Why is talking along with gestures so much easier than trying to talk without gesturing?
—Lionel Halvorsen, Cornith, Tex.
Michael P. Kaschak, an associate professor of psychology at Florida State University, offers an explanation:
A person in a fit of rage may have trouble verbalizing thoughts and feelings, but his or her tightly clenched fists will get the message across just fine.
Gesturing is a ubiquitous accompaniment to speech. It conveys information that may be difficult to articulate otherwise. Speaking without gesturing is less intuitive and requires more thought. Without the ability to gesture, information that a simple movement could have easily conveyed needs to be translated into a more complex string of words. For instance, pointing to keys on the table and saying, “The keys are there,” is much faster and simpler than uttering, “Your keys are right behind you on the countertop, next to the book.”
The link between speech and gesture appears to have a neurological basis. In 2007 Jeremy Skipper, a developmental psychobiologist at Cornell University, used fMRI to show that when comprehending speech, Broca’s area (the part of the cortex associated with both speech production and language and gesture comprehension) appears to “talk” to other brain regions less when the speech is accompanied by gesture. When gesture is present, Broca’s area has an easier time processing the content of speech and therefore may not need to draw on other brain regions to understand what is being expressed. Such observations illustrate the close link between speech and gesture.
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7 Comments
Add Commenti think the simple explanation for this is that our minds are born thinking visually, not verbally. Making gestures with our hands is a more natural way of recreating the thoughts within our minds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisretardedracoon - That is an interesting perspective, although the 'circuitry' for language soon develops, at around 5 years the 'circuitry' that is unused in the specific language learned is deleted. This process produces difficulties in making certain sounds (such as 'r' for Japanese) that are not used in the native language, and the increased difficulty of learning new languages after around 5 years..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile the ability to learn language develops in brain hardware, is is completed in software. This allows for speakers of different native languages and, more importantly, the evolution of languages. If we were were born with a complete language hardwired into our brain circuitry, language would not likely evolve over time.
It'd be interesting to survey hand gestures in common usage by people around the world. It seems that most (with perhaps a few exceptions, such as Italy) are also performed by the preferred hand.
I have traveled continuously for 12 years, I will go to any country, however readers of my blog are afraid. They believe language is needed, I tell them often, I can say about anything I want with hand gestures, I do not feel compelled to learn a language. One day, I will do a collage of all the hand gestures I have learned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLanguage is for explaining how I live you, buy our daily bread is easily done with hand gestures.
Andy Graham of HoboTraveler.com in Guatemala 2010
The reason is simple. Hand gestures assist in the creation of free-flowing speech. They provide momentum.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA more challenging question is the reason for head movement during speech.
D J Wray
www.atotalawareness.com
In Venezuela the people will point with their nose, I asked a person which direction to go, he pointed, but I thought he was ignoring me...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am rather sure this also happens in Dominican Republic.
what then is the difference between cultures who use a lot of gestures and those that use few?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjtdwyer, I thought that the increased difficulty of learning a 2nd language after the age of 5 {that you mention} was a myth, unsupported by evidence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm only aware of one major study, from Britain in the 1970s, which found that starting a 2nd language earlier actually held students back, compared to starting later.
Living in Budapest, I've also met a lot of people who are supposedly bilingual in English and Hungarian due to childhood exposure to both, but whom I've heard make mistakes in both languages. But their Hungarian-speaking friends assume the "bilingual" person is perfect in English, while their English-speaking friends assume the bilingual person is perfect in Hungarian.
Check - I think you'll find this folk belief is very common, but is under attack from linguists researching the field.