Articulatory gestures are the actions necessary to enunciate language. Examples of articulatory gestures are the hand movements necessary to enunciate sign language and the mouth movements of speech. In
semiotic
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...
terms, these are the physical embodiment (signifiers) of speech signs, which are gestural by nature (see below).
The definition of ''
gesture
A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or ot ...
'' varies greatly, but here it will be taken in its widest sense, namely, any meaningful action. An intentional action is meaningful if it is not strictly utilitarian: for example, sending flowers to a friend is a gesture, because this action is performed not only for the purpose of moving flowers from one place to another, but also to express some sentiment or even a conventional message in the
language of flowers
Floriography (language of flowers) is a means of cryptological communication through the use or arrangement of flowers. Meaning has been attributed to flowers for thousands of years, and some form of floriography has been practiced in tradition ...
. Use of the broadest definition of gesture (not restricted to hand movements) allows
Hockett’s “rapid fading”
design feature of human language to be accommodated as a type of sign in semiotic theory.
But if an articulatory gesture is to be considered a true gesture in the above sense, it must be meaningful. Therefore, an articulatory gesture must be at least as large as the smallest meaningful unit of language, the morpheme. A morpheme corresponds roughly to a spoken word or a sign language gesture.
This definition differs from the practice, common among linguists, of referring to phonemes (meaningless mouth movements) as articulatory gestures (see
articulatory phonology Articulatory phonology is a linguistic theory originally proposed in 1986 by Catherine Browman of Haskins Laboratories and Louis Goldstein of University of Southern California and Haskins. The theory identifies theoretical discrepancies between phon ...
). In
semiotics
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...
, meaningless components of spoken gestures (written as individual letters), or meaningless components of sign language gestures (such as location of hand contact) are known as
figurae
Linguists often use the terms phonemes and morphemes to refer, respectively, to the figurae and the signifiers of human languages.
The division of the stream of speech into meaningful morphemes plus their further subdivision into meaningless eleme ...
, the constituents of signs.
It also differs from the tradition of considering speech sounds to be the signifiers of speech signs. But this practice confuses signals with symbols. Sound and light are analogue signals, whereas mouth and hand gestures are discrete symbolic entities. A sound or light signal is subject to random noise, whereas the image of the gesture is subject to regular
distortion, as when a signer's hand is viewed from different angles. In speech, the sound of the contact of the tongue in the letter T can be distorted by surrounding mouth movements, as in the phrase “perfect memory”. When pronounced at conversational speed, the sound of the tongue contact is completely obscured by surrounding consonants even though this T movement is fully carried out.
Articulatory gestures, when seen as the physical embodiment of speech and sign language symbols, provide a link between these two language types, and show how speech resembles sign language more closely than is generally presumed.
See also
*
Language production
Language production is the production of spoken or written language. In psycholinguistics, it describes all of the stages between having a concept to express and translating that concept into linguistic forms. These stages have been described in ...
*
Linguistic performance
The term linguistic performance was used by Noam Chomsky in 1960 to describe "the actual use of language in concrete situations". It is used to describe both the Language production, production, sometimes called '' parole'', as well as the comp ...
References and further reading
* Eccardt, Thomas. (2006). "The case for articulatory gestures -- not sounds -- as the physical embodiment of speech signs." In Joseph Davis, Radmila J. Gorup and Nancy Stern. ''Advances in Functional Linguistics:
Columbia School
The Columbia School of Linguistics is a group of linguists with a radically functional and empirical conception of language. According to their school of thought, the main function of language is communication, and it is this fact that guides the ...
beyond its Origins.'' Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
* Hockett, Charles. (1960). "Logical Considerations in the Study of Animal Communication." In W. Lanyon and W. Tavogla (eds.), ''Animal Sounds and Communication.'' Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Biological Sciences
Semiotics
Gestures
Phonetics
Human communication
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