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Part of
Why Gesture?: How the hands function in speaking, thinking and communicating
Edited by Ruth Breckinridge Church, Martha W. Alibali and Spencer D. Kelly
[Gesture Studies 7] 2017
► pp. 103–125

Chapter 5 Supplement
Exchange on gesture-speech unity

What it is, where it came from

| Hong Kong Polytechnic University
| University of Chicago

The following is the edited version of an exchange that took place in 2013 between Renia Lopez-Ozieblo and David McNeill on McNeill’s paper Gesture – Speech Unity – What it is, where it comes from(in this volume) and his 2012 book How Language Began: Gesture and Speech in Human Evolution. The exchange began as a series of questions on the synchronicity of gesture and speech in the Growth Point (GP). This led to some basic questions on the GP itself and Mead’s Loop. The GP is created through the translation of our experiences (embodiment) as a combination of gesture and speech that allow us to capture, describe and transmit those experiences as thoughts.

Article outline
  • The growth point
    • Gesture-speech unity
    • Dual semiosis
    • Unpacking
    • Synchronicity
    • GP formation: thoughts
  • Mead’s loop
    • On the origins of speech
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gs.7.06lop
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Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Lopez-Ozieblo, Renia
2020. A multimodal cognitive approach to aid the conceptualization of Spanish utterances with ‘se’. Cognitive Linguistics 31:4 ► pp. 677 ff. DOI logo
Lopez-Ozieblo, Renia
2022. Cut-offs and co-occurring gestures: Similarities between speakers’ first and second languages . International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 60:3 ► pp. 647 ff. DOI logo
Mlakar, Izidor, Matej Rojc, Simona Majhenič & Darinka Verdonik
2021. Discourse markers in relation tonon-verbal behavior. Gesture 20:1 ► pp. 103 ff. DOI logo

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