Gesture and speech in interaction: An overview

Gestures and speech interact. They are linked in language production and perception, with their interaction contributing to felicitous communication. The multifaceted nature of these interactions has attracted considerable attention from the speech and gesture community. This article provides an overview of our current understanding of manual and head gesture form and function, of the principle functional interactions between gesture and speech aiding communication, transporting meaning and producing speech. Furthermore, we present an overview of research on temporal speech-gesture synchrony, including the special role of prosody in speech-gesture alignment. In addition, we provide a summary of tools and data available for gesture analysis, and describe speech-gesture interaction models and simulations in technical systems. This overview also serves as an introduction to a Special Issue covering a wide range of articles on these topics. We provide links to the Special Issue throughout this paper.