This article describes a previously undocumented deictic facial gesture of Papua New Guinea, which we call nose-pointing. Based on a video corpus of examples produced by speakers of Yupno, an indigenous language of Papua New Guinea’s Finisterre Range, we characterize the gesture’s morphology — which involves an effortful scrunching together of the face, or S-action, in combination with a deictic head movement — and illustrate its use in different interactive contexts. Yupno speakers produce the nose-pointing gesture in alternation with more familiar pointing morphologies, such as index finger and head-pointing, suggesting that the gesture carries a distinctive meaning. Interestingly, the facial morphological component of nose-pointing — the S-action — is also widely used non-deictically by Yupno speakers, and we propose that such uses provide crucial clues to the meaning of nose-pointing. We conclude by highlighting questions for further research, including precisely how nose-pointing relates to non-deictic uses of the S-action and what cultural and communicative pressures might have shaped the gesture.
2024. Indexicality, Deixis, and Space in Gesture. In The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies, ► pp. 84 ff.
Gawne, Lauren & Kensy Cooperrider
2024. Emblems: Meaning at the interface of language and gesture. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 9:1
Mittelberg, Irene & Jennifer Hinnell
2024. Iconicity, Schematicity, and Representation in Gesture. In The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies, ► pp. 56 ff.
Kita, Sotaro & Karen Emmorey
2023. Gesture links language and cognition for spoken and signed languages. Nature Reviews Psychology 2:7 ► pp. 407 ff.
Krause, Lisa-Marie & Oliver Herbort
2023. Just visual context or part of the gesture? The role of arm orientation in bent pointing interpretation. Acta Psychologica 241 ► pp. 104062 ff.
Li, Heng
2023. Personality in your hands: How extraversion traits influence preference for pointing in Chinese people. Australian Journal of Linguistics 43:2 ► pp. 121 ff.
Mesh, Kate, Emiliana Cruz & Marianne Gullberg
2023. When Attentional and Politeness Demands Clash: The Case of Mutual Gaze Avoidance and Chin Pointing in Quiahije Chatino. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 47:2 ► pp. 211 ff.
Golson, Megan E., Erica Ficklin, Cassity R. Haverkamp, Maryellen Brunson McClain & Bryn Harris
2022. Cultural differences in social communication and interaction: A gap in autism research. Autism Research 15:2 ► pp. 208 ff.
2016. Multimodal quotation: Role shift practices in spoken narratives. Journal of Pragmatics 104 ► pp. 1 ff.
Abner, Natasha, Kensy Cooperrider & Susan Goldin‐Meadow
2015. Gesture for Linguists: A Handy Primer. Language and Linguistics Compass 9:11 ► pp. 437 ff.
Lücking, Andy, Thies Pfeiffer & Hannes Rieser
2015. Pointing and reference reconsidered. Journal of Pragmatics 77 ► pp. 56 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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