"Expanding the field he helped create more than twenty years ago, David McNeill gives us, in "Gesture and Thought," a deep and insightful account of how the mind is intrinsically embodied. Gestures-pervasive and dramatically ignored-are in themselves thoughts. If you still think that human minds can be emulated or even surpassed by computers, read this book! A must for anybody interested in language, thought, and the elusive intricacies of the mind-body problem."--Rafael N??????ez, University of California, San Diego
"In this eagerly awaited book, David McNeill presents a unified theory of language, speech, gesture, and thought. Until this book, no one had ever attempted to formulate a theoretical framework to explain why gesture and speech appear so tightly linked, nor had anyone considered how an integration of gesture and speech might affect linguistic theory. Here, McNeill challenges traditional concepts in psychology and linguistics by arguing for the integration of body and mind and of dynamic and static aspects of language and thought-as opposed to separating them. This is a radically innovative work that will become a classic in psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, and anthropology. After having read it nobody will ever be able to think that the body and the mind are separate things again."--Cornelia M???ller, Free University of Berlin
"With "Gesture and Thought, "David McNeill again demonstrates his status as a pioneer in the field of cognitive psychology and linguistics. Here he has developed a new theory of language and gesture in which gesture is seen as integral to language. In doing so, he has not merely grafted gesture onto language, but has reexamined and redefined our understanding of language, thought, and gesture. "Gesture and Thought" is a book of profound importance, destined to change the way we think about human language, gesture, and thought."
From the Back Cover
Gesturing is such an integral yet unconscious part of communication that we are mostly oblivious to it. But if you observe anyone in conversation, you are likely to see his or her fingers, hands, and arms in some form of spontaneous motion. Why? David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the relationship between gesture and language, set about answering this question over twenty-five years ago. In Gesture and Thought he brings together years of this research, arguing that gesturing, an act which has been popularly understood as an accessory to speech, is actually a dialectical and integral component of language.
Gesture and Thought expands on McNeill’s acclaimed classic Hand and Mind. While that earlier work demonstrated what gestures reveal about thought, here gestures are shown to be active participants in both speaking and thinking. Expanding on an approach introduced by Lev Vygotsky in the 1930s, McNeill posits that gestures are key ingredients in an “imagery-language dialectic” that fuels both speech and thought. Gestures are both the “imagery” and components of “language.” The smallest element of this dialectic is the “growth point,” an “idea unit” of an utterance at its beginning psychological stage. Utilizing several innovative experiments he created and administered with subjects spanning several different age, gender, language, and neurological groups, McNeill shows how growth points organize themselves into utterances and extend to discourse at the moment of speaking.
An ambitious project in the ongoing study of the relationship of human communication and thought, Gesture and Thought is a work of such consequence that it will influence all subsequent theory on the subject.
About the Author
David McNeill is professor emeritus of linguistics and psychology at the University of Chicago and director of the Center for Gesture and Speech. He is the author of four previous books, including Hand and Mind, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and the editor of Language and Gesture.
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