Cover not available
Article published In:
Where do nouns come from?
Edited by John B. Haviland
[Gesture 13:3] 2013
► pp. 377–408

Using space to talk and gesture about numbers

Evidence from the TV News Archive

| University of California, Merced
| University of Wisconsin, Madison

This paper examines naturally occurring gestures produced in descriptions of numbers and quantities in television newscasts. The results of our analysis show that gestures reveal the metaphorical and spatial nature of numerical thinking. That is, speakers’ hands mimic known spatial mappings between space and quantity, including horizontal mappings (smaller quantities left, larger quantities right), vertical mappings (smaller quantities down, larger quantities up) and size-based mappings (smaller quantities “small”, larger quantities “large”). Speakers frequently switch between these different spatial mappings, and they sometimes combine them within the same gesture. This points to the flexibility of how metaphors can become expressed in gesture, and how domains such as number and quantity can be conceptualized through multiple compatible source domains.

Keywords: mathematics, quantity, number, metaphor, TV news
Published online: 21 July 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.13.3.06win
References
Alibali, Martha W., Miriam Bassok, Karen Olseth Solomon, Sharon E. Syc, & Susan Goldin-Meadow
(1999) Illuminating mental representations through speech and gesture. Psychological Science, 10 (4), 327–333. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Andres, Michael, Marco Davare, Mauro Pesenti, Etienne Olivier, & Xavier Seron
(2004) Number magnitude and grip aperture interaction. Neuroreport, 15 (18), 2773–2777.Google Scholar
Bächtold, Daniel, Martin Baumüller, & Peter Brugger
(1998) Stimulus-response compatibility in representational space. Neuropsychologia, 36 (8), 731–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Calbris, Geneviève
(2011) Elements of meaning in gesture (translated by Mary M. Copple). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cardona, Tommaso R
(2008) Metaphors in sign languages and in co-verbal gesturing. Gesture, 8 (1), 62–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casasanto, Daniel & Evangelia Chrysikou
(2011) When left is “right”: Motor fluency shapes abstract concepts. Psychological Science, 22 (4), 419–422. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casasanto, Daniel & Kyle Jasmin
(2010) Good and bad in the hands of politicians: Spontaneous gestures during positive and negative speech. PLoS ONE, 5 (7), e11805. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cienki, Alan
(1998) Metaphoric gestures and some of their relations to verbal metaphoric expressions. In Jean-Pierre Koenig (Ed.), Discourse and cognition (pp. 189–204). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Cienki, Alan & Cornelia Müller
(2008) Metaphor, gesture, and thought. In Raymond W. Gibbs (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought (pp. 483–500). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cook, Susan W., Terina K.Y. Yip, & Susan Goldin-Meadow
(2012) Gestures, but not meaningless movements, lighten working memory load when explaining math. Language and Cognitive Processes, 27 (4), 594–610. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cooperrider, Kensy & Rafael E. Núñez
(2009) Across time, across the body: Transversal temporal gestures. Gesture, 9 (2), 181–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dehaene, Stanislas
(1997) The number sense: How the mind creates mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dehaene, Stanislas, Serge Bossini, & Pascal Giraux
(1993) The mental representation of parity and number magnitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1221, 371–396. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Martin H
(2003) Spatial representations in number processing – evidence from a pointing task. Visual cognition, 10 (4), 493–508. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006) The future for SNARC could be stark…. Cortex, 42 (8), 1066–1068. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Martin H. & Peter Brugger
(2011) When digits help digits: spatial-numerical associations point to finger counting as prime example of embodied cognition. Frontiers in Psychology, 21, 41–47. Doi: DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Martin H. & Helena Campens
(2008) Pointing to numbers and grasping magnitudes. Experimental Brain Research, 192 (1), 149–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Martin H., Nele Dewulf, & Robin L. Hill
(2005) Designing bar graphs: Orientation matters. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19 (7), 953–962. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuhrman, Orly Lera & Boroditsky
(2010) Cross-cultural differences in mental representations of time: Evidence from an implicit nonlinguistic task. Cognitive Science, 34 (8), 1430–1451. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W
(1994) The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(1996) Why many concepts are metaphorical. Cognition, 611, 309–319. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, Susan
(2003) Hearing gesture: How our hands help us think. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, Susan, Howard Nusbaum, Spencer D. Kelly, & Susan Wagner
(2001) Explaining math: gesturing lightens the load. Psychological Science, 12 (6), 516–522. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Göbel, Silke M., Samuel Shaki, & Martin H. Fischer
(2011) The cultural number line: a review of cultural and linguistic influences on the development of number processing. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42 (4), 543–565. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hartmann, Matthias, Luzia Grabherr, & Fred W. Last
(2011) Moving along the mental number line: Interactions between whole-body motion and numerical cognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38 (6), 1416–1427. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Henik, Avishai & Joseph Tzelgov
(1982) Is three greater than five: The relation between physical and semantic size in comparison tasks. Memory & Cognition, 10 (4), 389–395. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendon, Adam
(1980) Gesticulation and speech: Two aspects of the process of utterance. In Mary R. Key (Ed.), The relationship of verbal and nonverbal communication (pp. 207–227). The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
(2004) Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kimmel, Michael
(2010) Why we mix metaphors (and mix them well): Discourse coherence, conceptual metaphor, and beyond. Journal of Pragmatics, 42 (1), 97–115. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán
(2002) Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George
(1987) Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liddell, Scott K
(2003) Grammar, gesture, and meaning in American sign language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindemann, Oliver, Juan M. Abolafia, Giovanni Girardi, & Harold Bekkering
(2007) Getting a grip on numbers: numerical magnitude priming in object grasping. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33 (6), 1400–1409. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Loetscher, Tobias, Urs Schwarz, Michele Schubiger, & Peter Brugger
(2008) Head turns bias the brain’s internal random generator. Current Biology, 18 (2), R60–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marghetis, Tyler & Rafael E. Núñez
(2013) The motion behind the symbols: A vital role for dynamism in the conceptualization of limits and continuity in expert mathematics. Topics in Cognitive Science, 5 (2), 299–316. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNeill, David
(1992) Hand and mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(2005) Gesture and thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mittelberg, Irene
(2013) The exbodied mind: Cognitive-semiotic principles as motivating forces in gesture. In Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Elena Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill, & Sedhina Tessendorf (Eds.), Body – language – communication: An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction (Vol. 11, pp. 750–779). Berlin & New York: de Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Mittelberg, Irene & Linda R. Waugh
(2009) Metonymy first, metaphor second: A cognitive-semiotic approach to multimodal figures of speech in co-speech gesture. In Charles J. Forceville & Eduardo Urios-Aparisi (Eds.). Multimodal metaphor (pp. 329–356). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Morris, Desmond
(1977) Manwatching: A field guide to human behaviour. London & New York: Jonathan Cape & Harry Abrams.Google Scholar
Müller, Cornelia
(2004) Forms and uses of the palm up open hand: A case of a gesture family? In: Cornelia Müller & Roland Posner (Eds.), The semantics and pragmatics of everyday gestures (pp. 233–256). Berlin: Weidler.Google Scholar
(2009) Metaphors dead and alive, sleeping and waking: A dynamic view. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Müller, Cornelia & Susanne Tag
(2010) The dynamics of metaphor: Foregrounding and activating metaphoricity in conversational interaction. Cognitive Semiotics, 10 (6), 85–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nemirovsky, Ricardo, Chris Rasmussen, George Sweeney, & Megan Wawro
(2012) When the classroom floor becomes the complex plane: Addition and multiplication as ways of bodily navigation. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 21 (2), 287–323. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Núñez, Rafael E
(2004) Do real numbers really move? The embodied cognitive foundations of mathematics. In Fumiya Lida, Rolf Pfeifer, Luc Steels, & Yasuo Kuniyoshi (Eds.), Embodied artificial intelligence (pp. 54–73). New York: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011) No innate number line in the human brain. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42 (4), 651–668. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parrill, Fay & Eve Sweetser
(2004) What we mean by meaning: Conceptual integration in gesture analysis and transcription. Gesture, 4 (2), 197–219. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pecher, Diane & Inge Boot
(2011) Numbers in space: differences between concrete and abstract situations. Frontiers in Psychology, 21. Doi: DOI logo.Google Scholar
Quinn, Naomi
(1991) The cultural basis of metaphor. In James W. Fernandez (Ed.), Beyond metaphor: The theory of tropes in anthropology (pp. 56–93). Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sell, Andrea J. & Michael P. Kaschak
(2012) The comprehension of sentences involving quantity information affects responses on the up–down axis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19 (4), 708–714. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shaki, Samuel & Martin H. Fischer
(2012) Multiple spatial mappings in numerical cognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38 (3), 804–809. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shen, Yeshayahu & Noga Balaban
(1999) Metaphorical (in)coherence in discourse. Discourse Processes, 28 (2), 139–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Streeck, Jürgen
(2009) Gesturecraft: The manu-facture of meaning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sweetser, Eve
(2007) Looking at space to study mental spaces: Co-speech gesture as a crucial data source in cognitive linguistics. In Mónica González-Márquez, Irene Mittelberg, Seana Coulson, & Michael J. Spivey (Eds.), Methods in cognitive linguistics (pp. 201–224). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tversky, Barbara
(2001) Spatial schemas in depictions. In Merideth Gattis (Ed.), Spatial schemas and abstract thought (pp. 79–111). Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tversky, Barbara, Sol Kugelmass, & Atalia Winter
(1991) Cross-cultural and developmental trends in graphic productions. Cognitive Psychology, 231, 515–557. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weger, Ulrich W. & Jay Pratt
(2008) Time flies like an arrow: Space–time compatibility effects suggest the use of a mental timeline. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 151, 426–430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Winter, Bodo & Teenie Matlock
(2013) More is up… and right: Random number generation along two axes. In Markus Knauff, Michael Pauen, Natalie Sebanz, & Ipke Wachsmuth (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society . Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 29 other publications

Brown, Lucien
2023. “The denigration of Korean men’s genitals”. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict DOI logo
Cheng, Xiaorong, Hui Ge, Deljfina Andoni, Xianfeng Ding & Zhao Fan
2015. Composite body movements modulate numerical cognition: evidence from the motion-numerical compatibility effect. Frontiers in Psychology 6 DOI logo
Cooperrider, Kensy & Susan Goldin‐Meadow
2017. When Gesture Becomes Analogy. Topics in Cognitive Science 9:3 ► pp. 719 ff. DOI logo
Deng, Mianlin, Ana Guinote, Lin Li, Lijuan Cui & Wendian Shi
2021. When Abstract Concepts Rely on Multiple Metaphors: Metaphor Selection in the Case of Power. Social Cognition 39:3 ► pp. 408 ff. DOI logo
Hall, Brian D., Lyn Bartram & Matthew Brehmer
2022. Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Hart, Christopher & Bodo Winter
2022. Gesture and legitimation in the anti-immigration discourse of Nigel Farage. Discourse & Society 33:1 ► pp. 34 ff. DOI logo
Hassemer, Julius & Bodo Winter
2016. Producing and perceiving gestures conveying height or shape. Gesture 15:3 ► pp. 404 ff. DOI logo
Hassemer, Julius & Bodo Winter
2018. Decoding Gestural Iconicity . Cognitive Science 42:8 ► pp. 3034 ff. DOI logo
Hsu, Hui-Chieh, Geert Brône & Kurt Feyaerts
2021. When Gesture “Takes Over”: Speech-Embedded Nonverbal Depictions in Multimodal Interaction. Frontiers in Psychology 11 DOI logo
Khatin-Zadeh, Omid, Danyal Farsani, Jiehui Hu & Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos
2023. The role of perceptual and action effector strength of graphs and bases of mathematical metaphors in the metaphorical processing of mathematical concepts. Frontiers in Psychology 14 DOI logo
Leboe-McGowan, Launa C., Jason P. Leboe-McGowan, Janique Fortier & Erin J. Dowling
2022. Non-magnitude sources of bias on duration judgements for blank intervals: conceptual relatedness of interval markers reduces subjective interval duration. Psychological Research 86:1 ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo
Littlemore, Jeannette
2019. Metaphors in the Mind, DOI logo
Mazzuca, Claudia, Chiara Fini, Arthur Henri Michalland, Ilenia Falcinelli, Federico Da Rold, Luca Tummolini & Anna M. Borghi
2021. From Affordances to Abstract Words: The Flexibility of Sensorimotor Grounding. Brain Sciences 11:10 ► pp. 1304 ff. DOI logo
Mittelberg, Irene
2018. Gestures as image schemas and force gestalts: A dynamic systems approach augmented with motion-capture data analyses. Cognitive Semiotics 11:1 DOI logo
Nicol, Madeline M. & Nikole D. Patson
2022. The effect of gestures on the interpretation of plural references. Journal of Cognitive Psychology 34:4 ► pp. 454 ff. DOI logo
Nourouzi Mehlabani, Somayyeh, Saied Sabaghypour & Mohammad Ali Nazari
2020. Number is special: time, space, and number interact in a temporal reproduction task. Cognitive Processing 21:3 ► pp. 449 ff. DOI logo
Parrill, Fey, Alison McKim & Kimberly Grogan
2019. Gesturing standard deviation: Gestures undergraduate students use in describing their concepts of standard deviation. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior 53 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Ranzini, Mariagrazia, Carlo Semenza, Marco Zorzi, Simone Cutini & Jérôme Prado
2022. Influences of hand action on the processing of symbolic numbers: A special role of pointing?. PLOS ONE 17:6 ► pp. e0269557 ff. DOI logo
Soto, Alexis, Melissa A. Schoenlein & Karen B. Schloss
2023. More of what? Dissociating effects of conceptual and numeric mappings on interpreting colormap data visualizations. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 8:1 DOI logo
Turner, Sarah
2021. Multimodality. In Analysing Religious Discourse, ► pp. 70 ff. DOI logo
Walker, Esther & Kensy Cooperrider
2016. The Continuity of Metaphor: Evidence From Temporal Gestures. Cognitive Science 40:2 ► pp. 481 ff. DOI logo
Wells, Kevin J.
2017. Noticing Students’ Conversations and Gestures During Group Problem-Solving in Mathematics. In Teacher Noticing: Bridging and Broadening Perspectives, Contexts, and Frameworks, ► pp. 183 ff. DOI logo
Winter, Bodo & Tyler Marghetis
2023. Multimodality matters in numerical communication. Frontiers in Psychology 14 DOI logo
Winter, Bodo, Tyler Marghetis & Teenie Matlock
2015. Of magnitudes and metaphors: Explaining cognitive interactions between space, time, and number. Cortex 64 ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo
Winter, Bodo, Teenie Matlock, Samuel Shaki & Martin H. Fischer
2015. Mental number space in three dimensions. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 57 ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo
Winter, Bodo & Jeff Yoshimi
2020. Metaphor and the Philosophical Implications of Embodied Mathematics. Frontiers in Psychology 11 DOI logo
Woodin, Greg, Bodo Winter, Marcus Perlman, Jeannette Littlemore, Teenie Matlock & Dennis Tay
2020. 'Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive. PLOS ONE 15:11 ► pp. e0242142 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2019. Chapter 18. Conclusion. In Sensory Linguistics [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 20], ► pp. 235 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2019. Sensory Linguistics [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 20], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.