Cover not available
Article published In:
Recurrent Gestures
Edited by Simon Harrison, Silva H. Ladewig and Jana Bressem
[Gesture 20:2] 2021
► pp. 153–179

Recurrent gestures throughout bodies, languages, and cultural practices

| City University of Hong Kong
| European University ViadrinaFrankfurt-Oder
In gesture studies, the adjective ‘recurrent’ has developed to distinguish a range of semiotic and conceptual phenomena concerning the nature of meaningful bodily movements. This article begins with a brief and recent history of recurrent gesture studies. We raise ongoing debates concerning the position of recurrent gestures on the so-called Kendon’s continuum, the relation between gestures and practical actions, and the interplay between gesture’s cultural specificity and universality. A selection of findings from previous research on recurrent gestures then acquaints readers with characteristics of these gestures: their form-function pairings and context-variation, linguistic organization and multimodal constructions, and community-specific typologies (from cultural, situational, as well as individual perspectives). Proposing to help build recurrent gesture theory, the paper then recognizes that recurrency goes hand-in-hand with diversity – both in the ways these gestures exist for members of a community and their role in the styles, habits, and creations of individuals.
Keywords: recurrent gestures, diversity, Kendon’s continuum, practical actions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Recurrent gesture study: A brief and recent history
    • 2.1Gestures with pragmatic functions
    • 2.2Recurrent gestures, singular gestures, and ‘Kendon’s continuum’
  • 3.Examples and findings from recurrent gesture study
    • 3.1‘Cyclic’ gestures and the notion of context-variants
    • 3.2Gestures associated with negation and the grammar-gesture nexus
    • 3.3Relations with ‘practical/instrumental’ manual actions
    • 3.4Typologies of recurrent gestures
  • 4.The diversity of recurrency
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.21014.har
References (90)
References
Andrén, Mats. (2010). Children’s gestures from 18 to 30 months. Doctoral Thesis, Lund University.
. (2014). On the lower limit of gesture. In Mandana Seyfeddinipur & Marianne Gullberg (Eds.), From gesture in conversation to visible action as utterance: Essays in honor of Adam Kendon (pp. 153–174). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beaupoil-Hourdel, P. (2015). Acquisition et expression multimodale de la négation. Étude d’un corpus vidéo et longitudinal de dyades mère-enfant francophone et anglophone. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Université Sorbonne Paris Cité.
Beaupoil-Hourdel, P., Morgenstern, A., & Boutet, D. (2016). A child’s multimodal negations from 1 to 4: The interplay between modalities. In Pierre Larrivée & Chungmin Lee (Eds.), Negation and polarity: Experimental perspectives (pp. 95–123). Cham: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beaupoil-Hourdel, P. & Debras, C. (2017). Developing communicative postures. The emergence of shrugging in child communication. Language, Interaction and Acquisition (LIA), 8 (1), 89–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beaupoil-Hourdel, P. & Morgenstern, A. (2021, this issue). French and British children’s shrugs: A cross-linguistic developmental case-study of a recurrent gesture. Gesture, 20  (2), 180–218. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bressem, J., Ladewig, S., & Müller, C. (2013). Linguistic annotation system for gestures. In C. Müller, E. Fricke, S. Ladewig, D. McNeill, & S. Teßendorf (Eds.), Body – language – communication: An international handbook on multi-modality in human interaction (Vol. 11, pp. 1098–1124). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bressem, J. & Müller, C. (2014a). The family of Away gestures: Negation, refusal, and negative assessment. In C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S. Ladewig, D. McNeill, & J. Bressem (Eds.), Body – language – communication: An international handbook on multi-modality in human interaction (Vol. 21, pp. 1592–1604). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bressem, J. & Müller, C. (2014b). A repertoire of German recurrent gestures with pragmatic functions. In C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S. Ladewig, D. McNeill & J. Bressem (Eds.), Body – language – communication: An international handbook on multi-modality in human interaction (Vol. 21, pp. 1575–1591). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bressem, J. & Wegener, C. (2021, this issue). Handling talk: A cross-linguistic perspective on discursive functions of gestures in German and Savosavo. Gesture, 20  (2), 219–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brookes, H. (2004). A repertoire of South African quotable gestures. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 14  (2), 186–224. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014). Gesture in the communicative ecology of a South African township. In M. Seyfeddinipur & M. Gullberg (Eds.), From gesture in conversation to visible action as utterance (pp. 59–73). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Calbris, G. (1990). The semiotics of French gesture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
(2011). Elements of meaning in gesture. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013). Elements of meaning in gesture: The analogical links. In C. Müller, E. Fricke, S. Ladewig, D. McNeill, and S. Teßendorf (Eds.), Body – language – communication: An international handbook on multi-modality in human interaction (Vol. 11, pp. 658–674). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cienki, A. (2012). Usage events of spoken language and the symbolic units we (may) abstract from them. In J. Badio & K. Kosecki (Eds.), Cognitive processes in language (pp. 149–158). Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
(2017). Ten lectures on spoken language and gesture from the perspective of cognitive linguistics: Issues of dynamicity and multimodality. Leiden & Boston: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cienki, A. & Müller, C. (Eds.) (2008). Metaphor and gesture. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Conlin, F., Hagstrom, P., & Neidle, C. (2003). A particle of indefiniteness in American Sign Language. Linguistic Discovery, 2  (1), 1–21.Google Scholar
Cooperrider, K. (2019). Universals and diversity in gesture: Research past, present, and future. Gesture, 18 (2/3), 210–239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Di Paolo, E., Cuffari, E., & De Jaegher, J. (2018). Linguistic bodies: The continuity between life and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duncan, S. D. (2002). Gesture, verb aspect, and the nature of iconic imagery in natural discourse. Gesture, 2 (2), 183–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engberg-Pedersen, E. (2002). Gestures in signing: The presentation gesture in Danish Sign Language. In R. Schulmeister & H. Reinitzer (Eds.), Progress in sign language research: In honor of Siegmund Prillwitz / Festschrift für Siegmund Prillwitz (pp. 143–162). Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Ferré, G. & Mettouchi, A. (2020). A cultural study of Open-Palm Hand gestures and their prosodic correlates. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2020, 25–28 May 2020, Tokyo, Japan (pp. 285–289). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Floyd, S. (2016). Modally hybrid grammar? Celestial pointing for time-of-day reference in Nheengatú. Language, 92  (1), 31–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fricke, E. (2010). Phonaestheme, Kinaestheme und multimodale Grammatik: Wie Artikulationen zu Typen werden, die bedeuten können. Sprache und Literatur, 41  (105), 70–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gawne, L. (2021). ‘Away’ gestures associated with negative expressions in narrative discourse in Syuba (Kagate, Nepal) speakers. Semiotica, 2021 (239), 37–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harrison, S. (2014). The organisation of kinesic ensembles related to negation. Gesture, 14  (2), 117–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018). The impulse to gesture: Where language, minds, and bodies intersect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(forthcoming). Gestures associated with negation: Empirical and theoretical perspectives. In Cienki, A. (Ed.). The Cambridge handbook of gesture studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harrison, S. & Larrivée, P. (2016). Morphosyntactic correlates of gestures: A gesture associated with negation in French and its organisation with speech. In P. Larrivée & C. Lee (Eds.), Negation and polarity: Experimental perspectives (pp. 75–94). Cham: Springer International Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hotze, Lena. (2019). Multimodale Kommunikation in den Vorschuljahren: Zur Verschränkung von Sprache und Gestik in der kindlichen Entwicklung. Doctoral Dissertation, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt-Oder.
Janzen, T. (2012). Lexicalization and grammaticalization. In R. Pfau, M. Steinbach, & B. Woll (Eds.), Sign language: An international handbook (pp. 816–840). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Janzen, T. & Shaffer, B. (2002). Gesture as the substrate in the process of ASL grammaticization. In R. P. Meier, K. Cormier, & D. Quinto-Pozos (Eds.), Modality and structure in signed and spoken languages (pp. 199–223). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendon, A. (1988). How gestures can become like words. In F. Poyatos (Ed.), Cross-cultural perspectives in nonverbal communication (pp. 131–141). Toronto: Hogrefe & Huber Publishers.Google Scholar
(1992). Some recent work from Italy on “quotable gestures (emblems)”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2  (1), 92–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1995). Gestures as illocutionary and discourse structure markers in Southern Italian conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 23  (3), 247–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendon, A. & Versante, L. (2003). Pointing by hand in “Neapolitan”. In S. Kita (Ed.), Pointing: Where language, culture, and cognition meet (pp. 109–137). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008). Some reflections on the relationship between ‘gesture’ and ‘sign’. Gesture, 8  (3), 348–366. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kita, S. (2000). How representational gestures help speaking. In D. McNeill (Ed.), Language and gesture (pp. 162–185). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009). Cross-cultural variation of speech-accompanying gesture: A review. Language and Cognitive Processes, 24  (2), 145–167. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kusters, A. (2017). Special Issue: Deaf and hearing signers’ multimodal and translingual practices. Applied Linguistics Review, 10  (1), 1–8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ladewig, S. H. (2011). Putting the cyclic gesture on a cognitive basis. CogniTextes, 61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014a). Recurrent gestures. In C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S. Ladewig, D. McNeill, & J. Bressem (Eds.), Body – language – communication. An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction (Vol. 21, pp. 1558–1574). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
(2014b). The cyclic gesture. In C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S. Ladewig, D. McNeill, & J. Bressem (Eds.), Body – language – communication. An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction (Vol. 21, pp. 1605–1617). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
(forthcoming). Recurrent gestures. In A. Cienki (Ed.). The Cambridge handbook of gesture studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ladewig, S. H. & Bressem, J. (2013). New insights into the medium hand: Discovering structures in gestures on the basis of the four parameters of sign language. Semiotica, 197 1, 203–231.Google Scholar
Ladewig, S. & Hotze, L. (2021, this issue). The Slapping movement as an embodied practice of dislike: Inter-affectivity in interactions among children. Gesture, 20 (2), 285–312. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1999). Grammar and conceptualization. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lapaire, J. R. (2006a). Negation, reification and manipulation in a cognitive grammar of substance. In S. Bonnefille & S. Salbayre (Eds.), La négation (pp. 333–349). Tours: Presses universitaires François-Rabelais. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lapaire, J.-R. (2006b). From sensory to propositional modality: Towards a phenomenology of epistemic modal meanings. Corela, 4  (1). [URL]. DOI logo
Lapaire, J. R. (2011). Grammar, gesture and cognition: Insights from multimodal utterances and applications for gesture analysis. Visnyk of Lviv University. Philology Series, 52 1, 88–103.Google Scholar
(2013). Gestualité cogrammaticale: de l’action corporelle spontanée aux postures de travail métagestuel guidé. Maybe et le balancement épistémique en anglais. Langages, 192 1, 57–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
LeBaron, C. D. & Streeck, J. (2000). Gesture, knowledge, and the world. In D. McNeill (Ed.), Gesture and language (pp. 118–138). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lopez-Ozieblo, R. (2020). Proposing a revised functional classification of pragmatic gestures. Lingua, 247 1, DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind: What gesture reveals about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(2005). Gesture and thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012). How language began: Gesture and speech in human evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018). Recurrent gestures: How the mental reflects the social. Gesture, 17  (2), 229–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of perception. Trans. Colin Smith. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morgenstern, A. (2014). Children’s multimodal language development. In C. Facke (Ed.), Manual of language acquisition (pp. 123–142). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morgenstern, A., Blondel, M., Beaupoil-Hourdel, P., Benazzo, S., Boutet, D., Kochan, A., & Limousin, F. (2018). The blossoming of negation in gesture sign and oral productions. In M. Hickmann, E. Veneziano, & H. Jisa (Eds). Sources of variation in first language acquisition: Languages, contexts, and learners (pp. 339–364). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morris, D. (1977). Manwatching: A field guide to human behavior. London: Cape. New edition (2002): Peoplewatching. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Müller, C. (2004). Forms and uses of the Palm Up Open Hand. A case of a gesture family? In R. Posner & C. Müller (Eds.), The semantics and pragmatics of everyday gestures (pp. 234–256). Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag.Google Scholar
(2010). Wie Gesten bedeuten. Eine kognitiv-linguistische und sequenzanalytische Perspektive. Sprache und Literatur, 41  (105), 37–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014). Gestures as “deliberate expressive movement”. In M. Seyfeddinipur & M. Gullberg (Eds.), From gesture in conversation to visible action as utterance (pp. 127–152). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018). Gesture and sign: Cataclysmic break or dynamic relations? Frontiers of Psychology, 9 1, 1651. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Müller, C., Bressem, J., & Ladewig, S. H. (2013). Towards a grammar of gestures: A form-based view. In C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S. H. Ladewig, D. McNeill, & S. Teßendorf (Eds.), Body – language – communication. An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction (Vol. 11, pp. 707–733). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pfau, R. & Steinbach, M. (2006). Modality-independent and modality-specific aspects of grammaticalization in sign language. Linguistics in Potsdam, 24  (3), 3–98.Google Scholar
Ruth-Hirrel, L. (2018). Cyclic gestures and multimodal symbolic assemblies: an argument for symbolic complexity in gesture. PhD Dissertation, University of New Mexico. [URL]Google Scholar
Ruth-Hirrel, Laura & Ladewig, Silva H. (in preparation). The embodied nature of aspect – a cross-linguistic comparison of the cyclic gesture in English, Farsi, and German.
Schoonjans, S. (2017). Multimodal construction grammar issues are construction grammar issues. Linguistics Vanguard, 3  (s1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shaffer, B. & Janzen, T. (2000). Gesture, lexical words, and grammar: Grammaticalization processes in ASL. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 26  (1), 235–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Streeck, J. (1994). Gesture as communication II: The audience as co-author. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27 (3), 239–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Streeck, Jürgen. (2009). Gesturecraft: The manu-facturing of meaning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Streeck, J. (2017). Self-making man. A day of action, life, and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2021). The emancipation of gesture. Interactional Linguistics, 1  (1), 90–122. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Loon, E., Pfau, R., & Steinbach, M. (2014). The grammaticalization of gestures in sign languages. In C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S. H. Ladewig, D. McNeill, & J. Bressem (Eds.), Body – language – communication. An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction (Vol. 21, pp. 2133–2149). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005). Routes from gesture to language. Revista da ABRALIN – Associação Brasileira de Lingüística, 4  (1/2), 11–45.Google Scholar
Zeshan, U. (2006). Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages. Nijmegen: Ishara Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zima, E. & Bergs, A. (2017). Multimodality and construction grammar. Linguistics Vanguard, 3  (s1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Brookes, Heather
2024. Variation in Gesture: A Sociocultural Linguistic Perspective. In The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies, ► pp. 616 ff. DOI logo
Dyrmo, Tomasz
2024. Image schemas in gestural metaphorical scenarios of swearing. Multimodal Communication 13:2 ► pp. 117 ff. DOI logo
Harrison, Simon
2024. ‘This you may NNNNNNEVER have heard before’: initial lengthening of accented negative items as vocal-entangled gestures. Language and Cognition ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Harrison, Simon
2024. On Grammar–Gesture Relations: Gestures Associated with Negation. In The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies, ► pp. 446 ff. DOI logo
Ladewig, Silva H.
2024. Recurrent Gestures: Cultural, Individual, and Linguistic Dimensions of Meaning-Making. In The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies, ► pp. 32 ff. DOI logo
Yang, Min & Min Wang
2024. Recurrent gestures and embodied stance-taking in courtroom opening statements. Text & Talk 0:0 DOI logo
Harrison, Simon, Silva H. Ladewig & Jana Bressem
2021. The diversity of recurrency. Gesture 20:2 ► pp. 143 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 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.