More Than Words
In relation to the dialectic interconnection between language and gesture Özyürek and Kita (2007, 71), both gestural theorists who have developed David McNeill’s theories, indicate that gesturing is altered by the manner in which information is packaged into specific units for speaking.
The content of gestures is shaped simultaneously by how speech organizes information about an event and by the spatial details of the event, which may or may not have been expressed in speech (Özyürek and Kita 2007, 70).
David McNeill (2005, 4) stresses that there is no universal body code and that it is erroneous to think of gesture as forming a ‘body language’. Instead culture, as expressed through the particularities of any language, is playing a significant part in gesturing through providing the syntactic packaging of information (Özyürek and Kita 2007, 70). The gestures created by any person in communication with another could not be understood outside of their specific interaction. The imagery-language dialectic that McNeill elucidates is of fundamental importance to performance theorists because it indicates the primacy of the performative nature of language. There is information in any encounter between two people that is only being expressed through gesture and at the same time the syntactic structures of the language being used are shaping the gestural component of the interaction.
This imagery-language dialectic (materialized in gesture and speech) is an interaction between unlike modes of thinking. The disparity of these modes is the ‘fuel’ that propels thought and language (McNeill 2005, 4).
Cornelia Müller (2007, 110) stresses the face-to-face location of language as the ‘natural home’ of language, which she views as ‘multimodal’. She reconfigures language as an integration of gesture and speech, taking into account gesture as a specific modality of the whole. With this in mind it is clear how vital the role of gesturing is within any language-based performance.
What then can we say to our students? Perhaps we can begin by stating, ‘Dr Lightman, there is no code!’ However within gesturing lies a meaning-making process that is a simultaneous and embodied expression of imagistic thought processes. Each attempt at the articulation of specific communication not only results in speech but also forms gestural moves, having spatial, temporal and intentional attitudes through which the whole body/subject is expressive towards its being-in-the-world. From twitches, to blinks, to the rolling of ankles, to nose-scratching and ear-pulling, all are parts of a dialectical process of communication with our abilities to speak of the things that matter to us.