Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. David McNeill. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 416 pp.

Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought

Dialogue has become a central theoretical concept in human and social sciences as well as in professions such as education, health, and psychotherapy. This 'dialogical turn' emphasises the importance of social relations and interaction to our behaviour and how we make sense of the world; hence the dialogical mind is the mind in interaction with others - with individuals, groups, institutions, and cultures in historical perspectives. Through a combination of rigorous theoretical work and empirical investigation, Markova presents an ethics of dialogicality as an alternative to the narrow perspective of individualism and cognitivism that has traditionally dominated the field of social psychology. The dialogical perspective, which focuses on interdependencies among the self and others, offers a powerful theoretical basis to comprehend, analyse, and discuss complex social issues. Markova considers the implications of dialogical epistemology both in daily life and in professional practices involving problems of communication, care, and therapy.

The Dialogical Mind: Common Sense and Ethics

The spontaneous gestures that speakers produce when they talk about a task reflect aspects of the speakers' knowledge about that task, aspects that are often not found in the speech that accompanies the gestures. But gesture can go beyond reflecting a speaker's current knowledge—it frequently presages the next steps the speaker will take in acquiring new knowledge, suggesting that gesture may play a role in cognitive change. To investigate this hypothesis, we explore the functions gesture serves with respect to both communication (the effects gesture has on listeners) and cognition (the effects gesture has on speakers themselves). We also explore the mechanisms that underlie the production of gesture, and we provide evidence that gesture has roots in speech, visuospatial thinking, and action. Gesturing is not merely hand waving, nor is it merely a window into the mind. It can affect how we think and reason and, as such, offers a useful tool to both learners and researchers.

Gesture in Thought

Low readability is a main concern regarding communication with persons with congenital deafblindness (Nafstad & Rodbroe, 2015). This is because most of the expressions come from the bodily-tactile modality and are often based on tactile iconicity. It is difficult for a seeing and hearing partner to understand these expressions from the perspective of cultural language.
The goal of this qualitative study is to show the emergence of sign constructions based on heightened tactile perception (Borchgrevink, 2002; Nicholas, 2004). Two videos, each showing one of two participants with congenital deafblindness, were subjected to qualitative micro-analysis. A key focus of this research concerns the combination of exploration and cognitive processing indicated by self-addressed expressions, and how this combination contributes to sign constructions. The linguistic quality of these sign constructions is further examined by detailing handshape, movement and location according to the work by Stokoe, 1960 and Bellugi & Klima, 2001. The results provide support for the proposition of a new sign category based on heightened tactile perception. 
https://doi.org/10.21827/jdbsc.4.31373

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Sign Construction Based on Heightened Tactile Perception by Persons with Congenital Deafblindness

Introduction: Very little research has been done on the transition of newly qualified professionals onto the working field. They often feel vulnerable, due to the differences between them and the experienced professionals. With present study the researcher wanted to investigate whether introducing newly qualified professionals to a specific theoretical model, can help improve their competence in the field of deafblindness and reduce the gap between newly qualified professionals at the start of their careers and expert professionals. The study was specifically aimed at an intervention in applying the Real Space Blend Model to improve competences in the interpretations of gestures of persons with CDB in both groups of professionals. Method: The study used a qualitative design based on individual video-analyses and focus groups. Results: In two of the newly qualified professionals a considerable increase in the number of gestures was seen. Such an increase was also found for one of the expert professionals. Two other expert professionals showed a little change in the overall number of gestures. From the thematic analysis, different themes came forward for each focus group. Newly qualified professionals seemed overall more confident after the intervention, while experienced professionals seemed to have more difficulties grasping the model of Real Space Blends. The expert professionals felt more aware about their identification of gestures in practice. Conclusion and discussion: The training did improve competences in newly qualified professionals. The main effect was an increase in confidence in their abilities. Experienced professionals, on the other hand, experienced more difficulties in learning how to use the model of the Real Space Blends, but found the model very useful in practice to add on the Diagnostic Intervention Model. Some limitations of this study were the small amount of participants and that there were more experienced professionals than newly qualified professionals. More extensive research on the transition of newly qualified professionals is recommended.

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Improving Competences of Newly Qualified Professionals

Persons with congenital deafblindness produce gestures and movements which do not seem to belong to a symbolic system although in many cases, they seem to convey elements of meaning. In order to see to what extent and in which manner they carry meaning, a relevant theoretical framework is necessary. The concept of Real Space Blend, which was worked out by Scott Liddell (2003) in the field of sign languages and describes how elements of the Real Space are used to refer to elements of the Narrative Space, could prove to be effective for that purpose. This article explains the concept of Real Space Blend and explores the possibility to extend it to contexts that do not involve sign language (like spoken productions of seeing-hearing people). Besides, its applicability is tried out on one example of video-analysis drawn from the field of congenital deafblindness using a descriptive method that could be used for further replication, criticism and improvement in the same field. It results from this investigation that the Real Space Blend model could be quite effective for describing how the body is communicatively used by people with congenital deafblindness and relevant for the description of human communication beyond the field of sign language.

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Jacques Souriau

Papers

Blended Spaces and Deixis in Communicative Activities Involving Persons with Congenital Deafblindness