Putting the cyclic gesture on a cognitive basis

In this paper we describe the cognitive model that governs the forms and uses of the cyclic gesture, recurrent in a corpus of spontaneous German conversations. The gesture shows a stable form-meaning relationship: The continuous circular outward movement correlates with the semantic core of cyclic continuity in each context of use. On the basis of a thorough analysis of each of the 56 instances found in the data, we found that the cyclic gesture is not used randomly but distributed over a stable set of contexts of use showing a systematic variation of form and meaning. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that the image schema cycle, which the core of this gesture is reminiscent of, is metaphorically construed drawing on the metaphors mind is a machine, body is a machine, and time is motion through space. According to these findings, we argue for a shared underlying Idealized Cognitive Model (ICM, cf. Lakoff 1987) which functions as a model for thinking about and classifying cyclic events and guides the uses of this gesture. Via our study, we can give a new, semantic, perspective on the notion of gesture families.