Why Do We Move Our Hands When We Talk?

Written with Gretchen McCulloch and Molly Ruhl, with an assist from Lauren Gawne.

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REFERENCES:

Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bernard, J. A., B Millman, Z., & Mittal, V. A. (2015).
Lederer, J. (2019). Gesturing the source domain: The role of co-speech gesture in the metaphorical models of gender transition. Metaphor and the Social World, 9(1), 32-58.
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lederer, J. (2019). Gesturing the source domain: The role of co-speech gesture in the metaphorical models of gender transition. Metaphor and the Social World, 9(1), 32-58.
McNeill, D. Gesture: a Psycholinguistic Approach.
Kendon, A. (2000). Language and gesture: Unity or duality? In D. McNeill (Ed.), Language and gesture: Window into thought and action (pp. 47-63). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Iverson, J., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1998). Why people gesture when they speak. Nature, 396(6708), 228-228.
McNeill, D. (1985). So you think gestures are nonverbal? Psychological Review, 92(3), 350-371.

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[TomScottGo]

I apologise in advance for the final line of this script.

[PaulPaulPaulson]

If our hands and arms are unavailable, we can compensate by shooting lasers from other parts of our body

[dexis]

“I don’t want a gif of that haunting me for the rest of my life”

We were on the verge of greatness. We were _this_ close

[FaustianBargainBin]

Me: *makes a gesture with my hands to indicate an object*
linguists: iconic

[ipermaga]

As an italian I always feel called out when this topic comes up

[madpod]

“I don’t want a gif of that haunting me for the rest of my life”

Cowardice

[crunglemcbungley]

"If you swap fingers-" *carefully avoids middle finger without saying anything*

[TheRealGirlWeeb]

Tactically skipping the middle finger there

[PLuMUK]

I was a teacher for 35 years, and became very well known for my gestures, to the extent that I was asked more than once why I was not an actor. I also used to pace around the classroom, drawing all of the class into a lesson.

I was once challenged to teach a lesson without moving. I sat on my hands to prevent any movement, but after 5 minutes the class asked me to return to normal. I had gone from a fluent and confident speaker with often dramatic gestures to a hesitant and bumbling speaker who forgot what they were saying, used "umm" and "erm" repeatedly. I could barely string words together to create meaningful sentences.

Since then I have regarded gesture as the conducting of the orchestra of my speech.

Unfortunately, I am just as dramatic when talking on the phone, much to the amusement of others, but if i stop, again my words dry up.

[SuicideBunny]

1:45 Tom tactically skipping another emblem ...

[Mocsk]

1999: emoji are basically gestures for the internet
2019: gestures are basically emoji for the real world

[rickseiden]

Tom's a very beat oriented gesturer. His favorite is left hand in a fist, thumb up, about belly button height, right hand palm down fingers spread coming down on top of the fist (0:15). It's a very uniquely "Tom" gesture.

[surdscraps]

"I would demonstrate that by dabbing, but I don't want a GIF of that to haunt me for the rest of my life." At this point, there are much much worse things you could do than dab. The floss comes to mind.

[AdamNeely]

neat. Every single gesture made in this video was prosodic - it fit with the stress-timed rhythm of English. Is it possible to gesture against prosody?

[ZiRR]

"Soundwaves are gone and they are never coming back"
Say that to my left arrow key

[wonderblt]

I really love Tom has gotten back into his original field, Linguistics. He's a good science communicator and Linguistics is very interesting to a lot of people, I think.

[Contra]

When someone asks me what "Dabbing" is, my favorite description is "Imagine a Nazi sneezing mid-salute".

[DomenBremecXCVI]

Because moving someone else's is weird.

[alissaswan]

"once its gone, its not coming back"
Me: goes back 10 seconds

[Tommo_]

When I went to japan as an exchange student, I sat in some of their English lessons. In the particular school I went to, they actually had "gesture" classes, where they would learn the correct gestures to do alongside their English speaking. Turns out that in Japanese, people rarely gesture anything at all, which is baffling to me.