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23 - Gesture and Intersubjectivity

from Part V - Gestures in Relation to Interaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2024

By
Elena Clare Cuffari
Edited by
Alan Cienki
Alan Cienki
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
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Summary

Research in conversational hand gesturing shows an array of philosophical senses of intersubjectivity. Gesturing is interpersonally rational, as demonstrated in studies linking gesturing to common ground achievements and effects and to markings of communicative intent. Gesturing is an ecological and interactional activity through which copresent interlocutors codetermine their own social and environmental relatings, building as well as attending to a shared world. Gesturing is an intercorporeal experience central to what it means to live as linguistic bodies. Taken together, research indicates that hand gesturing even as a variegated phenomenon offers insight into how language works. The full story of intersubjectivity and attendant features of recognition, interpretation, normativity, conventionality, and reference begins and ends with actual bodies interacting. As these matters concern the core of pragmatic philosophy, gesture research has radical relevance for all language theorists. An enactive approach to intersubjectivity and language offers a framework for making this case.

Keywords

intersubjectivitylinguistic bodiesparticipatory sense-makingconventionnormativityinteractiongesture ecologiesenactive approachautopoiesisrecognitioninterpretation
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies , pp. 599 - 615
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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