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In Mandana Seyfeddinipur & Marianne Gullberg (eds.), 2014. From Gesture in Conversation to Visible
Action as Utterance, pp. 75-04. Benjamins.
The Emblem as Metaphor
David McNeill
Abstract
Emblems contain inner metaphors – precision for “OK,” the so-called conduit metaphor
for the grappolo, for example. Other metaphors are Up is Good, Bad is Down in “thumbs
up/down,” and Beams and Obstacles in “warding-off” (including the “horn”). Cultures
historically pick metaphors, codify them with standards of form and function, ensure
social standardization and intergenerational transmission, and the inner metaphor does
not disappear. No emblem or “quotable gesture” in Kendon’s study of Neapolitan
emblems appears to reverse or contradict its inner metaphor. North America and Naples
both use the “ring” as a metaphor of precision but differ in how it is used: approbation in
North America, authorization in Naples. Finally, emblems become “magical.”
Dedication
For an article honoring Adam Kendon I can think of no
topic more apt than the Neapolitan gesture culture, a topic
to which Kendon has devoted time, passion, scholarship
and meticulous intellect, culminating in his great edifice,
Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. This article adds a
few bricks of metaphoricity to the foundation.
What is an emblem?
An emblem like the “OK” sign is characterized by at least
4 linked properties:
1) First, it is like a word of spoken language in that it
is repeatable, listable, and reportable. It is what
Kendon calls a “quotable” gesture – a term that encapsulates these properties.1
However, unlike spoken language words, emblems do not combine into larger units.
“The” + “ball” forms a new unit, a noun phrase; that phrase plus “hit” forms
another unit, a verb phrase, “hit the ball” and so forth, and each of these new
combinations is a further unit of the language. Emblems do not have this
combinatoric, hierarchic property. One emblem, say “OK,” followed by another
emblem, say “no” (hand, palm forward, waving back and forth), may in some
contexts look like “not OK,” but the two emblems have not formed a larger emblem
unit. It is, rather, still two emblems, first one, then another focused on it: waving the
“OK” sign back and forth could be “not OK,” or “everything is OK,” or “look, it’s
OK!” ‒ a range so broad and contradictory that it is fundamentally non-language-
like.
Adam Kendon and the author, in hats,
demonstrating Neapolitan emblems (with
varying skill) at the 1995 Summer
Institute of the Linguistic Society of
America, University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque.
2
2) Second, emblems have standards of good form. The “OK” sign must be made with
the tips of the forefinger and thumb in contact, the other fingers more or less
extended straight out. If some other finger makes contact it may be a gesture of
precision but it is not the “OK” sign. Whatever the historical origin of “OK,” it
must meet this standard. Kendon (1988) observed features in Warlpiri signs present
solely to distinguish one sign from other signs that would be the same but with
unrelated meanings (signs for “boy” and “truck” for example). This clearly shows
form standards (I will later show emblems with similar properties). I consider
adherence to well-formedness as one half of the hallmark of an emblem, such that
violations result in rejecting the gesture, even though it is meaningful as a metaphor
(precision in this instance). The other half-hallmark is having culturally specified
functions (with “OK,” approbation), another area that is standardized. The two
hallmarks comprise what Hockett and Altmann (1968) called “duality of
patterning” – both form (forefinger and thumb touching) and content (approbation)
are “patterned” (regulated) in the gesture culture.
3) Third, and in keeping with these hallmarks, emblems are culturally defined and
maintained. Every culture has a vocabulary of emblems, not always so extensive as
the Neapolitan, but emblems everywhere are culturally maintained symbolic forms
with specified functions – again, “OK” illustrates. Many emblems in North
America seem to have Italian or even ancient Roman sources – “OK” happens not
to but there are others less polite that are unquestionably Roman (the favorite of the
road-enraged, the “finger,” Morris, et al. 1979, is one, which I will take up again in
the section on “magic”).
4) Fourth, having to do with sources, many emblems can be seen to be metaphoric
gestures, codified. This source is the topic of the present chapter. For clarity, we
need to distinguish two concepts:
A “metaphor” = a specific package of meanings, including impromptu
packages.
“Metaphoricity” = the semiotic on which this is based. This semiotic is
experiencing one thing in terms of something else.2
Figure 9, later in the chapter, illustrates a gesture depicting a bowling ball in terms of
something else. Iconically, the gesture shows a scene from a cartoon a speaker was
recounting in which Tweety (the bird) launches a bowling ball into a drainpipe, which
Sylvester (the cat) was climbing on the inside. Metaphorically, the bowling ball was not
just an object but in the speaker’s conception was a force against Sylvester in a moral
contest of Good versus Evil. The speaker had several gestures with this theme, all with
the same symmetrical two-handed use (in McNeill 2005, a “catchment”). The gesture
partook of this metaphor: Good contra Evil. As we shall see, an emblem is a culturally
ratified version of such metaphors.3
In a raw metaphor, constraints on gesture form and meaning are non-existent,
apart from the necessity to project the metaphor imagery itself – the Good metaphorized
as a bowling ball requires only the qualities of motion and shape that the bowling-ball-
down image requires. Equally uncodified, the meaning in the impromptu metaphor is not
a meaning English mandates, a Bowling Ball is the Good. Unlike Figure 9, which was
spontaneous and did not exist beyond the immediate context of speaking, emblems like
3
“OK” are repeatable, culturally stable, held to form standards and they convey culturally
mandated meanings. (Other emblems derive from metonyms: see Payrató 1993; Ishino
2007.) Precision, metaphorized as a narrowing of distance between surfaces, is possible
only with the forefinger if it is to be the “OK” sign; and the precision meaning focuses
only on approbation. If it does not meet these conditions the gesture is not the emblem.
Children pick up some emblems as early as the first birthday (waving “bye-bye”
and others) but it is improbable – to put it mildly – that metaphoricity plays any part. A
ritual is present but a metaphoric understanding of “bye-bye” as wiping a situation or
oneself away is surely unlikely as an element in a one-year-old’s conceptual world. So-
called “child metaphors,” despite being termed metaphors, also do not plausibly include
metaphoricity – a 24-month-old saying “cup swimming” as he pushed a cup along in his
bath or “I’m a big waterfall” as he slides down his father’s side while wrestling, is
probably not experiencing the cup’s motion as swimming or his own motion as a
waterfall. Instead, he seems to be piling up descriptions to be “shared with the other”
(following Werner & Kaplan’s 1963 remark: the speech of children this young has “the
character of ‘sharing’ experiences with the other rather than of ‘communicating’
messages to the other,” p. 42), which is quite a different thing.
Neapolitan and other emblems
Now we can look at emblems in the Neapolitan gesture culture. Traces of metaphors can
be discerned in many if not all of these emblems. It is noteworthy that in no case has the
culture reversed or undone a root metaphor; it has stabilized, specified, and constrained
them but never left them.
The ring: “OK” and precision
First, this shape, , the North American “OK,” which because of the thumb and
forefinger shape is generally called “the ring,” is abundant in the Neapolitan code and
covers a range of meanings. It forms what Kendon calls a gesture family. It is also a
metaphor family, the idea of precision its kinship, the same meaning the North American
gesture code has commandeered for “OK.” However, the one meaning the Neapolitan
code does not include is approbation. In Naples the ring has stabilized around other foci.
Kendon describes three of these foci, based on form and manner of performance:
1) Ring first, then open hand: a topic-comment sequence, the ring coloring
speech with an aura “…in which something quite specific is being mentioned”
(Kendon: 241). The open hand belongs to a different metaphor, the conduit
(Reddy 1979), and will be described in the next section (the grappolo).
2) Hand raised, ring forms and is held before interlocutor: clarifying or giving
exact information. Again, the ring colors the accompanying speech with an
aura of precision. The effect is metalinguistic: what I am saying is “precisely
so.”
3) Hand in ring held vertically, palm facing interlocutor’s midline: a specific
point in contrast to some other point or position.
4
Far from dispensing or requesting approbation, therefore, the Neapolitan ring signals
authority – the speaker’s authority for giving a topic with a comment, for having
information that is precise and to contrast it with other information, all stemming from a
codification of the same precision metaphor as in “OK” but with nearly the opposite
pragmatic sense. If what a culture chooses to do with a metaphor, here precision, reflects
values possibly deeply held, we can compare the American and Neapolitan cultures on
this limited front. Where we see one seeking or administering approval, the other is
deriving authority.
Neapolitan and North American emblems differ in other ways as well. In English
the gestured and spoken versions of “OK” do not have the same functionality. In the
Neapolitan code, emblems and linguistic functions seem to converge. In this sense, the
Neapolitan gesture culture is closer to actual language (still lacking hierarchic
combinatoriality). While in English “that’s it!” implies both approbation and precision,
“okay” – the verbal equivalent of the ring – does not: it has approbation but not precision.
“Do you want a cup of coffee? Okay” (means “yes,” not “just so!”, although with
prosodic decoration this also can be conveyed – “oka-a-ay!”). Also, spoken “okay” has
conversational uses the gesture does not, again with approbation but not precision. It
signals, at potential speaker turn-exchanges, that the speaker has more to say and is
checking comprehension – the equivalent of I’ll keep on talking if you’re “okay” – as in,
“you go down the street to the next corner and turn right, okay? and look for the sign …
etc.” The gesture, with its precision dimension, could be only bizarrely or insultingly
used in this context. Neapolitan rings in contrast clearly have discourse functions of their
own (Kendon’s three foci all have discourse functions).
In both cultures the precision metaphor is present. It is in how and where it can be
deployed that they differ. The precision metaphor incidentally rules out an alternative
theory concerning the gesture’s form, that it is attempting to reproduce the letters “O”
and “K” – if this is so, then why precision at all? There is no answer.4
The next gesture family has a similar range of discourse uses, is also a metaphor
family, but comes from a different source – not precision but a metaphor in which the
hand stands as a container or surface on which some meaning can be “placed.”
[INSERTFIGURE1]
Thegrappoloandtheconduit
Figure 1, from Kendon, shows a grappolo (or finger-bunch or purse-hand) used as a
speaker introduced a discourse topic. The fingers formed an enclosed space (shaped by
standards of form), then followed it by the hand opening to present a comment (also
shaped by standards of form – both shapings attested by Kendon, pers. comm.); one of a
family of grappolo usages Kendon describes.
The grappolo hand is a codification of the conduit metaphor, a form that occurs in
spontaneous gestures. Like this spontaneous metaphor the hand appears to hold a
discursive object and move it to a locus. The locus also has meaning and is part of the
total gesture (the verbal conduit was described by Reddy 1979 and Lakoff & Johnson
1981; the possibility of a gesture version was suggested to me by George Lakoff in the
5
early 1980s, pers. comm.).5
The Neapolitan emblem again has form and meaning standards, which
spontaneous conduits lack. In Figure 1, the gesture begins as a container and as the hand
opens it becomes a surface that continues to support the “object.” Both steps embody the
conduit imagery of a surface (first curled, then opened) and a substance in or on it. In
raw, non-emblemitized form the conduit appears at least in Asia, Europe, and North
America.6 Figure 2 is an English speaker’s spontaneous, non-emblematized open-hand
gesture also holding a discursive object (“the final scene,” the “object” in question). The
gesture is not unlike the open-hand version of the grappolo but is also different from it.
The gesture is not held to standards of form. There is no history or culture of gesture form
behind it and no standards other than to iconically depict a container. Rather than
standards, indeed, the metaphor recruited the image. That was the only constraint on its
form and the gesture was created from it on the spot, not drawn from a vocabulary.
[INSERTFIGURE2HERE]
We have an early use of the conduit gesture (possibly emblematic, possibly even
the grappolo) in a quote from Montaigne (sixteenth century), who attributes a series of
gestures for degrees of epistemological certainty to Zeno of Elea (sixth century BC). The
grappolo’s topic-comment use, as in Figure 1, is in italics:
Zeno pictured in a gesture his conception of this division of the faculties of the
soul: the hand spread and open was appearance; the hand half shut and the
fingers a little hooked, consent; the closed fist, comprehension; when with his
left hand he closed his fist still tighter, knowledge. (Montaigne 1958, 372)7
As with Zeno, the grappolo’s closed version is a bounded container that conveys a sense
of certainty; in its second, open version, the certainty is less, corresponding to the
Neapolitan comment.
The open hand, in addition to being the less certain end of the Zeno series,
conveys its own metaphor of openness – the idea of a discursive object that is “open” to
discussion, dispute, etc., as is appropriate for the second half of topic-comment. Again,
Neapolitan culture has codified both form and use, so that the open hand zeros in from
conveying something “open” to something where “the object being indicated is not the
primary focus or topic of the discourse but is something that is linked to the topic”
(Kendon: 208).
Finally, in Figure 1, panel C, the open-hand part of the gesture also included
pointing. Space was a meaningful element of the gesture. These multiple dimensions
converged in a combination that was also held to standards of form. Although in this
example the deixis was to a concrete locus, deixis can readily take on metaphoric values
of its own, pointing to a space whose meaning is non-spatial and is established or
recaptured by the deixis itself.
Thumbs up, down: Good is up, bad is down
“OK” is not the only approbation emblem; “thumb-up” has its own metaphor source and
conveys approbation in different terms: better is higher, “up on top” (Lakoff & Johnson
6
1980), to which the upturned thumb points. Equally, “thumb-down” indicates a locus at
the bottom, the reverse metaphor, lower is worse. The difference explains how the two
emblems, “OK” and thumbs up/down, differ while both signaling approbation. The
thumb’s ancient uses, at least in Hollywood versions, involved the same metaphor: “up is
better (= survival)”/“down is worse (= death).” This conceit, however, is thoroughly
debunked by Morris et al. 1979. The actual Roman gesture was the thumb extended in an
unspecified direction = death; the thumb retracted under the fingers = survival. Morris et
al. suggest the thumb was an iconic sign for the sword that would perform the deed. I
have been told that the thumb was also connected with concepts of power and authority,8
echoes of which may also exist in the ring, as described earlier, involving the thumb (the
ring shape may therefore not be the only important feature of the Neapolitan emblem). A
further interpretation is that the thumb-sword was also deictic, pointing at the gesturer’s
neck, showing where the sword would plunge – a deictic/iconic gesture similar, for us, to
a forefinger across the neck. With time, the higher = better/lower = worse metaphor took
over.
But why the thumb rather than the forefinger if the gesture involves pointing?
Apart from the possible Roman emphasis on the thumb as power, using the thumb avoids
collisions with pointing to something that actually is up or down, a different gesture and
not either metaphor. The thumb up/down emblem may thus show a sensitivity similar to
that of Warlpiri signs in situations where they could be confused with other gestures. It
also avoids colliding with a different and inappropriate metaphor – the index finger
showing a path, moving toward the good or bad, whereas in the emblem Good is Up and
Bad is Down are fixed locations.
Beams and obstacles: Palm forward and others
Eyebeams were once a theory of how we see: beams from the eyes going out,
encountering objects and sensing their presence. Seeing was like touching. The beams
could be lethal as well, originally by the basilisk, as in c. 1400 “Thei slen him anon with
the beholdynge, as dothe the Basilisk” (from the OED), but in Figure 3 the serpent has
been updated to a multi-armed Deconstructionist, a new-age alien whose eyes still beam
destruction (of the Humanities in this case).
]INSERTFIGURE3HERE]
Through retellings of Hitchcock’s 1929 film Blackmail by several speakers of
English and by one speaker of Georgian I will compare spontaneous, non-emblem
gestures that use metaphors to manage complicated narrative problems to Neopolitan
emblems. The film more than invites this kind of complexity, which can be seen from
Figures 4 to 7.
The comparison will enable us to see how the Neapolitan emblem-code
selectively draws on the natural variation of eyebeams and obstacles metaphors. These
metaphors appear in encoded and spontaneous gestures both. Palms in both are the site of
force, energy, and action. This is why the palms face the danger in warding-off emblems,
widespread in spontaneous gestures and a fixed feature in the Neapolitan code: the palm
as obstacle. In the examples Kendon presents the palms face outward but in the
spontaneous gestures the palms present their faces both outward and inward. The code
7
has standardized the direction: generally outward (in one example, Kendon’s Figure 13.4,
inward) whereas, in the spontaneous cases, the beams are guided by the metaphor and the
palm faces in various directions depending on the semantics of the situation: to ego,
sideways, and outward. For the radiance, the beams themselves, the Neapolitan examples
all seem to move to the front, much as in the spontaneous gestures, although, again, these
move not only forward but in different directions (beams are not shown but are implied in
Kendon’s illustrations and all seem to move in one direction). We can imagine
spontaneous gestures where beams move inward – “I could feel the rage coming from the
audience” ‒ with a palm-facing, inward-moving gesture. It is unclear how the Neapolitan
code handles this.
The open hand takes two forms in the Neapolitan code, prone or palm-down
(including away) and supine or palm-up. They comprise a gesture family of shared forms
but, unlike the ring, not a metaphor family. Kendon emphasizes that the orientations have
different contexts of use, and this is our clue. Two unlike metaphors are involved that do
not combine. Palm-down denies, negates, interrupts, or stops something – metaphorized
as an incoming force, a beam, with the palm as a barrier. Palm-up is the conduit, and
offers, shows, or requests something – metaphorized as an object, the palm a surface or
container. From a metaphoricity viewpoint the two types are different, not opposites but
unconnected. Thus how one regards the gestures, as form qua form or as metaphors,
affects whether they resemble each other or not. From a form angle they go together as a
family, but from a metaphoricity viewpoint palm-down belongs with the other beam
emblems while palm-up belongs with the grappolo and other conduits.
[INSERTFIGURE4HERE]
Beam and obstacle imagery appear in a host of spontaneous gestures. In Figure 4,
the left hand is a wall and the emanation in the right hand represents eyebeams moving
outward through a superimposed translucent crowd that the wall hand represents to
contact the main character. The ancient theory was brought to life in the gesture while
attempting to describe translucent imagery.
[INSERTFIGURE5HERE]
Beams also radiate from psychological and brain states, as with puzzlement in
Figure 5. The palms face outward, not to ward off incoming forces but to show the
direction of the beams, the palm as usual the “active” face of the hand. They contrast with
the Figure 4 palms, which face inward, but it is the same process in a different function.
In Figure 4 the palms are obstacles to the eyebeams (which pass through them, making
them translucent).
Two further examples involving beams and walls are in Figures 6 and 7. Shadows
are conceptualized as beams in Figure 6, “cast out” from the body onto a wall, the surface
of which the right hand depicts (palm upright, facing the shadow).
[INSERTFIGURES6,7]
And in Figure 7 the moving left hand metaphorizes an entire scene from the film
itself, as it is transformed, in the film, into a different scene. The right hand is the first
8
scene and its transformation, a kind of wall to which the left hand is moving, is the new
scene.
[INSERTFIGURE8HERE]
The beam metaphor may also be present in emblems that traditionally have been
described in other terms. Figure 8 is the ancient “horn” (Morris et al. 1979), used to ward
off danger such as the evil eye, and also to accuse someone of being a cuckold. Morris et
al., considering the “horn” name, cite beliefs that to ward off danger the gesture summons
the power of metaphoric bulls. How this applies to the cuckold is not clear. Beams may
explain both. A beams explanation would be easy to see if the gesture were, rather than
protection, giving the evil eye. Beams for warding off are harder to register but the bull’s
horns may actually be iconic for beams – beams not only touching but thwarting,
capturing the idea of one’s own beams meeting and blocking those of the evil eye. The
gesture culture I inhabit, not having the “horn,” leaves intuitions shaky. Still, I find it
implausible that my hand should turn into a miniature bull when I make the emblem. The
shape has two uses according to Morris et al., both of which can be tied to the beams
theory. The above explains how they protect. Beams in the “cuckold” sign are obvious,
the separated fingers the eyebeams touching (“seeing”) the offended party, the cuckold,
whom the gesture singles out for public opprobrium.9
Conclusion of emblems
Emblems in the Neapolitan and North American gesture cultures thus contain hidden
metaphors. Emblems do not forget their metaphoric roots. And across cultures the
metaphors differ in part and are the same in part for the same gesture forms. Cultures
“choose” metaphors and what to emphasize, and from these choices emerge emblems.
We have seen how the American and Neapolitan rings embody different values ‒
approbation in North America, authority in Naples. In addition to sheer quantity, this is a
clear example of a cultural contrast of emblems. Beams and palms and the hand as a
conduit illustrate other conclusions; how emblems embody ancient metaphors, and how,
depending on the interests of the investigator, emblems – palms-up or palms-down in our
examples – can be interpreted as one family or as different families.
Where do metaphors come from?
Orchestrating speech by metaphoric gestures
Figure 9, alluded to earlier, illustrates a gesture depicting a bowling ball in terms of
something else, Good against Evil. Iconically, the gesture shows Tweety (the bird)
launching a bowling ball into a drainpipe, but this is only the surface of the metaphor.
[INSERTFIGURE9HERE]
The speaker said, “Tweety Bird runs and gets a bowling ba[ll and drops it down
the drainpipe],” with the gesture stroke as shown synchronizing exactly with “it down.”10
In the syntax of the sentence “it down” is not a unit. “It down” unified words belonging
to different units of the syntax, the Figure (“it”) and Satellite (“down”), using Talmy’s
(2000) categories, and excluding another, the Activating Process. This latter also
9
includes “drops,” to which the “it” is syntactically more tightly coupled. If the gesture
orchestrated “it down,” the words could have been a unit of speech despite the syntax. To
“orchestrate” means the speech has been organized around the gesture, forming a
gesture–speech unit. Orchestration by gesture was possible because the gesture, as a
metaphor, made the bowling ball into a force for the Good, and the same metaphor
applied to the words. Gesture and speech were co-expressive of it. The speaker’s context
was something like HOW TO STOP THIS EVIL, to which the gesture and words replied,
“the bowling ball down is the force of Good against it.”
The biomechanics of speech, a level of action, take place within this unit and are
guided by it. Orchestration provides the property of “chunking,” a hallmark of expert
performance (cf. Chase & Ericsson 1981), whereby a chunk of linguistic output
(synchronous with the gesture) is organized around the presentation of the image. From
how the gesture unfolded, we know that the “it down” and gesture were unified – the
stroke synchronized with just these words and skipped over “drops,” the verb which
identifies the action. This verb was uttered during the continuing preparation for the
gesture and may even have been tipped at the end with a brief pre-stroke hold, as if the
stroke, now cocked, was waiting until “drops” had ended and “it down” could begin. This
is natural if the “it” and “down” were in fact to be orchestrated by the gesture.
The metaphoricity semiotic is the key to the whole process. It is what emblems
use as raw material. Cultures have a never-ending supply of metaphors from the action
of speaking itself. To find metaphors at the heart of various emblems is the expected
outcome of the speech process. The “it down” gesture was immediate, arose on the fly
without contemplation. It was impromptu, the speaker’s immediate, intuitive take on the
episode. Such instant metaphoricity is frequent in narrations as here; in living space
descriptions (McCullough 2005); in task planning (Park-Doob 2010) and doubtless in
many other places – this is what we can see is the emblem’s key.
What propels a metaphor once created to emblem status lies in environment,
culture, and history. For Neapolitan emblems, Kendon emphasizes the noisy open-air life
of Naples where value accrues to ways of communicating meanings without speech. In
this environment, cultural forces such as the valorization of authority through precision
shape spontaneous gestures, eventually becoming the grappolo and ring emblems. In
these cases and others emblems have deep historical roots – ancient and forgotten except
in the form of gesture (the “OK” sign seems a newcomer as emblems go, emerging in
only the last few hundred years, but following a similar trajectory starting from the
precision metaphor).
The metaphoricity of speech – ubiquitous as the source of the emblem-metaphor
– is no accident. It is inevitable. If my speculations on how language began have any
merit it was essential to the origin of language itself (McNeill 2012).
Are actions metaphors or are metaphors actions?
Kendon, articulating a widely held view, wrote, “…the group of ‘ring’ hand shapes … is
derived from holding something between the tips of the index finger and thumb,” the
precision meaning deriving from this “precision grip” (p. 240). Similarly, the grappolo
derives in this view from the hand holding something. I have argued that ultimately the
ring and grappolo are metaphors. Do these hypotheses differ? Do actions like the
10
precision grip or holding underlie metaphors? Perhaps, but the arguments here pose the
reverse hypothesis: metaphors orchestrate actions (of the hands and vocal tract) and have
done so from the beginning of language. A precision grip is still a grip; when it becomes
a metaphor it changes into something else, the experience of precision as a touch or
narrow space. The action of gripping itself disappears. Metaphors orchestrating manual
and vocal actions (rather than actions as metaphors) are how emblems arise in this
conception, leaving the “old” pragmatic actions behind. Given this origin of the emblem,
the source naturally involved both a restructuring of the actions themselves, vocal and
manual, and their significances..
What remains of “old actions” in this “new action” world? A gesture may look
like a pragmatic action but the action has changed at its core. To describe a gesture as
“outlining” or “shaping” is useful as a description but to also say that such a practical
action is still within the gesture is to disregard what makes the gesture a human sign. An
example I have often cited, the “rising hollowness” gesture (Figure 10), looks like the
action of lifting something in the hand, but this gesture is not lifting at all. It is an image
of the character rising, of the interior of the pipe through which he rose, and of the
direction of his motion upward – all compacted into one symbolic form to differentiate a
field of meaningful equivalents having to do with HOW TO CLIMB A PIPE, namely,
ON THE INSIDE.
[INSERTFIGURE10HERE]
Emblematicity
Finally, it is important to consider how the “emblem,” the category, is the end-point of a
dimension that Susan Duncan and Kamala Russell and others have started calling
“emblematicity.” This is a dimension that, unlike iconicity and metaphoricity, at its end
opens up to the full conventionality that we call an emblem but at earlier points includes
metaphoricity separately or in limited combinations (hence virtually all gesticulations),
recurrence, catchments, awareness of one’s own gesture as a communicative effort,
shareability (Freyd 1983), intragroup solidarity, intergroup differences, and no doubt
others. These intermediate points are affected by different forces from completed
emblems (for example, thinking with a metaphor like the conduit, as in the palm up, open
hand, produces recurrence without encoding). These forces, when present, offer raw
material on which social groups can work in reaching the final state, a conventional
emblem, whereupon emerge the properties enumerated at the start of this chapter –
repeatable, listable, reportable; adhering to standards of form/function; containing form
elements to distinguish the emblem; sociocultural standing defined and maintained; in
Kendon’s word, a gesture that is “quotable.”The emblematicity dimension is perhaps the
most potent source of the emblem itself in cultures around the world. Communicative
exchange is the midwife and, as Kendon emphasized, creates the emblem. What makes a
society seize the available emblematicity and convert it into a codified emblem is not
known, but cultural values must be a part of it. Nor is it known how long and irregular or
smooth the emblematicity dimension must be before crossing the threshold, but to think
of each emblem in this way, as at the end of a “pre-encoded” line, is an important insight.
Most importantly, every gesture, no matter how ephemeral, lies somewhere on this
dimension, and along with its other dimensional loadings (iconicity, indexicality, etc.)
11
has emblematicity and the potential to become an emblem itself.
Conclusionofwheredoemblemscomefrom
Thus, for several reasons, when engaging with language the mind inevitably creates
metaphoricity, and with it the raw materials for emblems – the very act of speaking (not
gesturing alone) makes emblems inevitable. The origin of language built this in and we
may say that the emblem was an inevitable consequence of how language began.
Exceptions
Not every emblem holds a metaphor. The cover of Kendon’s Gesture: Visible Action as
Utterance, in fact, shows two emblems that appear not to. The cover reproduces one of de
Jorio’s illustrations where two men are having a wordless conversation about eating and
drinking. I see nothing metaphoric about the gestures. A full understanding of the
emblems that any culture has created would have to consider the metaphors and the way
the culture has formalized them, and also what has been acquired from other sources. Of
these, eating and drinking, the topics of Kendon’s cover illustration, have enough
importance on their own to have crossed the emblem threshold.
Fetishism and magic
Fetishism results when emblems appear to take on new powers, “magical powers,” by
which the gesture itself, when made, is thought to effect a change in something else. The
“OK” sign can mollify; the Neapolitan ring assures the speaker that she knows whereof
she speaks. Morris et al (1979) show photographs of obscene gestures in live contexts
being made not for self-expression but as weapons. Fetishism also explains the hold
ancient theories have on the modern mind, like vision via eyebeams: gestures, fortified as
fetishes, recreate the beams in one’s own experience.
Presumably all emblems participate in fetishism to some extent but the “finger” is
an exceptionally clear if disreputable example. A belief in its magical power appears to
be the main reason it is raised nowadays. It exists not merely as an expression of outrage:
it is meant to inflict damage. In Rome it was called the “indecent finger,” was an insult
and may even have been used propositionally (Caligula wagging it). It has become, on
American roadways at least, purely illocutionary, a generic insult, the approbation theme
absorbing it to create, in inverted logic and “as if by magic,” the incompetence and
unworthiness of existence of another driver. Its origin in a graphic depiction of sexual
acts is lost and new powers to diminish if not efface the other are created. I have seen the
gesture aimed at targets for extended intervals, as if extra time increases the effect
(visibility not being a problem), and at inanimate objects. Also, sculpted models posed on
tables are a kind of talisman. Performers of a certain kind display it to audiences to gain
control.
Whence this feeling of magic? There can be no doubt it exists, and not only with
this gesture but with every emblem. Even those who say “magic” in quotes can feel it.
Pick an emblem and you feel its power in your hand (it must be an emblem you
personally inhabit). I can only guess the causes but I suggest two. One is a sense that
gestures are ancient. The past and its mysteries often possess an aura of magic. Many
emblems are, in fact, ancient and in this respect are like myths – micro-myths – in which
12
we touch ancient truths. The other is the feeling ‒ described earlier and which arises from
our daily speech ‒ that gestures fuel speech. Gestures orchestrate speech and seem to
push it forward, appearing to have what Firbas (1971) called “communicative
dynamism.” Making the gesture you sense this power, the gesture “fueling” something –
but what? You are not speaking but are making the gesture. Nothing is there, yet your
hand is filled with energy. This could be what we feel, power on the loose, without
speech to absorb it, and this, combined with the sense that we are touching the ancient, is
“magic.”11
Conclusions overall
Emblems are the end-points of gestures with speech, not the beginnings of anything.
Metaphoricity is the raw material. A culture “chooses” and maintains a metaphor and
stabilizes it for some valorized focus. This inner metaphor also anchors the emblem.
Once created, an emblem takes on a life of its own, yet the metaphor holds it in place,
protecting it from the kind of historical abrasion that causes change to spoken language.
We regularly use emblems that are thousands of years old. No spoken language,
including the ancient Greek and Latin with which those emblems began (if they did not
predate even them) long since vanished – “dead languages”, “live gestures.” This very
disparity is another reason why gestures appear magical. And because of inner metaphors
emblems can be read for deeply held values, like approbation in North America and
authority in Naples. A window onto value is perhaps one of the emblems most important
aspect and what it reveals.
References
Chase, W. G. and Eriksson, K. A. 1981. “Skilled memory.” In Cognitive Skills and Their
Acquisition, Anderson, J. R. (ed.), 227249. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
De Jorio, Andrea 2000. Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity. A
Translation of Lamimimca degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano (1832).
Translated with an Introduction and Notes, by Adam Kendon. Bloomington and
Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
Firbas, Jan. 1971. “On the concept of communicative dynamism in the theory of
functional sentence perspective.” Philologica Pragensia 8: 135‒144.
Freyd, Jennifer J. 1983. “Shareability: ‘The social psychology of epistemology.’”
Cognitive Science 7: 191‒210.
Hockett, Charles F. and Altmann, Stuart A. 1968. “A note on design features.” In Animal
communication: Techniques of Study and Results of Research, Sebeok (ed.), 61–
72. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Ishino, Mika. 2007. Metaphor and Metonymy in Gesture and Discourse. Unpublished
PhD dissertation, University of Chicago.
Kendon, Adam. 1980. “Gesticulation and speech: Two aspects of the process of
utterance.” In The Relationship of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication, Key,
M. R. (ed.), 207–227. The Hague: Mouton and Co.
13
Kendon, Adam. 1988. Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, Semiotic and
Communicative Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
MacNeilage, Peter F. 2008. The Origin of Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McCullough, Karl-Erik. 2005. Using Gestures during Speaking: Self-Generating
Indexical Fields. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Linguistics,
University of Chicago.
McNeill, David. 2005. Gesture and Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McNeill, David. 2013. How Language Began: Gesture and Speech in Human Evolution.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Montaigne, Michel de. 1958. The Complete Essays of Montaigne (D. Frame, trans.).
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Morris, Desmond, Collett, Peter, Marsh, Peter, and O’Shaughnessy, Marie. 1979.
Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution. New York: Stein & Day.
Müller, Cornelia. 2008. Metaphors ‒ Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking: A Dynamic
View. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Park-Doob, Mischa Alan. 2010. Gesturing Through Time: Holds and Intermodal Timing
in the Stream of Speech. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California,
Berkeley.
Payrató, Lluis. 1993. “A pragmatic view on autonomous gestures: A first repertoire of
Catalan emblems.” Journal of Pragmatics 20: 193–216.
Reddy, Michael J. 1979. “The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language
about language.” In Metaphor and Thought, Ortony, A. (ed.), 284‒297.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Vol. 2: Typology and Process in
Concept Structuring. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
14
Figures
FIGURE 1. Neapolitan gestures as standardized encodings of metaphoric images, in this case the discursive
object (so-called “conduit”) metaphor. Used with permission of the author and Cambridge University
Press.
15
FIGURE 2. English
speaker’s non-culturally
defined discursive object
gesture with “the final scene
was… .” His palm “holds”
the object – the idea of the
“final scene” of the cartoon.
Computer drawing by Fey
Parrill, now on the faculty of
Case Western University.
Used with permission of
University of Chicago Press.
16
FIGURE 3. Beams emerging from the eyes of a
Deconstructionist. Poster found on walls around the
University of Toronto, about 1990. Art in this and the
following four figures by Laura Pedelty, now on the
medical faculty of the University of Illinois. All used
with permission of University of Chicago Press.
17
FIGURE 4. “People are walking by her and you can
see though the people into her” where left hand is “the
people” and right hand for “seeing” moves past it.
18
FIGURE 5. Beams radiating from the head in a
character viewpoint gesture. Speaker is saying, “so
uh… she’s flying into the area and wondering why all
the animals are running away.”
19
FIGURE 6. A shadow being cast off to contact a
surface. Left hand is the shadow, right hand the
surface. Speaker is saying (in Georgian), “you see a
shadow … the shadow of a man in a top hat.” Trans.
By Kevin Tuite.
20
FIGURE 7. Transforming one scene into another
scene that had analogous elements. Left hand is the
first scene, the right hand the new scene. Left hand
moves forward in front of right hand for the
transformation. Trans..by Kevin Tuite.
21
FIGURE 8. The “horn,” the
“cuckold” and possibly also
beams of vision. From Morris,
et al (1979). Copyright
unknown.
22
FIGURE 9. Spontaneous gesture
metaphor. Computer art in this
and Figure 10 by Fey Parrill.
Used with permission of
University of Chicago Press.
23
FIGURE 10. Gesture looks like lifting
but is a “rising hollowness” metaphor
with no connection to the pragmatic
action. Computer art by Fey Parrill.
Used with permission of the
University of Chicago Press.
24
Notes
1 References to “Kendon” without date are to Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance
(2004), cited in the bibliography. I take Kendon to mean by quotable that a gesture can be
quoted as a gesture, like a word, not that some speech quote, like “okay,” corresponds to
it (which in fact it does not, as I will explain).
2 With “experiencing” in place of “understanding,” a reformulation by Cornelia Müller
2008 from a phenomenological point of view of the definition originally put forth by
Lakoff & Johnson 1980.
3 It is hard to imagine an emblem stemming from a bowling ball, but somewhat absurdly
one can envision a society of slapstick comedians valorizing Figure 9, “The Good is
Dropping a Bowling Ball,” and making it into an emblem, with standards of form,
codified meanings and the rest, as it bounces off Curly’s famously iron-clad head. (A
deeper question is why this is amusing at all.)
4 The letters theory may be right in one sense but backwards. In this backwards version,
the gesture is called “oh-kay” because, while it is actually metaphorizing precision, the
handshape is read pun-like as the letters, “O” and “K.” Whether this has any merit I
cannot say. Efforts to trace the word “okay” to some language source have also been put
forth with equal dubiousness – among the candidates, Choctaw, West African languages,
and Lakota (see the Wikipedia article on “okay history”–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okay, accessed 4 Feb 14). These speculations, however, only
push the precision metaphor origin into another place. Are these cultures equally
obsessed with approbation and its defiance? I do not know but it seems unlikely. The
Wikipedia article dates the first “O.K.” in print to early 1800s Boston newspapers. That
the ring had acquired the approbation meaning in local culture by then is plausible.
5 The “conduit” name itself refers to the “channel” along which the “container” with its
“cargo of meaning” is sent to a “recipient” (quote-marked words are other occurrences of
the same metaphor).
6 It seems lacking in some African cultures, discursive meanings being covered by
completely different imagery; cf. the Turkana, in McNeill 2005.
7 Thanks to Josef Stern of the University of Chicago Department of Philosophy.
8 Thanks to Randall B. McNeill of the Lawrence University Department of Classics for
this and following observations concerning Roman usage.
9 Modern “horn” handshapes in US football and rock music venues have no discernable
connection with beams or, for that matter, bulls (one alludes to cattle, which is not the
same).
10 With Kendon’s (1980) categories in Susan Duncan’s and Karl-Erik McCullough’s
notation – square brackets around the gesture phrase; boldface for the stroke; underlining
for holds, both pre-stroke and post-stroke (details at http://mcneilllab.uchicago.edu/, in
the Analysis section).
11 The “magic” of emblems accordingly requires that speech does not occur. For “magic”
there must not be speech.
