherently create the idea expression plane together with verbal organisation (gestures represent the visualisation schemes of notions), the textual plane (gestures influence the syntactical structure of utterances) and finally the interpersonal plane (gestures serve as signs of the attitudes towards the content and behaviour of the dialogue partner). For all these reasons - in accordance with McNeill‟s assumptions - one has to define gestures as linguistic signs integrated with speech. And finally, I will make an attempt to show that cognitive hypotheses about the „embodied mind” can be brilliantly verified by the study of the nature and function of gesture in communication.

When stressing the vital importance of non-verbal behaviour in human communication the authors of many websites (available online) as well as – seemingly – serious academic papers quote Albert Mehrabian‟s rule. The rule usually takes the form of a simple statement, like the one following, cited from a website: “The anthropologist Albert Mehrabian found that words account for only 7% of the information we derive from a conversation, whereas tone of voice accounts for 38% and body language accounts for 55% of the information”1.

In a collection of serious academic articles on nonverbal communication entitled Psychologiczne konteksty komunikacji edited by Jarosław Klebaniuk, in an otherwise respectable paper written by Bożena Janda-Dębek, Mehrabian‟s rule is even more simplified and quoted after many Polish and foreign articles (including McKay, Davis, Fanning, 2001; Zimbardo, Ruch 1994; Stankiewicz 1999)2. Failing to relate to the original context of the rule, the text reads: “In an act of communication 50% of the information is conveyed by body and facial movements, about 40% is conveyed by the use of paralinguistic signals and only 7% of the information we receive comes from the verbal message” (Janda-Dębek, 2005: 17-18).

This is not an isolated example. Almost everybody cites other researchers, including the renowned ones like Ray Birdwhistell, who claims that 65% of the information is conveyed to us nonverbally.3 1

For example: http://www.sciaga.pl/tekst/31990-32-komuniakcja_niewerbalna_bardzo_dobra_praca These have been quoted by the author, but not included in the list of references.

3 For example: http://www.szkolenia.miasta.pl/mowaciala.html 2

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But let us consider Mehrabian‟s rule in more detail. A claim that the verbal channel accounts for 7% of the information conveyed in an act of communication may alarm language researchers, semanticists and linguists. They may actually be discouraged from putting serious thought into the importance of verbal behaviour in the process of meaning construal and communication. Is it possible for language to play such a small role in the process of information creation and transmission? And where exactly do these figures come from?

The answer to the second question is usually ignored by specialists in nonverbal communication. As for the first one, the insignificance of language is really none of their concern.

If, however, we decide to investigate the original studies behind Mehrabian‟s rule, we discover the layers of distortion and simplification that have grown around it.

Almost 40 years ago Albert Mehrabian, recently employed at the University of California in Los Angeles after completing PhD in psychology, conducted an experiment together with his colleagues. Mehrabian wanted to find an answer to the following question: If perceived behaviour of another person is incongruent in that his or her face says one thing, words say another and the way they are spoken sends a third message, and if that person asks me to voice an opinion about him or her, what will guide me in the process? Their words? Or maybe something else?

Mehrabian and his team used a group of 137 students from the University of California. The researchers prepared the following experimental material: three photographs of the same person (1) smiling; (2) neutral; (3) sad, and three groups of words: (1) positive dear, great, honey, love, thanks; (2) neutral maybe, oh really, so what; and (3) negative brute, don’t, no, scram, terrible.

These verbal messages were recorded in a studio with the speaker pronouncing each phrase in three ways: positive, neutral and negative. Next, specific configurations of stimuli were arranged to create incongruent expressions. (We use them in everyday life when, for example, somebody spills coffee over our shirt, and we force a smile and coldly say “It‟s all right; it doesn‟t matter”).

A set of stimuli presented to a subject would, for example, include: a photograph of a smiling person and a neutral word (so what) spoken in a negative way. The subjects were asked to assess how much they like the person represented by the given configuration of stimuli. Researchers wanted to find the degree to which the constituent elements of an incongruent act of communication (facial gestures, words, vocalisation) account for the perceived level of liking the person sending the message. The results were as follows: body language accounts for 55%, tone of voice accounts for 38% and words account for 7% of the perceived level of liking. This is the origin of the magical “7%-38%-55%” formula4.

I do not want to raise objections against Mehrabian‟s achievements; his experiment was elegant and well-designed. We have repeatedly obtained proof that when faced with incongruence – or discrepancy – between verbal and nonverbal channels, we tend to trust the nonverbal signals more that we trust words. I do, however, want to stress the fact that Mehrabian‟s rule referred to a very narrow range of information conveyed in an act of communication. It was restricted to proportional data related to emotions and attitudes expressed or – more precisely – to the ways of expressing sympathy and to the credibility of those signals within this context only.

Still, if we radically restrict the phenomenon described by Mehrabian to a claim that nonverbal communication plays an important role in the process of expressing emotions, then perhaps we might run into another extreme and conclude that nonverbal communication belongs to the domain of psychology because it is restricted to manifestations of emotional behaviour (the so-called body language) with which linguists do not and should not have anything to do as expression of emotions or affects does not change meanings and information conveyed?

This claim is equally far from the truth. Some researchers – quite wrongly – restrict nonverbal communication to body language: body signals expressing changing emotional states or affects, interactive signs showing changing attitudes towards our partner in a dialogue and, finally, the socalled adaptors, ie. behaviours allowing us to achieve conversational situation of maximum 4

Various distortions and misunderstandings have been described in detail by Paweł Fortuna and Dariusz Tarczyński in an article entitled Sens i nonsens komunikacji niewerbalnej. Reguła: 55/38/7. The paper can be accessed at: http://kadry.nf.pl/Artykul/6730/Sens-i-nonsens-komunikacji-niewerbalnej-Regula-55-38-7/Komunikacja-niewerbalnamowa-ciala-rozwoj/

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Jolanta Antas: Gestures – Icons of Thoughts

comfort for the speaker and self-adaptors, ie. nonverbal behaviours which help regulate mental tension at a desired level. These behaviours could indeed remain in the field of psychology and be studied by researchers specialising in nonverbal communication. 5 However, already in 1941 in his brilliant Gesture and Environment Efron noticed that there are two kinds of gestures: gestures which communicate meaning regardless of verbal content and gestures which gain meaning only in relation to the verbal utterance. The latter group, according to Efron, can be divided into batons (markers of rhythm) and ideographs illustrating the thought process. These should be included in the studies of semantics rather than psychology. They should be a point of interest to cognitive linguists rather than specialists studying ways and means to manifest emotions, attitudes or affects.

Where, then, should we draw the line and divide the field of research competence? How to differentiate gestures of psychological nature from semantic behaviours?

And how do we answer the question so often directed to me by so many people: to gesture or not to gesture? I always find it difficult to come up with a simple answer, because it very much depends on our definition of gesticulation. If, in our understanding, gesticulation comprises nonverbal behaviours with which we aim to create communicative comfort for ourselves and express our emotional reactions to the communicative process, then I would say that this kind of gesticulation is selfish in nature; it does not facilitate the process of communication, nor does it help in conveying ideas or mental content. These are gestures which Knapp and Hall (2000) call self-touching gestures, Ekman (1997) calls manipulators, Morris (1998) calls self-contact gestures and many other researchers call self-touching behaviours. I call them selfish gestures, because invariably they constitute a set of actions whose aim is to increase mental comfort of the speaker or listener. They can be studied in the realm of psychology, because, as stressed by Goodwin and Goodwin (1986), self-touching behaviours are actually used to accentuate lack of interest in the discussion. As such they stand in opposition to interactional gestures (Knapp, Hall, 2000: 337).

I would like to show examples of these selfish behaviours (and I mean behaviours not gestures, as I would like to reserve the term gesture for semantic activity). These behaviours always involve one hand touching, stroking or holding the other hand or other parts of the body (eg. head, chin, ear or nose). They can be mediated by an object. We may play with a ring, a pen etc., we may scratch ourselves, stroke the sofa we are sitting on, chew a pencil, stroke the little finger to comfort ourselves. All those strokes, scratches and self-embraces are to increase the comfort of a given participant in the interaction.

In 1941 Desmond Morris wrote about the comfort we derive when depressed or upset from an embrace of a loved one, a touch of a specialist or a cuddle with a cat or a dog. When alone at night we can snuggle up in the blanket and thus feel safety. When all else fails, we can turn to our own body. To escape anxiety, we can embrace, hug, grab or touch it (Morris 1941).

Let us now look at several examples of these self-touching behaviours: Scratching and hesitation (the speaker does not know what to say and suspends his utterance yes, this is because by scratching the area right under his nose with his finger and using signals of linguistic disfluency eeeh yyyyh.  drapanie i retardacja.avirdacja.avi6  scratching one‟s neck drapanie się po szyi.avi  stroking one‟s chin Głaskanie brody - warto rozmawiać 04.02.2005.avi.avi  stroking the sofa głaskanie kanapy2.avi  fiddling with one‟s ring bawienie sie obraczka.avi  fiddling with a pen bawienie sie piorem.avi  fiddling with one‟s fingers bawienie się paluszkami Nelly.avi  fiddling with one‟s hair bawienie się włosami.avi 5

I refer to terminology introduced in 1969 by Ekman and Friesen, who, drawing upon experiments conducted by Efron, established the first semiotic typology of gestures. They listed 6 six categories: emblems, illustrators, affect displays, regulators, adapters and selfadapters.

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To watch the movies please find the appropriate file in the ANTAS folder on GESPIN PROCEEDINGS disc. You may need Windows Media Player to see the English subtitles.

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 drumming one‟s fingers Bebnienie palcami.avi  rubbing one‟s nose Pocieranie nosa.avi or scratching one‟s chin with one‟s finger (this is the moment in which the two interlocutors talk about Agnieszka Włodarczyk, an actress who is distrustful and afraid of people. She prefers staying at home and dislikes public admiration. Here, she is embarrassed and ambivalent. She can‟t suppress the desire to comfort herself and does it with the little gesture of scratching her chin).

Finally, we can bite or rather chew on a pencil (here the listener, a Polish politician, realises he is doing it and quickly puts the pencil down) Oleksy obgryza ołówek.avi When we want to comfort ourselves we can also stroke our finger (just like our then would-be Prime Minister embarrassed by the speaker who talks about his defeat after the elections)  Tusk skonfudowany przez Leppera.avi It is also true that, as Goodwin and Goodwin say, self-touching gestures often signal our lack of interest in the interaction, and may even indicate boredom. This is illustrated by the next example, where a bored participant hennas his eyebrow with a pen. henna dlugopisem.avi Touching the participant of an interaction may be used to win him or her over to support our argument, but it also constitutes a proxemic attack into the personal space of that person. It can be risky in terms of rules of politeness. This is illustrated by the situation in which a familiar touch is answered with a cold, basilisk stare. dotkniecie 1.avi Also the so-called steepling (term coined by Birdwhistell), the gesture which has been best described in body language literature, is a selfish behaviour and has no semantic function.7 Let us look at several examples of this gesture:  wieza Lecha.avi  wieżaRokity.avi  wieza Giertycha.avi  wieża Nelli.avi  wieżyczka kobieca.avi It is impossible to maintain this gesture for longer periods of time (a speaker involved in the act of communication must at least use batons). An example of such utterance follows:  wieża przerywana.avi How do we then differentiate between the gestures of affect (self-touching behaviours) and semantic gestures? When does our body really become semantic in nature?

Over the many years during which I observed gestural behaviours I became convinced that whenever hands are free (they do not have to “embrace” each other or comfortingly touch other parts of the body), they perform semantic functions. And a lot of hand movements which occur during dialogues and communicative interactions are in fact semantic in nature. These are movements in free space or time beats or some forms of sketches. And if both hands are used, they usually do not touch each other. Rather, they come together and apart, sometimes perhaps grazing each other slightly.

In other words, whenever one hand or both hands are thrown into the free space around the speaking body, barely touching each other and sculpting something in the air, hitting the air or moving in space, they signal cognitive processes; they are semantic signs facilitating speech, even though sometimes we are uncertain of their actual meaning. These are gestures assisting the ideational plane (ICONIC GESTURES), textual plane (BATONS and DEIXIS) or interpersonal plane (NONVERBAL SPEECH ACTS).

Generally speaking, all hand movements performed by the speaker during an act of speaking which do not fall into the category of self- or other object-touching behaviours are semantic in nature. They are signs of mental processing and they facilitate speech. They should therefore form part of research on semantics and language pragmatics and not psychology.

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The gesture of steepling (term coined by Ray Birdwhistell) is one of the best researched self-adaptors; it is made almost unconsciously by people who are either very confident or feel superior to others. This gesture, according to many researchers, invariably betrays an attitude of authoritarian self-confidence and the need to signal the message of “I know this already” (cf. example: Pease, 1992: 47-48).

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Jolanta Antas: Gestures – Icons of Thoughts

We may remember that in 1973 M.A.K. Halliday made a claim that language functions at three levels: 1. Ideational – the level of imagery; 2. Interpersonal – the level of collaboration with the interlocutor; 3. Textual – the level of linguistic self-organization.

Later on Halliday indicated that ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings form a network in the semantic system (1979:61).

Halliday‟s approach has been adopted and further developed on the verbal level within the theory of communicative grammar. The ideational level makes use of the representational capacity of the natural language, the interactional level organizes the grammar of speech acts, expressing subjective influence exerted upon the addressee through language, while the level of text organization relates to various instruments which delimit and order the course of the message (Awdiejew, 1999:8)8.

Awdiejew claims that: “M.A.K. Halliday, whose ideas form the foundation of our communicative grammar methodology, has introduced – to my mind – the final and most legitimate division of the levels of language functioning participating in the complete act of communication” (Awdiejew 2004: 16). I subscribe to this opinion. And as specialists in communicative grammar have for years argued for the validity of Halliday‟s thesis and classification, I will try to prove that these three levels of functioning are also expressed nonverbally. My research on nonverbal communication in general and research on gestures appearing in the course of an utterance in particular show that gestures to an equal degree signal interpersonal attitudes and perform ideational-creational functions. This means that the speaker gesticulates because both he or she wants to illustrate (or make vivid) the meanings conveyed to the addressee and because those nonverbal senses form images in his or her mind.

But in contrast to commonplace opinions about the things these opinions illustrate, gestures never illustrate the words we utter but the notions hiding behind those words. Gestures from the ideational level of representation are in fact “drawings” (gestural PICTURES) of image schemas (in the cognitive sense) which hide behind linguistic signs. They are icons of thoughts.

Because of obvious formal restrictions I cannot present all pieces of evidence supporting this thesis in the present paper, but nevertheless I would like to give a few examples.

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In the following fragment Aleksy Awdiejew and Grażyna Habrajska, who established the Polish school of communicative grammar, discuss the typology of linguistic levels introduced by Halliday and explain their own understanding and developments: “Verbalisation comprises three independent processes: transfer of ideational content (what we say) realisation of pragmatic intention (why we say what we say) selection of means organising a given text type (how we say what we say) These three processes run on three functionally different levels of grammar. For the first time these three levels of language functioning (ideational, interpersonal and textual) were introduced by M.A.K. Halliday.

In Halliday‟s opinion, the most important level of language functioning, present in most realisations (in particular in the form of objectified graphic realisation) is the ideational (representational) level. Its basic aim is to represent the world: convey information about the existing reality or reality formed in the mind of the speaker. The interpersonal level, in turn, defines the speaker‟s attitude towards the world represented in his utterance and, more importantly, towards participants in the act of communication. The level of text (discourse) organization reflects the capacity of the language to express the same content with the use of various formal instruments. Operators organising information in a text or direct discourse, as opposed to interactional operators, do not introduce speech acts, do not affect the value of the interaction, but portray the same content in various ways or enhance the process of content reception on a metatextual level”, Aleksy Awdiejew, Grażyna Habrajska, cited from http://www.komunikatywizm.jestsuper.pl/poziomy.htm. The same realisations appear on the nonverbal plane (cf. Załazińska, 2006)

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Gestures of the ideational level – icons of thoughts

The idea of completeness, of finitude Often, when talking about a “whole”, about something finite and complete (ie. when thinking about an idea of wholeness or “everythingness”) people draw with their hands a schematic sphere or half a sphere.

For example a speaker may say the total9 benefit and illustrate the word total with a sphere drawn with his hands. Thus, because the idea of “wholeness”, something which we might in mathematics call the closed or “complete” set, is reflected in an image of a physical object: the sphere. The sphere symbolises human experience of meeting the “complete” or “perfect” in the world.  calosci korzyści.avi A similar example follows. Here, the speaker says and this is the strategy in its complete form, while drawing a sphere with his hands. Again in terms of set theory this closed set is represented as an iconic image of a physical object.  całość strategii - warto rozmawiać 04.02.2005.avi In the next example the speaker says but of the utmost importance is Poland as a whole and clearly draws a geometrically closed set.  całość.avi Still, to prove my point and show that ideational gestures are not pictorial images of the words uttered by the speaker, but rather the icons of thoughts hiding behind those words and phrases, I would like to show situations in which speakers “draw a sphere” in other verbal contexts in which the same or similar mental image is present.

The speaker says You called back from nothingness and elevated to the highest office politicians who we all knew were corrupt and illustrates the words we all knew with the gesture of a sphere. For this person the common knowledge is again a closed, complete set, something he imagines a sphere to be.  wszyscy wiedzieliśmy.avi A similar situation takes place in the next example. The speaker says And we are slowly approaching the hundred days of the Prime Minister’s office, drawing a sphere at hundred days.  100 dni tego premiera.avi This expression is often metaphorically referred to as a “round number”, something that seems closed and finite, like a full geometrical figure represented by the mental image of a sphere, a physical expression of the concept of “everythingness”. Thus the concept of “everythingness” as a finite, complete number becomes transformed into the dimension of “roundness” expressed on the physical plane by a sphere.

Libura claims that, „showing language as entangled in all cognitive activities of a human being is the most characteristic trait of cognitive linguistics” (2000: 16). “The basic research strategy in cognitive linguistics is not to separate the purely linguistic abilities and capabilities from other human abilities, like visual perception, motor skills etc. Cognitive linguists do not isolate linguistic abilities like, say, Chomsky does. They claim they do not exist. Linguistic abilities derive from other human perceptual powers” (Kalisz, 1994: 65). In other words, “cognitive semantics treats linguistic meaning to be a special case of meaning in general, the manifestation of the human cognitive ability to give meaning to experience” (Libura 2000: 20). This gives us basis to integrate gesture and word as means to express thoughts, where the gesture gives iconic character to ideas conveyed by words. Cognitive linguistics has from the very beginning stressed the role of imagination in meaning construal. “While the classical theory of cognition strictly separated reason from imagination, treating them as two opposites, cognitive theory, dismissing many dichotomies deeply rooted in our culture, stresses the central role of imagination in thinking and understanding” (Libura 2000:21). This is particularly evident in Johnson (1987: 172).

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The verbal phrase during which a gesture appears in an utterance is always marked as underlined.

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Jolanta Antas: Gestures – Icons of Thoughts

And it is precisely imagination that so vividly manifests itself in iconic (semantic) gestures, which on the ideational plane constitute almost physical or perceptual images of “concrete” but symbolic “things” or “processes”. These are symbolic, because, according to Merleau-Ponty‟s penetrating remark, “[t]he meaning of the gesture is not contained in it like some physical of physiological phenomenon. The meaning of the word is not contained in the word as a sound. But the human body is defined in terms of its property of appropriating, in an indefinite series of discontinuous acts, significant cores which transcend and transfigure its natural powers. This act of transcendence is first encountered in the acquisition of a pattern of behaviour, then in the mute communication of gesture: it is through the same power that the body opens itself to some new kind of conduct and makes it understood to external witnesses” (Merleau-Ponty 2003: 225).

Merleau-Ponty also notices, „[i]t has always been observed that speech or gesture transfigure the body, but no more was said on the subject than that they develop or disclose another power, that of thought or soul. The fact was overlooked that, in order to express it, the body must in the last analysis become the thought or intention that it signifies for us. It is the body which points out and which speaks” (Merleau-Ponty, 2003: 229-230).

Let us think of an example.  Illustrated adverbs The etymology of the Polish natomiast (on the other hand) has become obsolete. The contemporary speakers of Polish rarely realise that this word comes from an expression which can be directly translated into English as “onto this place”. But they are conscious of its meaning and in their minds they have an image schema of “putting something in the place of something else”, which they express with their bodies (ie. gestures). Let us look at some examples:  natomiast2.avi  natomiast4.avi  natomiast 6.avi (On the other hand, I’m sorry) This gesture is hard to discern, but it is there. natomiast.avi A similar gesture accompanies Polish zamiast etymologically related to its English near counterpart instead.  zamiast.avi (Here, the narrator says instead of development)  Illustrated prepositions: Illustrated in The preposition in is illustrated in accordance with the cognitive schema of a container, as an instrument describing something placed inside a container.

The narrator says from ten to fifteen percent of resources which are in that system and illustrates the preposition in (hands imitate a container in which something is placed).  w.avi  Illustrated modifiers: Illustrated also In the next example the narrator several times says the word also, and at the same time keeps repeating the same gesture of gathering or including. Let us have a look at the recording.  też.avi What he says might be roughly translated into English as in my family, also in my family, and many of my colleagues, many friends also, those of the left wing, also of central-left wing. This might mean that the qualifying modifier also is conceptualised as a logical operation of “including in a set”. The narrator is showing with his hand that the given elements he is enumerating are somehow encompassed in a set; they exist within a space of the same set. Their existence is in a way physical. While entering the space (this is the gesture of lowering the hand), the speaker is touching them there: finding them. The hand thus executes the logical operation performed in the mind when the logical quantifier is uttered. This means that the hand is an instrument of the mind.

The fact that it shows the meaning of the operation in physical terms (boundaries in space enclosing a set) and manual terms (belonging to a set is manifested as manual tactile discovery of individual elements in the physical space of the set) reveals the embodied character of the mind, which assimilated an abstract logical operation in (and from) the pattern of physical, manual actions.

Iterativity

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We will see the former Polish First Lady Jolanta Kwaśniewska showing an image of an iterative verb. She asks her interlocutor In your case, yes, yes, there would be situations (and the words would be are accompanied with a forward movement of the hand which makes several jumps over some path).  Bywały takie sytuacje.avi This actually is an image schema of “iterativity”: movement along a path with rhythmical occurrence of the same event.

It seems then that the speaker brings metatextual notions closer by turning them into concrete, and thus imaginable, “things” or “actions”. Let us consider another example: The verb “discuss” belongs to metalanguage, but it also is an abstract word. Kopaliński‟s dictionary of foreign words and phrases offers the following information: dyskusja (noun, discussion) – an exchange of views on some topic, (collective) dealing with some particular topic, a conversation, a dispute. Dyskusyjny (adjective debatable) – liable or able to be debated, open to debate, subject to debate. Dialog (noun, dialogue) – a conversation, especially between two persons.

How do native speakers of Polish conceptualize these units? Let us have a look at the way the following speakers conceptualize the notions of “dialogue” and “discussion”.

In the first one the speaker says: Today, you, mister Jarosław, are not a symbol of a dialog with different social groups.  Dialog.avi and in the second scene he states: yyy even if it might be discussed from a formal or legal point of view...  Dyskutowac2.avi We can see a clear antithetic movement in space, some sort of motion, a change of location compelled by some force. This happens when we change our point of view (our mental view), influenced by persuasive manipulations. The physical movement is a symbolic sign of a “mental movement” induced by conversation (dialogue, discussion). This movement results in a change of location in a space which is visually “physical” but symbolically mental. And, what is interesting, this gesture exposes and revives the etymology of the term discuss10. At the core of its meaning there is movement (shaking) and this is what the gesture suggests. It is significant that if language produces metaphors like “bend one‟s mind” or “break up a problem”, where abstract notions of “mind” or “problem” are “physically moved”(bent or broken up), then the need to familiarise the world of abstract expressions is probably an inherent feature of the human system of conceptualisation. Abstract notions are related to the carnal, physical nature of the human existence and gestures happen to naturally render the primarily manipulative character of our interactions with physical surroundings. The world of gestures reveals the ideational character of the world of thoughts – their iconic nature.

What I would like to clearly stress is that in fact every movement of the human body which does not fall into the category of self-touching behaviours is semantic in nature, even if we cannot always decipher the mental schema behind it.

“The sense of the gestures is not given, but understood, that is, recaptured by an act on the spectator‟s part. The whole difficulty is to conceive this act clearly without confusing it with a cognitive operation. The communication or comprehension of gestures comes about through the reciprocity of my intentions and the gestures of others, of my gestures and intentions discernible in the conduct of other people. It is as if the other person‟s intention inhabited my body and mine his. The gesture which I witness outlines an intentional object. This object is genuinely present and fully comprehended when the powers of my body adjust themselves to it and overlap it. The gesture presents itself to me as a question, bringing certain perceptible bits of the world to my notice, and inviting my concurrence in them. Communication is achieved 10

Discussion c.1340, from O.Fr. discussion, from L.L. discussionem "examination, discussion," in classical L., "a shaking," from discussus, pp. of discutere "strike asunder, break up," from dis- "apart" + quatere "to shake." Originally "examination, investigation, judicial trial;" meaning of "talk over, debate" first recorded 1448. Sense evolution in L. appears to have been from "smash apart" to "scatter, disperse," then in post-classical times (via the mental process involved) to "investigate, examine," then to "debate."

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when my conduct identifies this path with its own. There is mutual confirmation between myself and others” (Merleau-Ponty, 2003: 215).

Merleau-Ponty‟s penetrating reflection goes very deep and it should be understood properly. In a stroke of genius the philosopher senses that the meaning of a gesture and its understanding do not follow an intellectual act; they result from an act of empathy and our ability to adopt the point of view of the other. In fact the study of gestures is so difficult for the sole reason of them “coming to life and dying” in the course of a conversation. They do not persist in a semantic possible world.

Performed by a participant of a given interaction, a gesture is understood by the other or gains meaning the moment when this person‟s body becomes literally ready to make it and experiences it intentionally. Many times, while looking for meaning of nonverbal behaviours noticed in other people, I would repeat some incomprehensible action or freeze in a gesture until I experienced or, more precisely, until my body experienced some new intentional world. The body was the first to perform an act of understanding through its disposition to act in a similar way. The body would send a memory of this disposition to the brain, which in turn could give it meaning. Merleau-Ponty also notices, “[s]uccessive generations „understand‟ and perform sexual gestures, such as the caress, before the philosopher [J.-P. Sartre – J.A.] makes its intellectual significance clear” (Merleau-Ponty, 2003: 216). He claims that it is easier for us to understand intentions hidden behind gestures of another human being than to understand behaviours of a dog, precisely because of the physical similarities we share.

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The level of text organization

The gesture and the word also collaborate on the level of utterance construal, ie. text organization. Often, it is the gesture that turns an utterance which lacks a verb into a complete sentence. For example this narrator says Really, page after page this Fiedler[„s book] and his gesture depicts the verb: I read. This person literally demonstrates turning pages of a book.  kartka po kartce.avi It might have been redundant to verbalise the verb, especially in the situation where the process of gestural illustration is more precise that the lexical unit. Narrator stresses the fact that the act of reading was important to him, he performed this action carefully and scrupulously.

Let us have a look at another example: The musician Zbigniew Wodecki says the truth was that from some point in the childhood on I was taught to show off and the way I began with this [pauses] at primary school [nonverbally imitates playing the violin and continues to speak] through the stage [illustrates the stage as some sort of “round arena”] and wherever I did that only to impress women, of course.  składnia werbalna i obrazowa.avi The text itself does not provide us with information which might be used to interpret this.

What‟s more, the narrator pronounces the phrase sloppily (we only hear something which in English could be rendered as “I began with the”) and decides to provide a nonverbal illustration of the deictic referent to the pronoun this. Bühler‟s origo is not realised anaphorically but with the use of immediate iconic symbolisation. Thus deictic coordinates follow the line of a lexical pronoun – iconic gesture. The gesture, to use Langacker‟s terminology, performs semantic grounding for the deictic phrase.

The same phenomenon occurs in a scene in which the Polish rock musician Maciej Maleńczuk talks to the acerbic host of Kuba Wojewódzki show about an incident which took place at one of his concerts. What he says might be translated as well, it was one hell of a party, it began when they broke the fences, approached the stage, I was playing a solo concert. We can see that while uttering the underlined phrase, Maleńczuk imitates the action of playing the guitar. The words alone do not tell us about the type of instrument Maleńczuk played in his solo concert. Again, the word and the gesture complement each other semantically. It is also worth noticing that in this example the narrator moves on from selfish gestures (adaptors) to iconic gestures illustrating “breaking the fence”, “approaching the stage” and, finally, “playing the guitar”.  ja grałem solowy koncert.avi

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The next short example happens to be similar. When the narrator says I was in a lift, the hand completes the message with a vertical down-up movement, supplying information about the direction of the narrator‟s journey.  jechalem winda.avi ( nie ma Justyna) In the following example the gesture vividly expresses the metaphorical meaning of the repeated use of the pronoun taki (here: this and that). The gesture explains that the narrator is in fact referring to the image schema which Lakoff and Johnson describe as UP IS GOOD and DOWN IS BAD. This image schema lies at the core of spatial metaphors such as I’m down in the dumps or lift oneself above the petty issues etc.

It is significant that the utterance, abundant in demonstrative pronouns, would be incomprehensible if it not were for the accompanying repetitive gesture of the hand going up and down. Without this nonverbal clue, we would be unable to discern the metaphor. Let us first analyse the text itself: Everyone knows what Olejnik is like. Wierzyński comes to her like this and goes out like that, Giertych comes to her like this and goes out like that.  Taki, taki.avi The pronouns this and that are linguistic signs of the implied metaphorical content, which, with the way the text is organized, could not perceived without the gestural image. The up-anddown hand movements illustrate the qualities of “thisness” and “thatness” semantically marked with “greatness” one moment, and “smallness” the next. The metaphorical message becomes clear: “he comes in great and goes out small”. Again the metaphor has been encapsuled and indicated in its primary metonymic image recorded in a gesture. The image schema seems obvious: HIGH IS IMPORTANT and LOW IS UNIMPORTANT. The gesture appears to be an actual sketch of this schema, which, through the metonymic pattern, gives rise to a series of metonymic and metaphorical expressions such as a great (ie. important) man or high attitude, low-key etc. What is interesting, this example also shows that the meaning of an utterance involves textual occurrence of a gesture, which brings in the ideational meaning of the verbal phrases. Separating these levels can be difficult.

Let us, however, come back to the point of our discussion. The productivity of the image schema HIGH IS IMPORTANT, LOW IS UNIMPORTANT becomes evident when we look at the next speaker and the way he has illustrated the concept of degradation.

This person says, degrading family as the fundament of life and the word degrading is illustrated with the hand making a vertical downward movement.  degradujac.avi In my next example the Polish demonstrative pronoun stąd (from here) is illustrated with the hand pointing to the heart. Kuba Wojewódzki confesses to his interlocutor, I felt something like this with Miles Davis records. I knew that guy was talking about something coming from here. While saying from here, he points at his heart.  co płynie stąd.avi Wojewódzki did not need the metaphorical phrase talking about something coming from the heart. Instead, he used a deictic gesture. However, if the verbal content of I felt something like this with Miles Davis records. I knew that guy was talking about something coming from here were not accompanied by the visual message, it would be incomprehensible or, at least, semantically ambiguous. The language system allows for the metaphorical expression come straight from the heart to denote an activity performed with feeling, but in actual conversation this metaphor can be instantiated in other ways. Gesture saves speech but it also gives it more expression. This is yet another example of syntax influenced by gesture.

In 2005 in his book Gesture and Thought David McNeill introduces a very important notion of growth point (GP) – the smallest unit of the imagery-language dialectic. Assuming that between language and imagery there exists an inseparable connection, McNeill claims that imagery is embodied in gestures, the second figurative semiotic mode. The first (verbal) one is called linguistic categorical mode. According to McNeill, the interaction of those two semiotic modes ends when a semantic unit is formed at both levels (more slowly on the verbal level). This new category (of the units) of thought is a collaborative and simultaneous effort of the word, the gesture and the linguistic context of the utterance. McNeill calls it the growth point, but I would like to

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refer to it as the “moment of thought initiation”. It is a “moment”, because, in McNeill‟s view, GP is not an expression of an idea or thought but a semiotic sign of the fact that a new thought has been born and has been looking for a new form of expression. GP can appear unexpectedly and never recur, as it is the sign of a dynamic cognitive process which is actualised during speaking and which ends when speaking ends (McNeill, 2005: 18)11.

I have noticed, however, that GP appears every time a thought wishes to be embodied in the form of an iconic image expressed through gesture or body.

In a Polish TV gameshow aired in December 2008 I saw a scene in which, after the host asked What do we call a standard nominal altitude of an aircraft?, the participant was desperately looking for the answer, while making quick horizontal movements with his hand raised to the level of shoulders. When the time was up, the host said, The word got lost, but the idea was there. The answer was the flight level.

The next example will show the change in gesture and its meaning in the course of an interaction. This testifies to the dialectic, dynamic nature of gesture as an iconic expression of thoughts.

The speaker says, we can shape it based on and shows his understanding of the concept of “shaping” as a physical activity: handling something resembling plasticine and moulding it, which results in changing its form or structure. You can see this in the quick movement of both hands, which are contracted and then relaxed in the air when brought closer and then further apart. Thus the speaker uses the schema of “manipulating force”.  kształtować2.avi What is interesting, however, is that the speaker will keep relating to the concept of “shaping”, but this time he is interrupted. He says, in every voivodeship it has to be shaped, not with respect to the political stereotype, but with respect to what the people of business. He gives in to irritation; beginning with the word shape again makes a gesture, but this time it is different and recurs several times in the narration. This gesture loses its ideational character; the communicative situation forces it to become an interactional baton. The speaker tries to exert pressure on his unruly addressee and with his hand makes a movement of “pressing something down”. He does it several times and goes lower and lower. Finally, he places his hand (or, more precisely, his fingertips) on the table. We witness an instantiation on another schema: the schema of the “influencing force”, exerting pressure downwards. The aim of this gesture is to silence the addressee through exerting force from above and immobilising him. The speaker wants to achieve verbal immobilisation; he wants to silence the other person and prevent them from interrupting him. Nevertheless this intention is expressed with a physical movement.  kształtować3.avi We can see thus that separating various levels of the act of communication may be difficult, because many gestures happen to be complex cognitive blends.

FINGER UP BATON There is no doubt that the index finger raised and pointing up always carries the “baton” meaning of “this is important”, but I always wanted to find out the conceptualisation behind it.

Why “this is important” is so often expressed in this way? It seems that this baton is constructed in a way in which the speaker touches the problem with his or her finger and raises it, literally raises it in physical space, placing it higher. The image schema behind it would be HIGH IS IMPORTANT, LOW IS UNIMPORTANT. We can see this clearly in the next example, when the speaker actually says an important piece of information, while raising his index finger and pointing up.

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“A growth point, or GP, is a minimal unit of dialectic in which imagery and linguistic content are combined. A GP contains opposites semiotic modes of meaning capture – instantaneous, global, nonhierarchical imagery with temporally sequential, segmented, and hierarchical language. A GP is a unit with demonstrable self-binding power (attempts to disrupt is, for example, with delayed auditory feedback do not succeed), and the opposition of semiotic modes are within it fuels the dialectic. The key to the dialectic is that the two modes are simultaneously active in the mental experience of the speaker. Simultaneously representing the same idea in opposite modes creates instability that is resolved by accessing forms on the static dimension – constructions and lexical choices, states of repose par excellence”.(p.18) “We call the combination a GP because it is meant to be the initial form of thinking for (and while) speaking., out of which a dynamic process of organization emerges. (see p.64)

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 palec w gore - wazna informacja.avi This surely must be the textual stereotype of this baton. Or let us have a look at another example, in which the speaker points her index finger up when making an important (to her mind) proviso: but, I wanted to say.  palec w górę- ale chciałam powiedzieć.avi Similarly, another speaker also qualifies his statement and points his index finger up when saying but I remember him.  palec w górę 2.avi When, for opponents in a debate, the “point” of importance is to impute particular intentions of the other party as important in the conflict (here it is the matter of conflicting support) with the other party denying the truth of the allegation, two fingers (of the adversaries) shoot up almost simultaneously.

In this example one of the speaker‟s says Well, now, after the President actually supported the elements of the presidential constitution (all the time shaking the so-called “core-of-the-matter” baton). His adversary interrupts with He didn’t support them (preceding his verbal denial with the “finger-up” baton). The speaker immediately reacts with the same baton and verbal reply: but he did support elements of the European constitution. This is spoken at the same time as you are misguiding the public opinion of the adversary. The adversary, as is always the case with ignored provisos, categorically repeats the finger-up baton and the words He didn’t support them. At the same time he turns his head away from his opponent, signalising rejection and distaste.  palec w górę - 2 palce naraz.avi This narration runs as follows: Well, now, after the President actually supported the elements of the presidential constitution He didn’t support them But he did support elements of the European constitution; of course he did, he said they should be included You are misguiding the public opinion; he didn’t support them The last movement of the finger changes the schema of “it is important” (elevated and touched) into “I am warning you not to ignore this” (even if the person, who might do the ignoring, was the speaker himself). I caught myself once when, while scolding myself internally for some neglect, I lifted my index finger, pointed it up and shook it several times in silence (at myself).

But how does it happen that a baton gesture whose aim is to expose and emphasise the important content (finger up) of the uttered words, suddenly, through movement of the finger alone, becomes the (usually interpersonal) nonverbal marker of a particular speech act, namely of warning and sometimes even of threat? And how does a sign from the level of text organization become a sign belonging to the pragmatic frame? Let us first consider the act of warning itself.

When a mother wants to warn her child of a dangerous behaviour or plan, she can say shake it off or she can even shake the child. The metaphor present in such collocations as shake somebody’s heart, conscience, mind (move somebody’s heart or mind; quoting after Skorupka, 1969, vol. 2: 627) seems to be obvious: changing somebody‟s attitude involves that person‟s movement and the physical force inducing that movement. Thus “inducing movement” of the subject in the process of cognition probably means the change in point of view and cognitive perspective. The “change is motion” schema must be present in the mental structures of the subject who deems something important and demanding notice. Important – the index finger pointing up. And now the subject wants to “shake” another subject (or his or her alter ego) into and by this important thing. The subject wants this person both to notice the thing (finger raised up) and to be concerned with it (the finger starts to shake). This is obviously a blend of two mental schemas: IMPORTANT IS HIGHER and “MOVEMENT IS THE CHANGE IN PERSPECTIVE AND NOTICING NEW PHENOMENA”. This syntax of gestures is the mental syntax.

The same happened to one of the hosts of the Polish talkshow TOK-SZOK. First, he performed the “it is important” baton and then warned the viewers against stereotypical thinking: All right, in a minute we will meet two women (index finger pointing up) yyyh but they will be different (finger shaking) from these two gentlemen.  palec w górę - ważne i ostrzegam razem.avi

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However, if the sole intention of the speaker is to move the interlocutor into opening to other perspectives which he does not impose (ELEVATED WITH THE FINGER UP INTO THE AIR), he will be aiming at and rhythmically hitting the space of the interlocutor with his index finger, trying with this mental (but physically directed) force to “move” that person into a new perspective.

In that situation the gestural schema is simple, not complex. It seems then that the conceptualisation of the act of warning is rooted in physical action: shaking somebody. And even if the memory of this motivation has faded in the speaker‟s mind, the gesture makes it sharper. The moving finger may in fact constitute the symbolic gesture of the act of warning. This act, of negative value for the interlocutor, has its name but lacks the performative verb. It lacks the form of “hereby I threaten you”. It has no verb, but what it does have is another iconic sign which successfully serves the function. The same is true for the next example, in which the narrator talks about an incident and imitates the words and gestures of foreigners directed towards a group of Poles.

What he says may be rendered as Right, well, we will show you your place here (all this time he is shaking his index finger as a symbol of warning or threat)  grożący palec.avi We have thus moved from the level of text organization to the interpersonal level. The index finger does not emphasise the important content or argument, it became a performative act directed at the addressee.

Gestures, body movements and facial movements as signals of interpersonal attitudes seem to be the most common. They are common in particular in those situations when our reaction is negative as verbal confrontation would be more risky and offensive. Let us consider a couple of short examples.

This politician‟s face shows outrage at the words spoken by another member of the Polish parliament.  oburzenie Leppera.avi This is an example of nonverbal, mimic disapproval at the statement delivered by an adversary (head makes a rapid „no” movement and lips close tightly)  Dezaprobata mimiczna Borowskiego wobec Leppera.avi This person nonverbally expresses doubt at the words spoken by the partner in the dialogue (hand suddenly half-turns in a vertical movement, as if something is missing, as if it were to say “you can look at it differently”).  słuchacz ma wątpliwości.avi This is a nonverbal act of outrage (first the person opens his mouth as if to express surprise „what am I hearing?”, then makes a negating (rejecting) movement with his head, as if to say „this is too much, what is he talking about?”).  niewerbalna dezaprobata Leppera.avi Oh yes, we do have one more example of nonverbally expressed disaproval at the message conveyed by one‟s interlocutor.

After asking Tell me, Maciek… and hearing the reply Kuba Wojewódzki reacts to the last words of his interlocutor with a gesture of “throwing back” his body and then imitates the action of “hanging” himself on a rope in an act of despair. This is accompanied with the look of pain in the face. Then Wojewódzki turns to the audience. This gestural icon serves as a symbolic judgement of the words and attitude of the invited guest. The host asks, Is it true in the showbusiness, Maciek, that the showbusiness consists of people on drug-induced speed. Tell me honestly. You move in those… You look like a guy… And the guest replies, You know what, I think that the main problem … the main problem in the showbusiness is alcohol. All the rest is just an accessory. Sometimes someone happens to have something interesting, and the conversation runs more smoothly, but the truth is that in general… (And this is where Wojewódzki performs the nonverbal pantomime described above).  niewerbalna ocena wypowiedzi krocej.avi We have seen only several examples and most of them were negative, but it is possible to observe gestures expressing more positive acquiescence, approval, consent, encouragement and, finally, agreement and understanding

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Empathy and mimicry I would like to end with two examples of understanding and agreement, which involve adopting the empathic point of view.

My understanding of empathy is close to the definition formulated by Kuno, who conceptualises empathy in terms of camera placement (Kuno 1987: 203). In other words, changes in empathy result from changes of the place in which the speaker places him- or herself in relation to other elements of the utterance. The role of the speaker can be compared to the role of film director. The speaker has to make a subconscious choice of the position which he or she will take with respect to events and states. This position will be then described by the sentences he or she utters (Kuno 1987: 204). Empathy is thus the degree to which the speaker identifies with the person or thing participating in the event described by a sentence. This much for Kuno. However, the sentences and the verbal plane of utterances do not always show the emphatic position of the narrator (sometimes this task is too difficult for them). However, this position is clearly observable in the speaker‟s nonverbal narrative manoeuvres, especially in a dialogue. Emphatic stance manifests itself in gestural mimicry, when the addressee repeats a gesture of the narrator to show mental and cognitive identification. This is illustrated by the next example where the interviewer repeats the gesture of “uniting” in a mental image of her interviewee. She wants to show her intellectual empathy engaged in ideational communication of a given attitude and cognitive process. Let us have a look at this scene:12 The interviewed actress says, It gets united in an image (and shows the process of uniting) And the interviewer repeats the phrase united in an image (also repeating the same gesture).  scala w jakiś obraz-empatyczna powtórka gestu.avi In the second example the narrator says teenie-weenie and does not illustrate the notion of smallness . This is done by the host who, it seems, empathises with the speaker‟s words and shows mental bond with him.

The hosts asks: What should she be like?

The guest replies: I would prefer for a woman to take a teenie-weenie bit more responsibility for the home than my wife does, but this… (here the host reacts with laughter and the emphatic gesture of something small)  ciut ciut.avi In summary, I will once again quote Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who wrote, „[h]ere the meaning of words must finally be induced by the words themselves, or more exactly, their conceptual meaning must be formed by a kind of deduction from their gestural meaning, which is immanent in speech (Merleau-Ponty, 2003: 208). For Merleau-Ponty, gestural meaning involves locating the sign (word) in the „context of the action”, in the act of its use and expression irrevocably entangled in the cultural context. Wittgenstein would say that it is the sign in the „act of playing the game”.

Merleau-Ponty also writes, „It is through my body that I understand other people, just as it is through my body that I perceive „things”. The meaning of a gesture thus „understood” is not behind it, it is intermingled with the structure of the world outlined by the gestur, and which I take up on my own account. It is arrayed all over the gesture itself (Merleau-Ponty, 2001: 216 – emphasis mine). A notion is never identical with the meaning of the word denoting it. Speakers use names because they are the most immediate instruments to represent it. And when they feel that a name does not convey the whole meaning of a given notion, they use gestures. As Merleau-Ponty wrote, “for the [concept] ought always to know itself as distinct from the [speech] and to know [speech] as an external accompaniment” (2003: 206).

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The quotation and the example comes from my article (Gesty – obrazy pojęć i schematy myśli [in:] Ikoniczność znaku. Słowo-przedmiot-obraz-gest (2006) ed. E.Tabakowska s.200-2001), where I considered this problem in more detailed way.

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Libura A., (2000): Wyobraźnia w języku. Leksykalne korelaty schematów wyobrażeniowych CENTRUM-PERYFERIASIŁY. Wrocław McNeill D. (2005), Gesture and Thought, Chicago and London 2005, University of Chicago Press Mehrabian A. (1972): Nonverbal communication, New York.

Mehrabian, A. (1980). Silent messages: Implicit communication of emotions and attitudes (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

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Websites http://kadry.nf.pl/Artykul/6730/Sens-i-nonsens-komunikacji-niewerbalnej-Regula-55-38-7/Komunikacja-niewerbalnamowa-ciala-rozwoj/ http://www.komunikatywizm.jestsuper.pl/poziomy.htm

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