GESPIN – GESTURE & SPEECH IN INTERACTION – Poznań, 24-26 September 2009
Specifying principles of meaning creation in gestures – gestural modes of representation Cornelia Müller, Silva H. Ladewig, Sedinha Tessendorf European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) cmh.mueller@t-online.de, mail@silvaladewig.de, tessendorf@euv-frankfurt-o.de
Abstract Gestures can, amongst other things, be used to refer to an unlimited number of concrete as well as abstract entities or events. They can, for instance, represent a person, model the shape of an object, draw a triangle into the air, or re-enact the turning of a car key. However, in the meaning-making processes, gestures are based on a limited set of mimetic devices. Various scholars of gesture as well as sign language have investigated the human capacity of turning the hands into gestures or signs (see e.g., Cohen, Namir & Schlesinger 1977; Kendon 1980, 1988; Mandel 1977; Müller 1998; Streeck 2008; Wundt 1921) spelling out different complexities of the act of mimesis and the underlying cognitive processes. In this talk we want to give first results of our empirical refinement of Müller’s gestural modes of representation (Müller 1998) and the underlying cognitive-semiotic processes involved driving the production and understanding of human gestures. Based on 18 hours of naturally occurring conversations of German speakers as well as German TV shows we identified two modes of representation speakers make us of, namely representing and re-enacting. Building upon work by Wundt (1921), Fricke (2007, 2008), and Mittelberg (2006, 2008) we investigated in a further step how the hands turn into gestures. More specifically, we spelled out the cognitive-semiotic processes involved in the different modes of representations as the underlying "base-referent relation" (Mandel 1977) as well as "iconicity and indexicality" and "metaphor and metonymy". (Müller et al. in prep.) By reconstructing examples of our corpus, we want to give first insights of our larger attempt of giving a full-fledged account of the devices and cognitive-semiotic processes that drive the production and understanding of human gestures.
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