I believe I saw the Backhand Slap in the wild at Unfoggedycon.
A terrible, terrible person I used to work for had a lovely gesture for not dealing with the glaringly important problem that was urgently before us, and instead turning to the minor thing that he really wanted to talk about -- he'd pick up an imaginary object about a cubic foot in size from in front of him with both hands, and place it off to his left, saying "Putting that to one side..."
I have adopted this and use it all the time now. (This was one of a couple senior lawyers I've worked for where I've thought "If I were a really bad person, I'd be just like that. Wow. Maybe I am just like that.")
That page fails to do justice to the fascinating sophistication of intuitive deictic gestures. Even absent any formal system, people can convey much more sophisticated relationships, even between abstract concepts, with their hands than with words alone. Also, they are timed amazingly precisely to the words to which they refer, like within milliseconds.
It's surprising that we can time our hands to our words?
I mean, it's the same brain. Someone else's words; that would impress.
It's not surprising that we can. It's surprising that we do.
people can convey much more sophisticated relationships, even between abstract concepts, with their hands than with words alone.
How do you study something like that -- look at phone conversations and determine that they're slower and more difficult? Or something?
My mom sent me an interesting article recently about how we use clicks and such to convey punctuation when we talk.
2: ASL has a lexicalized version of this where you shove everything in front of you off to one side. I can't find a video, or think of what words to use to search for it...
Friends in a linguistics program made a t shirt that said
IT is a deictic thing
YOU wouldn't understand.
This is the only occasion I have ever had to reference it. I guess the meme was a little more current in 1993.
8: nah, I mean, you videotape people talking about things and look at what relationships they're representing with hand gestures and what relationships are actually in the content of speech. And remember, this is not a terribly conscious process; people make hand gestures just about as much when talking on the phone.
I guess I was thinking to study what people were actually successfully conveying, you'd have to look at what was understood by people who either could or couldn't see the gesturing.
Sometimes I direct the middle-finger gesture at the computer screen when a website or application does something irritating, like blanking out a form when I try to submit it because one field is missing. I try not to do this in public.
14: oh, probably. But look, I wave my hand.
an interesting article recently about how we use clicks and such to convey punctuation when we talk.
A related documentary.
IANAPhilosopher, but this is on my office door anyway.
People make all sorts of gestures outside the car window while on the phone and driving. I need to find some way of welding a machete to the right side mirror.
I am friends with surprisingly huge swathes of the co/speech ge/sture research community. Unsurprisingly, they study that stuff a whole bunch of different ways! Most interestingly (to me, at the moment), though people are pretty good at guessing what gestures go with what speech, and they're thrown off somewhat by being given mismatched speech and gestures, people have found much more solid evidence that gesturing helps people produce language fluently and understand concepts that they're trying to articulate themselves than evidence that seeing gestures helps people understand the gesturer (aside from cases where the gesture is being used explicitly and consciously to disambiguate things).* S/usan G/oldin-M/eadow has some fun studies with people learning better when they
*Good sentence, me!
Confidential to Sifu: you don't really want that "deictic" in there, though it's one of my favorite words, so hey.
people learning better when they...
ugh, sorry. Research on kids' acquisition of concepts -- I forget what the specific context was, but something in the classroom -- and their ability to communicate them if they are encouraged to gesture/"use their hands".
Good sentence, me!
Next time try it with hand gestures.
Confidential to Sifu: you don't really want that "deictic" in there, though it's one of my favorite words, so hey.
I know that non-deictic gestures have the same qualities but I was thinking about, like, gestures representing abstract spatial arrangements like the one mentioned in heebie's post title. Is that not deictic?
21: so my handwave was sorta wrong, but encouraged somebody who knows more than me to show up and discuss the topic. Success!
I am revising 15 to say that I explicitly disambiguate my fingers at the screen.
Is that not deictic?
No, it is, though a bit loosely, I think, by the standard standards of gesture research, which of course isn't my own area, but... in gesture research I think there is a tendency to reserve "deictic" to refer to gestures that are either (a) clearly referencing the actual here-and-now surroundings, or (b) acts of pointing, or both. This is a little bit conservative, obviously, and the context--speech or gesture-wise--can make people more willing to call a given gesture deictic.
Since a lot of the same issues come up in categorizing signs, I'm sure our friend Messily would be able to weigh in much more authoritatively on the question than I.
But anyway, my point was just: to the extent that that gesture or any of these is in fact deictic, it's not their deicticness in particular that is the source of their fascinating sophistication.
Speaking of fascinating sophistication, twice today I found myself muttering to myself audibly while walking down a crowded sidewalk. I have no idea how often I've done it without awareness. This happens when I have a lot of stress or decisions. I must remember to wear my nice shirts so I look crazed with stress instead of Boone's Farm.
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I just watched this Peaches video, and have two important observations.
1. The ad I was shown before this video was for a preschool. It was full of pictures of small children and gentle acoustic guitar music. Youtube's algorithm does not know when the kids have gone to bed and you are ready for grown up stuff.
2. Society has reached reflective equilibrium on the judgement that the linked Peaches video is not pornography, and can be shown on youtube, while a bunch of other things that are more explicit, but less unsettling are pornography, and can only be shown on places with names like porntube or redtube or whatever.
This is probably the best judgement to make, all things considered. But I still feel that something is lost in a society where no one freaks the hell out at a video like this. As Leon Kass says, "Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder." It is an insult to Peaches that people are not more offended.
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I'll weigh in tomorrow if we're still talking about this. I'm super jet lagged and also feeling otherwise less than well, so I'm going to bed now.
I personally try to avoid both reality and semantics as much as possible, but I have friends who do lots of work on deixis and indexing and depicting and Real Space Blends so I'm sure I'll think of something to say.
Rob, I think is the elementary school/Peaches crossover that shows the promise of genre
Have I mentioned here before that having broken my hand gave me increased sympathy for the claim somewhere in the Blue Book that we think with our hands? Probably! I think my dissertation cites something relevant to rfts' first comment, but I can't remember the author or title. Whee!
Now you're just going to have to start over from the very beginning.
people have found much more solid evidence that gesturing helps people produce language fluently and understand concepts that they're trying to articulate themselves than evidence that seeing gestures helps people understand the gesturer
Huh. So you know that thing where you're thinking about something for hours, and it's confusing, and then you go start talking to someone else to ask them a question and before they say anything or you even get through the whole question you realize what the answer is? I wonder if that's ever because you're moving your hands around in a way that you weren't when you were thinking about it alone.
I don't talk with my hands at all, but I recently discovered that I'm slightly less inarticulate when I sketch related but indecipherable figures with circles and arrows.
I think it acts as a supplement to my working memory, which is not what it once was.
Under the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there is no do. Only can. Essear will explain.
I think we can all safely ignore 46.
The paper I was thinking of was John Annett, "On knowing how to do things".
47: That rule would make using actual quantum mechanics hard.
49: Nah, the quantum mechanics would just have to specify causality more precisely.
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Bleg: Anybody know if Ecosia, the environmental search engine is legit, or does anybody any good? (It's a front end to Bing, so presumably it searches as well as any other such, more concerned about whether its ethical claims stand up.)
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50: Dude, I quoted the Everett many-worlds interpretation. I'm spooning out a higher-class of bullshit.
Since a lot of the same issues come up in categorizing signs
There is much, heated, debate in the field of Signed Language Linguistics about which manual gestures (or parts of gestures) are linguistic and which are not. People get very angry about this and both sides call in as evidence the fact that even hearing people move their hands around while they're talking! One side says this proves that there is no clear boundary between language and gesture, and the other side says this proves that we can categorize the gestures that nonsigners make as nonlinguistic (even when they show up in signed discourse).
I do think I use a lot of gestures (and some signs) even when I'm talking to people who probably don't understand/expect them. It is much easier to show than tell, for some types of subject matter.
54.last: I have thought about it, and I side with the former camp. Just because categorizing non-signers' gestures as nonlinguistic doesn't seem like the right answer.
The "stand" gesture from Blackjack works to stop the bartender from bringing me another beer. That's linguistic, I think.
Of course, it's likely I also say "No thank you" and that I'm gesturing to make it easier to speak.
I'm probably not the most reliable source of information about my own actions.
I mean, I'm a more reliable source of information about myself than I am about the Hanseatic League. Still, I could do better on self-awareness.
even hearing people move their hands around while they're talking!
It is not so much what the pig says...
I guess I was thinking to study what people were actually successfully conveying, you'd have to look at what was understood by people who either could or couldn't see the gesturing.
Surely said studies exist! And must be incredibly fascinating. I'd love to see comparisons of how people interpret sentence in text format, audio audio only, paired with the original speaker's gestures, and paired with alternative gestures.
54 is interesting.
Personally, I love watching people in their cars talk with their hands while they are on the phone. South Asians often have great hand gestures. The hand gestures of the Africans who live near me are pretty distinctive.
I'm a more reliable source of information about myself than I am about the Hanseatic League.
ON THE OTHER HAND, WE ARE A FAR MORE RELIABLE SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT MOBY THAN HE IS ABOUT HIMSELF. FROM OUR REMOTE FASTNESSES ON THE BALTIC SHORE WE SEE ALL AND KNOW ALL.
Here's a review paper for you, Di.
Oh wait that's not a review paper at all. Anyhow, it's definitely a paper.
I guess I'm in the first camp, although I find the extremist claims (e.g. gestures are part of spoken English because you can't understand sentences with deictic adverbs in them without gestures) irritating.
Mostly I try to avoid the issue. But it turns out even I have to make decisions about which things to code/include as data and which things not to, so I should probably come up with some sort of rationale at some point.
In other news, I just got prescribed a pain relieving ointment that is 10% ketamine. Woo hoo! Or something!
I find the extremist claims (e.g. gestures are part of spoken English because you can't understand sentences with deictic adverbs in them without gestures) irritating
Yeah, I can imagine how that would be irritating. I could find a hypothesis that gestures are a sort of epiphenomenon of spoken language colorable, but there seem evidently to be cases where nonsigners' gestures communicate additional information that isn't in their speech. Although I guess the same thing goes for expression and gaze direction and so on but... aren't those also lexicalized in ASL? But then the same thing is true for timbre and intonation and so on and I have no idea to what degree (spoken) linguistics considers those kind of things part of language. Let alone things like grunts and pauses and whatever.
Sure is complicated!
Re: the ketamine I must advise against drying, grinding and snorting your ointment.
I guess I'm in the first camp, although I find the extremist claims (e.g. gestures are part of spoken English because you can't understand sentences with deictic adverbs in them without gestures) irritating.
The argument, were one inclined to make it, that gestures aren't a part of spoken English, seems pretty straightforward.
On the other hand (hahahaha) there are certainly some things that deaf people do with their hands, faces, etc. while signing that are not what I would want to call linguistic. I agree that the boundary is very fuzzy, but I also think nonlinguistic communicative gestures exist.
I mean, if you deny the existence of nonlinguistic communicative gestures then you presumably have to grant language to every species that communicates, and I just bet linguists don't want to do that.
Me, I'm all for it, since I speak the language of the trees.
The counterargument, for those who are inclined to make it, includes a claim that "spoken English" is a misnomer, since it includes gestures.
But yeah I guess one thing with co-speech gestures is that they don't have any kind of syntax separate from the speech syntax (probably?), which would sort of point towards the epiphenomenon hypothesis. On the other hand, if speech without gestures is disfluent then they are probably at least a semi-vital component of speech, right? 70.last to this.all.
Every time I throw poop, people try to understand the meaning. It's like they don't understand simple joy.
since I speak the language of the trees.
Me too, but I find them really boring.
Research on the gestures/speech content of blind people is pretty interesting. Also comparing speech patterns of people who can't use their arms/hands to people who can.
This ketamine cream is pretty amazing. Its other ingredients include baclofen, gabapentin, and lidocaine.
You hear no end of good things about ketamine.
It also will make a horse unconscious, should you need that.
77: Mara calls that juggling her eyes, which I love. Thankfully we haven't had to learn what her personal term for throwing poop might be.
The pump thing has lots of stickers about how it is a controlled substance, but everyone* says it is not going to get in to my brain and mess me up.
*Doctors, the internet, the lack of stickers about operating heavy machinery...
85: yeah I can't imagine it will, more's the pity.
Nobody even sees stickers.
There's a fair amount of law on this issue, because of the hearsay rule. Generally the dividing line is whether the nonverbal conduct acts in the same way as a verbal assertion. So nodding yes in response to a question, or otherwise making an assertion as part a conversational context without using words, would count as a "statement" for purposes of the hearsay rule, whereas gestures that are arguably communicative but not really clear replacements for a verbal assertion (like gesturing wildly, or throwing poop, or shooting someone in the face) would not be.
As long as I can testify that I saw somebody throw poop regardless of whether or not they can be cross examined, I'm happy.
If they were throwing poop to help the police deal with an ongoing emergency situation, the poop throwing is not testimonial and the Confrontation Clause does not apply.
What if you nod yes while saying "no"? HUH? THEN WHAT?
Then you're in The Breakfast Club.
There are of course hazy language/not language boundaries for spoken utterances too. "Ouch" is definitely a word, and an inchoate shriek of pain definitely isn't, but there are plenty of things that fall in between.
If you go to far in the other direction you get non-words again, though, such as "golly that hurt".
So nodding yes in response to a question, or otherwise making an assertion as part a conversational context without using words, would count as a "statement"
I'm wise to you, lawyer boy.
There are of course hazy language/not language boundaries for spoken utterances too.
Nuh UH.
88 - I'd love to see an episode of Law & Order in which the defense attorneys argue that eyewitness accounts of poop throwing should be excluded under the hearsay rule.
OK, time to get to work writing my spec script . . .
98: First do a search to see that it hasn't been done. That show was on for a long time.
98.1: They'd still be admissible for the fact of the poop-throwing, just not for the truth of the assertions made by means of throwing poop.
I preëmptively hate you all for turning this into a law thread.
99: or Macedonia, or Albania.
Nevertheless, I admit that was a bad geographical-terminological blunder on my part.
30: I found myself muttering to myself audibly while walking down a crowded sidewalk. I have no idea how often I've done it without awareness. This happens when I have a lot of stress or decisions.
Per previous discussions here, that is certainly me. But relevant to this thread, even if I am not verbalizing I am often gesturing*. And even with intentional speech (or just thinking) I often feel "blocked" unless I can gesture (often over-vigorously--I am a notorious drink knocker-overer).
*I'm approach the limit of socially acceptable on this. My one kid approaches the limit from the other side and it is in fact a significant life-altering problem for him.
I've developed a terrible habit of closing my eyes and making big swooping conductor hand gestures in front of my face - think batting away gnats - when I'm losing track of what I'm saying and am trailing off. I always feel foolish opening my eyes up and having people still be looking at me.
That's a bad way to walk down a crowded sidewalk, heebs.
107: There really does need to be a universal "I've lost my train of thought and am to reclaim it" gesture, because trying to communicate that verbally is apt to complete the process of losing it forever.
I make facial expressions appropriate to what I'm thinking about, although not hand gestures, and I don't think I mumble (yet). This leads to me making wildly inappropriate faces at, say, seminars while concentrating on some frustrating problem that needs solving.
108: No, it seems to clear a wide berth quite well, actually.
111: A variety of the Richard Pryor tactic. When you're on fire and running down the street, people will get out of your way.
gah, variety of s/b variation on.
Hoo boy. The paper in 67 looks both fascinating and really, really hard! Thanks, Sifu.