Salient criterions in gesture classification: Developmental perspective in humans
Résumé
Gesture has become an important object of scientific interest during the last several
decades. That observation is documented by an increasing number of new studies,
publications and conference talks. However, when it comes to bringing up all pieces of
acquired and presented knowledge together, one question emerges: Do we really make
research, write and talk about the same ”thing”? In literature, we observe a multitude of
different and frequently incompatible understandings and classifications of gestures
(see e. g., Guidetti, Fibigerova, & Colletta, 2014; Kendon, 2004; McNeill, 1992). With no
intention to approach the ontological fundamentals of the topic, the aim of the above
question is to initiate a debate on the variety of phenomena that actually can be, should
be or actually are, considered as ”gesture”. In order to establish a ”common ground”
among gesture scholars, we would like to address the following questions: (1) what has
gesture to do with language evolution and development? (2) what is it that develops?
and (3) why study both the forms and the functions of gesture?
(1) If language is considered as a mean of adaptation (Verschueren, 1991) language
acquisition is one way, but not the only one, to adapt to the social environment.
There is a heuristic interaction between evolutionist theories and developmental
theories which, as a consequence, let us to have a theoretical position on language
acquisition where the function and the use are crucial and where language acquisition
has to be tightly linked to social cognition. In this sense language cannot be considered
as a ”communicative revolution” since it is preceded by gestures in young children.
Regardless of the position on the ”gesture-first” hypothesis of language origin (for:
Corballis, 2014 or against : McNeill, 2014), taking account social cognition and the
functions and the uses of communication have lead to a close look to non human
primates gestures.
(2) If for McNeill (2014), ”there is no way to get from Acquisition 1 –before age
3/4 – to Acquisition 2 ”– from age 3/4I because ”there are on different tracks”, we
would also like to have a closer look on the continuity/discontinuity in the use and
thus on the classification/terminology of gestures at the prelinguistic and the linguistic
periods
(3) If we consider the use and the functions as crucial, we have to clearly dissociate the
forms and the functions of gestures in a multilevel model of data analysis We will argue
and illustrate these different points with data from current research.