1 The historical perspective: A synthesis
In this chapter, we provide a brief introduction to the notion of gesture and its current and technical meanings, which is followed by a historical overview. The historical overview begins with the forerunners (classical rhetoric, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian), the treatises from medieval and later periods, including Engel’s (1785–6) outstanding work from the 18th century, and the many contributions that appeared during the 19th century (inter alia Austin 1806, Tylor 1865, Sittl 1890, Hacks 1892). Work by De Jorio (1832), Darwin (1872), Mallery (1881a, 1881b), as well as Wundt’s (1900) constitute a link between the 19th and 20th centuries. The last part of the historical overview covers work published during the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, including the majority of studies of what is known today as emblematic gesture research. This state of the art follows different traditions and trends (French, Italian, British, Portuguese and Hispanic traditions), with special reference to works by Efron (1941), Meo-Zilio (1961a, 1961b, 1980–1983), Ekman and Friesen (1969) and more recent contributions by Kendon, McNeill, Poggi, Calbris, Hanna, and Brookes.
A highly synthesized selection of these contributions can be found in Table 1.1, in order to provide a first presentation of the most relevant studies, as well as their historical genesis. In the following sections, we discuss and contextualize the studies listed in this table, together with other works that are not included but are worthy of being mentioned.
Table 1.1:Synthesis of historical contributions to the conceptualization of gesture, and in particular to the conceptualization of emblematic gesture.
| | Classical Rhetoric |
| 55 BC | Cicero | De oratore |
| 95 AD | Quintilian | Institutio Oratoria |
| | Medieval and Later Treatises |
| 1616 | Bonifacio | L’Arte de’ Cenni |
| 1620 | Cresollius | Vacationes Autumnales sive De Perfecta Oratoris Actione et Pronunciatione |
| 1640 | Bacon | Of the Advancement and Proficiency of Learning. Book VI |
| 1644 | Bulwer | Chirologia: or the Natural Language of the Hand
Chironomia: or the Art of Manual Rhetoric |
| 1746 | Condillac | Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge |
| 1785–6 | Engel | Ideen zu einer Mimik |
| | 19th Century |
| 1806 | Austin | Chironomia or, a Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery |
| 1832 | De Jorio | La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano |
| 1865 | Tylor | Early History of Mankind |
| [1865] | Gratiolet | De la physiognomie et des mouvements d’expression |
| 1872 | Darwin | The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals |
| 1872 | Bacon | A Manual of Gesture |
| 1881b | Mallery | Sign Language among North American Indians […] |
| 1890 | Sittl | Die Gebärden der Griechen und Römer |
| 1891 | Adams | Gesture and pantomimic action |
| 1892 | Hacks | Le geste |
| | 20th Century |
| 1900 | Wundt | Völkerpsychologie.I. Die Sprache |
| 1925 | Leite de Vasconcellos | A figa. Estudio de etnografia comparativa […] |
| 1932 | Cocchiara | Il linguaggio del gesto |
| 1939 | Critchley | The language of gesture |
| 1941 | Efron | Gesture, Race and Culture |
| 1968 | Green | A Gesture Inventory for the Teaching of Spanish |
| 1969 | Ekman and Friesen | “The repertoire of non verbal behavior: categories, origins, usage and coding” |
| 1972 | Saitz and Cervenka | Handbook of Gestures: Colombia and the United States |
| 1979 | Morris et al. | Gestures: their origins … |
| 1980–3 | Meo-Zilio | Diccionario de gestos: España e Hispanoamérica |
| 1981 | Kendon et al. (eds.) | Nonverbal Communication, Interaction, and Gesture. |
| 1990 | Calbris | The Semiotics of French Gestures |
| 1992 | McNeill | Hand and Mind |
| 1996 | Hanna | “Defining the emblem” |
| 1998[2004] | Posner and Müller (eds.) | The semantics and pragmatics of everyday gestures |
| | 21st Century |
| 2000 | McNeill (ed.) | Language and Gesture |
| 2001 | Various | Gesture. A Journal … |
| 2003 | Rector et al. (eds.) | Gestures. Meaning and Use |
| 2004 | Kendon | Gesture. Visible Action as Utterance |
| 2007 | Poggi | Mind, Hands, Face and Body: […]Multimodal Communication |
| 2013–2014 | Müller et al. (eds.) | Body – Language – Communication |
This is a book about emblems, but emblems understood in what sense? Today, we consider emblems as instances of a gestural category that may seem easy to isolate and define. For instance, there is a general agreement that emblems can be used without accompanying speech – verbal language – and that can be translated into words, can be quoted, and can be reproduced with words. However, emblems or emblematic gestures – two terms that are used as synonymous in this work – have been named with different denominations in the literature across history: for instance, gestures, symbolic gestures, folk gestures, pantomimic gestures, semiotic gestures, autonomous gestures, quotable gestures, and quasi-linguistiques. This terminological diversity shows that the apparent ease in isolating and defining the category should be envisaged with more prudency. A historical overview is fundamental to understand how this category has been conceptualized in the literature over the years and how we have come to propose in this book what constitutes the category of emblematic gesture that emerges from a pragmatic perspective and it is therefore part of an integrated analysis.
1.1 Forerunners: From classical rhetoric to the 19th century
The historical journey that allows us to understand what is — or what we can say is — an emblem is inseparable from the historical journey of what is — or what we can say is — a gesture. The review that we take here does not aim to be a history of gesture, since there is an abundance of historical studies (Schmitt 1990, Kendon 2004). We propose here to ask and try to answer a more specific/narrower question: when does it become apparent that gesture means, that it conveys and it is taken to convey meaning? More specifically, what allows people to do (or say) similar or almost identical things to spoken words by using gestures? In sum we are interested in analyzing the historical steps that have led to a pragmatics of gesture.
1.1.1 Classical rhetoric
Classical rhetoric is often presented as the oldest precursor to pragmatics and semiotics. The arguments for this interpretation are strong and well known: the interest in language/linguistic use, and in particular, the interest in verbal language/speech, as well as the interest in argumentative and expressive devices, with an emphasis on persuasion research. In particular, classical rhetoric devoted attention to gesture as a mechanism associated to words in the phase of actio, that is to say, declamation, in updated terminology. As a complement to speech and also an inherent aspect of orality, classical rhetoric has had a significant interest in gesture, which did not necessarily continue in subsequ...
