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11 - On pointing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2015

Adam Kendon
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

In the course of his guided tour of Northant, GB takes his little group of tourists into the church. He describes the interior of the building and draws attention to various features. In one part of his discourse he says (GB 3.09.07) “there is Gil Crestwood (..…) and there is Floyd Craddock.” It would be impossible for any member of the group to know what he was referring to, however, without also taking into consideration the fact that, as he says this, he extends his straight arm upwards, angled first in one direction, then in another, in each case with his hand shaped so that only his index finger is extended. With these gestures, in each case, he directs his audience's attention to the location of the two objects he has named which are, in this case, statues. He points to each statue in turn, as he refers to them, but only by doing so does he make the speech in his utterance intelligible. Without these pointing gestures the meaning of GB's “there” in each case could never be known. As we saw in Chapter 6, gestures of pointing, or deictic gestures, have been recognized as a separate class by almost all of the students of gesture we have reviewed and it has always been understood that such gestures can play a fundamental role in establishing how an utterance is to be understood. There are very few studies, however, which have examined the way in which pointing is done.

Type
Chapter
Information
Gesture
Visible Action as Utterance
, pp. 199 - 224
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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  • On pointing
  • Adam Kendon, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Gesture
  • Online publication: 05 February 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807572.011
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  • On pointing
  • Adam Kendon, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Gesture
  • Online publication: 05 February 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807572.011
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • On pointing
  • Adam Kendon, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Gesture
  • Online publication: 05 February 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807572.011
Available formats
×