Speech and gesture: an integrational approach

In this paper, gestures accompanying speech are considered as an integral part of human linguistic communication. It is shown that gestures and speech are functionally convergent: they can be used to fulfill the same linguistic functions in conversation. Then the gestural nature of speech is argued for: since oral gestures produce speech, it can be maintained that speech is also a gestural mean of communication. It is also shown that non-verbal gestures can also take part in the structure of verbal sentences as constituent components playing a regular syntactic role. All these phenomena can be used to argue in favor of an integrational view of human language, in the line of that proposed by Harris.

► In this paper I show that speech and manual gestures complement each other in linguistic communication. ► I also show that spoken expressions and gestures can serve the same linguistic functions. ► Gesture and speech make a distinct meaningful contribution to the whole speech act, even when fulfilling the same function. ► The speech-gesture interaction is essential for a good understanding of human linguistic communication.