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The Nature of Gesture and Language

The Nature of Gesture and Language. David F. Armstrong, William C. Stokoe, Sherman E. Wilcox. Sherman Wilcox. Professor of Linguistics Chair of Department of Linguistics at the University of New Mexico Studies Signed languages (mostly ASL)

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The Nature of Gesture and Language

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  1. The Nature of Gesture and Language David F. Armstrong, William C. Stokoe, Sherman E. Wilcox

  2. Sherman Wilcox • Professor of Linguistics • Chair of Department of Linguistics at the University of New Mexico • Studies Signed languages (mostly ASL) • Author of books and scholarly articles on linguistics, evolution of language, gesture, Deaf culture, and signed language interpreting • Learning to See , American Deaf Culture , The Gestural Origin of Language , The Nature of Gesture and Language

  3. What is Speech? • “to speak is to make finely controlled movements in certain parts of your body, with the result that information about these movements is broadcast to the environment” – cognitive psychologist Ulrich Neisser • “the movements of speech are called articulatory gestures. A person who perceives speech, then, is picking up information about a certain class of real, physical, tangible… events.” • “several articulators move in a coordinated way to accomplish a task” (sound like bodily gestures?) • The “invisible” form of gesture

  4. Can “gesture” be considered independent of speech? • some linguists think there is no relationship • Manual gestures serve referential functions: McNeill (1985) • Gestural primitives common to all people (and in some cases all primates/mammals) bigness = sign of threat/intimidation = loudness smallness = signs of submission = softness

  5. What are the different forms of gesture? • Salient gestures that are universally understood • Gestural pool unique to but universal within a social group • Spoken/signed gestures unique to spoken and signed communities respectively (mutually unintelligible)

  6. Defining what is “linguistic” • “We tend to consider ‘linguistic’ what we can write down, and ‘nonlinguistic’ everything else; but this division is a cultural artifact, an arbitrary limitation derived from historical evolution” --McNeill, 1985 • How is written communication different from gestural communication (spoken or signed)? • words are “complexes of muscular gestures which are temporally ordered, but not in the serial segmental fashion familiar from classical [linguistic] theory” --- Mowrey and Pagliuca (1988) • Wilcox & co. argue against the assumption that grammar is independent of meaning… grammar is based on body schema!

  7. Connecting our mouths to our bodies • “The human vocal apparatus is capable of producing a vast array of sounds, just as the body as a whole is capable of producing an enormous number of visible movements.” --- Armstrong (1986) • Gesture and speech function as an “inseparable unit” --- McNeill • Evidence from children’s language acquisition supports this theory (especially from studies between a mother infant) • The study of both spoken and signed language production  the search for the “neural basis of human communication in general” • Telling us something about the evolution of language… looking at the “importance of hands, the visual system, and upright posture in the development of language”

  8. The Evolution of Language • The theory of the organic evolution of language says that language evolved from purely manually gesture-based  more focused on gestures in the mouth • “a critical function of the early conceptual abilities of hominids was to categorize an essentially unlabeled world of objects and events” • We were able to categorize and conceptualize, visible (primarily manual) gestures • These “were themselves categorized as prototypical objects and actions in the world.” This led to the development of language  marshalling these concepts and articulators as linguistic symbols

  9. The Formalist Approach to Linguistics: 1. Language is a separate module of the mind/brain, not part of “general cognition” 2. Structuralism in the analysis of language; language structure can be analyzed independently of its communicative function 3. The sign-relation between the linguistic code and its mental designatum is arbitrary

  10. If we take this approach… • We assume that the mental and the physical and independent of one another (linguistic units are therefore only mental things) • One linguist named Kendon (1991) asks “ “if language began as gesture, why did it not stay that way?”  Wilcox & co. answer: “It did stay that way!”

  11. Is the organization of signed and spoken language the same? Over the years there have been assumptions that language cannot be separated from speech. However that’s NOT True “…by looking to vision as the major primate and human perceptual system, we may escape the error of mistaking the acoustic manifestation of language for language itself”.

  12. Linguistic research has established that ASL is a natural human language. • It has its own rules of grammar and syntax. • “Signed languages have been demonstrated to be highly constrained, following general restrictions on structure and organization comparable to those proposed for spoken language” H. Poizner, E.S. Klima, and U. Bellugi

  13. This also goes for other signed languages: There are many different kinds of signed languages and each are distinct and independent. Each language has their own linguistic cultures. If one wanted to be truly proficient in signed language then they should be immersed in a community of deaf people much in the same way other foreign languages are learned.

  14. Deaf Culture There are people who prefer to refer to themselves as Deaf as opposed to hearing impaired The bond between Deaf people does not arise from the same cultural norms as those in surrounding communities who hear Deaf people from all over the world are also divided by language barriers as there is no universal sign language. (Though there is Gestuno…)

  15. Gaulldet University • University for the education of the deaf and heard of hearing that is located in Washington, D.C. • Bilingual community in which ASL and English co-exist • Deaf President Now

  16. There are different kinds of “signed” language • Primary sign language which is a real and separate language all on its own. • Coded languages (to go along with the native language) • Ex: Manually Coded English, Signed Exact English

  17. Understanding of signed languages can lead to better knowledge of how language evolved. • Physiological • Structural • Symbolic nature

  18. Language in general shares a general cognitive substrate. • “Alphabetical writing, invented long after language began to be spoken, produces the illusion that vocal gestures… can reveal whole structure of language.” • This is counter to the widespread belief that the words of languages must be composed of vocal material, the material composing words in the primary sign languages of deaf populations is visual.

  19. Primary sign language was not intended to replace a spoken language, it is intended to be used as a means of communication for those who cannot hear and may not be able to speak • “Visible actions...can stand in the reinforce and duplicate and even substitute for vocal messages; they can stand in the absence of speech for the means of unspoken words… they can accompany speech and help to mark its prosody and regulate its flow”

  20. We should remember that sound is an abstract concept. • Ex: For instance the example given in the book states that we as humans ask for eyewitness and not earwitnesses. • “Different organization of spoken languages and signed languages is inevitable, given the differences in the two perceptual systems.”

  21. Facts about ASL Dominant sign language used by the Deaf Community in the U.S. It shares NO RELATION to British Sign Language It has its own grammar structure including phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics It’s a visual language thus uses complex visual-spatial orientation Also contains gestures, classifiers, fingerspelling, etc. More related to FSL

  22. Baby Sign Language • Developed by professors Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn • Joseph Garcia found that babies exposed to signs regularly at 6 to 7 months can begin using them as early as 8 months • Belief that young children have desire to communicated but vocal ability and coordination lags behind cognitive ability • Learn words such as eat, sleep, hug, play, etc. • Home based and ASL based signing

  23. Emotes: An example of Gesture • =) • =( • T___T • ^^;;; • :0 • :p

  24. To conclude… • “The key to understanding the general model encompassing both spoken and signed languages lies in the vocabulary of neuromuscular activity, ie gesture.” • Application to cultural understanding… our conceptual understanding of our bodies and our environment differs around the world: http://nonverbal.ucsc.edu/gest.html • Like spoken and signed languages, manual/bodily gestures are often not universally understood, as they vary from culture to culture • ** real world example of attempting to use gesture in written language: “emotes” • "For more things affect our eyes than our ears." --Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Essay on the Origin of Languages”

  25. Bibliography • Wilcox, Sherman; Armstrong, David; Stokoe, William. Gesture and the Nature of Language. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995 • http://www.deaflibrary.org/ by Karen Nakamura

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