Article published In:
GestureVol. 8:3 (2008) ► pp.348–366
Some reflections on the relationship between ‘gesture’ and ‘sign’
In recent discussions there has been a tendency to refer to ‘gesture’ and ‘sign’ as if these are distinct categories, sometimes even as if they are in opposition to one another. Here I trace the historical origins of this distinction. I suggest that it is a product of the application to the analysis of sign languages of a formalist model of language derived from structural linguistics, on the one hand, and, on the other, of a cognitive-psychological view of ‘gesture’ that emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century. I suggest that this division between ‘gesture’ and ‘sign’ tends to exaggerate differences and obscure areas of overlap. It should be replaced by a comparative semiotics of the utterance uses of visible bodily action. This will be better able to articulate the similarities and differences between how kinesics is used, according to whether and how it is employed in relation to other communicative modalities such as speech.
Keywords: gesture, structural linguistics, history of linguistics, sign language
Cited by
Cited by 59 other publications
Andrén, Mats
Argaman, Einav
2010. Explaining educational experience: On one- and two-handed gestures as semiotic entities and the flexibility of their use. Semiotica 2010:182 
ASADA, Yuko
2019. Properties of Coordination in Japanese Sign Language. Japanese Journal of Sign Language Studies 28:1 ► pp. 31 ff.
Cormier, Kearsy, Adam Schembri & Bencie Woll
2013. Pronouns and pointing in sign languages. Lingua 137 ► pp. 230 ff.
Debras, Camille
Evans, Michael A., Eliot Feenstra, Emily Ryon & David McNeill
2011. A multimodal approach to coding discourse: Collaboration, distributed cognition, and geometric reasoning. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 6:2 ► pp. 253 ff.
Faltaous, Sarah, Torben Winkler, Christina Schneegass, Uwe Gruenefeld & Stefan Schneegass
2022. Augmented Humans 2022, ► pp. 15 ff.
Ferrara, Lindsay
2020. Some interactional functions of finger pointing in signed language conversations. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5:1
Ferrara, Lindsay & Rolf Piene Halvorsen
2017. Depicting and describing meanings with iconic signs in Norwegian Sign Language. Gesture 16:3 ► pp. 371 ff.
Ferrara, Lindsay & Gabrielle Hodge
2018. Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction. Frontiers in Psychology 9
Fuks, Orit
2014. Gradient and categorically: Handshape's two semiotic dimensions in Israeli Sign Language discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 60 ► pp. 207 ff.
Fuks, Orit
Fuks, Orit
2021. The distribution of handshapes in the established lexicon of Israeli Sign Language (ISL). Semiotica 2021:242 ► pp. 101 ff.
Goldin-Meadow, Susan & Diane Brentari
2017. Gesture, sign, and language: The coming of age of sign language and gesture studies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40
Green, Jennifer, Barbara F. Kelly & Adam Schembri
2014. Finding Common Ground: Sign Language and Gesture Research in Australia. Australian Journal of Linguistics 34:2 ► pp. 185 ff.
Green, Jenny
2014. Signs and space in Arandic sand narratives. In From Gesture in Conversation to Visible Action as Utterance, ► pp. 219 ff.
Harrison, Simon & Silva H. Ladewig
2021. Recurrent gestures throughout bodies, languages, and cultural practices. Gesture 20:2 ► pp. 153 ff.
Healy, Lulu, Elizabeth Becerra Ramos, Solange Hassan Ahmad Ali Fernandes & Jurema Lindote Botelho Peixoto
2016. Mathematics in the Hands of Deaf Learners and Blind Learners: Visual–Gestural–Somatic Means of Doing and Expressing Mathematics. In Mathematics Education and Language Diversity [New ICMI Study Series, ], ► pp. 141 ff.
Hjulstad, Johan
2016. Practices of Organizing Built Space in Videoconference-Mediated Interactions. Research on Language and Social Interaction 49:4 ► pp. 325 ff.
Hodge, Gabrielle & Lindsay Ferrara
2022. Iconicity as Multimodal, Polysemiotic, and Plurifunctional. Frontiers in Psychology 13
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika
2011. Writing the smile: Language ideologies in, and through, sign language scripts. Language & Communication 31:4 ► pp. 345 ff.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika
2013. (Don’t) Write My Lips: Interpretations of the Relationship between German Sign Language and German across Scales of SignWriting Practice. Signs and Society 1:2 ► pp. 243 ff.
Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika
2022. Ordering burgers, reordering relations. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 373 ff.
Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide
2019. Chapter 3. Perception metaphors in cognitive linguistics. In Perception Metaphors [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 19], ► pp. 43 ff.
Johnston, Trevor
2013. Towards a comparative semiotics of pointing actions in signed and spoken languages. Gesture 13:2 ► pp. 109 ff.
Johnston, Trevor, Jane van Roekel & Adam Schembri
2016. On the Conventionalization of Mouth Actions in Australian Sign Language. Language and Speech 59:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Kendon, Adam
2017. Languages as semiotically heterogenous systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40
Kendon, Adam
Kurz, Kim B., Geo Kartheiser & Peter C. Hauser
2023. Second language learning of depiction in a different modality: The case of sign language acquisition. Frontiers in Communication 7
Kusters, Annelies
2017. Gesture-based customer interactions: deaf and hearing Mumbaikars’ multimodal and metrolingual practices. International Journal of Multilingualism 14:3 ► pp. 283 ff.
Kusters, Annelies & Ceil Lucas
2022. Emergence and evolutions: Introducing sign language sociolinguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics 26:1 ► pp. 84 ff.
Kusters, Annelies & Sujit Sahasrabudhe
2018. Language ideologies on the difference between gesture and sign. Language & Communication 60 ► pp. 44 ff.
Ladewig, Silva H. & Lena Hotze
2023. From action to performative gesture: the Slapping movement used by children at the age of four to six. Semiotica 2023:250 ► pp. 91 ff.
Lepeut, Alysson
Lepeut, Alysson & Emily Shaw
2022. Time Is Ripe to Make Interactional Moves: Bringing Evidence From Four Languages Across Modalities. Frontiers in Communication 7
Lepic, Ryan & Corrine Occhino
2018. A Construction Morphology Approach to Sign Language Analysis. In The Construction of Words [Studies in Morphology, 4], ► pp. 141 ff.
Marentette, Paula, Paola Pettenati, Arianna Bello & Virginia Volterra
2016. Gesture and Symbolic Representation in Italian and English-Speaking Canadian 2-Year-Olds. Child Development 87:3 ► pp. 944 ff.
McNeill, David
McNeill, David
Mcneill, David, Elena T. Levy & Susan D. Duncan
2015. Gesture in Discourse. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ► pp. 262 ff.
Mittelberg, Irene
Mittelberg, Irene
2017. Multimodal existential constructions in German: Manual actions of giving as experiential substrate for grammatical and gestural patterns. Linguistics Vanguard 3:s1
Murgiano, Margherita, Yasamin Motamedi & Gabriella Vigliocco
2021. Situating Language in the Real-World: The Role of Multimodal Iconicity and Indexicality. Journal of Cognition 4:1
Müller, Cornelia
2018. Gesture and Sign: Cataclysmic Break or Dynamic Relations?. Frontiers in Psychology 9
Nelson, Christian Kjaer
2016. Book Review: From gesture in conversation to visible action as utterance: Essays in honor of Adam Kendon by Seyfeddinipur, M., & Gullberg, M.. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 35:3 ► pp. 327 ff.
Nilsson, Anna-Lena
2016. Embodying metaphors: Signed language interpreters at work. Cognitive Linguistics 27:1 ► pp. 35 ff.
Nuessel, Frank & Ott Puumeister
2022. Sémiotique 2021 : l’année en revue. Semiotica 2022:249 ► pp. 293 ff.
Ortega, Gerardo, Annika Schiefner & Aslı Özyürek
2019. Hearing non-signers use their gestures to predict iconic form-meaning mappings at first exposure to signs. Cognition 191 ► pp. 103996 ff.
Ortega, Gerardo & Aslı Özyürek
2020. Systematic mappings between semantic categories and types of iconic representations in the manual modality: A normed database of silent gesture. Behavior Research Methods 52:1 ► pp. 51 ff.
Perniss, Pamela, Asli Özyürek & Gary Morgan
2015. The Influence of the Visual Modality on Language Structure and Conventionalization: Insights From Sign Language and Gesture. Topics in Cognitive Science 7:1 ► pp. 2 ff.
Quaeghebeur, Liesbet & David McNeill
2016. Accessing Individual Style through Proposed Use of THEME Associates. In Discovering Hidden Temporal Patterns in Behavior and Interaction [Neuromethods, 111], ► pp. 195 ff.
Rodrigues, Cilene & Andrés Saab
2023. South-American Languages in a Formal Perspective. In Formal Approaches to Languages of South America, ► pp. 1 ff.
Safar, Josefina
2019. Translanguaging in Yucatec Maya signing communities
. Applied Linguistics Review 10:1 ► pp. 31 ff.
Schembri, Adam, Kearsy Cormier & Jordan Fenlon
2018. Indicating verbs as typologically unique constructions: Reconsidering verb ‘agreement’ in sign languages. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3:1
Schiaratura, Loris Tamara
2013. Analyse et interprétation psychologiques des comportements corporels en situation de communication interpersonnelle. Méthodos :13
Stukenbrock, Anja
2014. Pointing to an ‘empty’ space: Deixis am Phantasma in face-to-face interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 74 ► pp. 70 ff.
Wilcox, Sherman
2020. Kendon’s work on a signed language from the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea. In Sign Language in Papua New Guinea, ► pp. 185 ff.
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
2022. Bibliography. Journal of Sociolinguistics 26:1 ► pp. 137 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 may 2023. 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.