The exbodied mind: Cognitive-semiotic principles as motivating forces in gesture

Building on the premises of the embodied mind (e.g. Gibbs 2006; Johnson 1987), this talk presents an approach to manual gestures and full-body enactments that centers on how cognitive-semiotic principles – such as iconicity, indexicality, metaphor and metonymy – seem to drive the expression (i.e. ‘exbodiment) of ideas, inclinations, emotions, etc. in multimodal performance acts. The focus will be on how semiotic modes (Jakobson 1956; Peirce 1960) as well as related conceptual schemata may structure and thus lend some systematicity to spontaneous communicative bodily movements integrated with speech. Of central interest are the ways in which image schemas and other cognitively entrenched patterns of experience – arisen from visual perception, navigation through space, tactile exploration and other practices of bodily interaction with the material and social world – may be said to not only underpin gestural sign formation and the use of gesture space, but also guide, at least to some degree, gesture interpretation.

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