Distinguished Lectures in Humanities: Gesture, Metaphor, and Spatial Language

Abstract

I will discuss how co-speech (i.e., speech-accompanying) gestures relate to language and conceptualisation underlying language. I will focus on “representational gestures”, which can depict motion, action, and shape or can indicate locations. I will provide evidence for the following two points. Various aspects of language shape co-speech gestures. Conversely, the way we produce co-speech gestures can shape language. I will discuss these issues in relation to manner and path in motion event descriptions, clause-linkage types in complex event descriptions, and metaphor. I will conclude that gesture and language are parts of a "conceptualisation engine”, which takes advantage of unique strengths of spatio-motoric representation and linguistic representation.

About the speaker

Sotaro KITA is Professor of Psychology of Language and Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Warwick, in the UK. After a bachelor and a master's degree in mathematical and information engineering from University of Tokyo. He obtained a PhD in linguistics and psychology from the University of Chicago, in 1993. He established and led the "Gesture Project" at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, in the Netherlands, from 1993 to 2003. Then, he held a faculty position at University of Bristol and University of Birmingham, before joining University of Warwick. He served as the President of the International Society of Gesture Studies and also as the Editor of the journal, GESTURE.

His current research topics include how children’s word learning can be facilitated by sound symbolism and gesture, how communicative contexts influence infants’ and adults’ gesture production, and how “silent gestures” show language-like features.