Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Gestural Types: Forms and Functions
- Part II Ways of Approaching Gesture Analysis
- Part III Gestures and Language
- Part IV Gestures in Relation to Cognition
- 18 The Growth Point
- 19 Gestures in Cognition: Actions that Bridge the Mind and the World
- 20 The Neuroscience of Gesture Production
- 21 Gesture in Learning and Education
- Part V Gestures in Relation to Interaction
- Index
- References
18 - The Growth Point
from Part IV - Gestures in Relation to Cognition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2024
Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies
- Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Gestural Types: Forms and Functions
- Part II Ways of Approaching Gesture Analysis
- Part III Gestures and Language
- Part IV Gestures in Relation to Cognition
- 18 The Growth Point
- 19 Gestures in Cognition: Actions that Bridge the Mind and the World
- 20 The Neuroscience of Gesture Production
- 21 Gesture in Learning and Education
- Part V Gestures in Relation to Interaction
- Index
- References
Summary
A growth point captures the moment of speaking, taking a first-person view. It is thought in language, imbued with mental/social energy, and unpacked into a sentence. It is not a translation of gesture into speech. It is a process of processes. One is the psychological predicate (a notion from Vygotsky), a differentiation of context for what is newsworthy, the growth point’s core meaning – the context reshaped into a field of equivalents to make the differentiation meaningful. The core meaning has dual semiosis – opposite semiotic modes – a global-synthetic gesture and analytics-segmented speech, synchronized and coexpressive of the core. The gesture phases foster the synchronization. Cohesive threads to other growth points (a “catchment”) enrich it. A dialectic provides the growth point’s unpacking – the gesture becoming the thesis, the coexpressive speech the antithesis. Jointly, they create the dialectic synthesis. The dialectic synthesis and the unpacking are the same summoned construction-plus-gesture. The growth point, its processes fulfilled, inhabits the speaker’s being, taking up a position in the world of meaning it has created (conception from Merleau-Ponty).
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies , pp. 477 - 500Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
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