The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies

The study of gesture has ripened to the point that there is an established community of academics in this field, but a growing number of young scholars are also pursuing new areas of research. This Handbook offers a selective snapshot of the field in its current state, which is useful not only for historical documentation, but also for supporting future developments. Focusing primarily on manual gesture, the Handbook provides an overview of a variety of approaches to the study of it by key figures. It considers the roles of both psychological and interactional processes in gesture use and considers the status of gesture in relation to language. The volume includes practical guidelines for gesture analysis along with surveys of empirical research. Attention is given to different theoretical and methodological frameworks for studying gesture, including semiotic, linguistic, cognitive, developmental, and phenomenological theories and observational, experimental, corpus linguistic, ethnographic, and computational methods.