Towards an Ecology of Gesture: A Review (And Some Promising Paths)

Despite the ‘embodied’ turn that gesture studies have been taking, the extent to which the body actually contributes to the realization of thought remains questionable. Due, in large part, to the preoccupation of ‘embodied cognitivism’ with co-verbal gestures, the material world and the gestures engaging it are usually left out of discussion. That said, there is a small but growing corpus of literature on the cognitive effects of gesture that seeks to account for the performative role of the body, as well as the scaffolding function of the physical world. The purpose of this book chapter is to outline the arguments presented by the main representatives of what we loosely call here ‘ecological’ approaches. Our goal for doing so is two-fold: i) to highlight the important insights gained about gesture through an ecological lens, and ii) to identify promising lines of inquiry for future research. What we identify as an approach suitably geared towards studying gesture, and especially its creative variety, is a theoretical framework grounded on the combination of Material Engagement Theory and Peircean semiotics.