The Impulse to Gesture

Simon Harrison is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of English at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. His research has played a central role in bridging the divide between grammar and gesture.

• 1. The impulse to gesture: spontaneous but constrained; 2. The grammar-gesture nexus: a mechanism for regularity in gesture; 3. Sync points in speech: evidence of grammatical affiliation for gesture; 4. Gesture as construal: blockage, force, and distance in space and mind; 5. Gesture sequences: wrist as hinge for shifts in discourse; 6. Patterns of gesturing: the business of 'horizontal palming'; 7. Wiping away: embodied interaction in speech and sign; 8. Impulse theory: how, when, and why we gesture.

'Harrison's book offers an excellent example for how multimodal language use can be approached with a focus on grammatical phenomena. Numerous nicely discussed examples and a well-grounded discussion of theoretical and methodological aspects for such an endeavor make the book attractive to students as well as advanced scholars interested in a usage-based perspective on multimodal language use.' Jana Bressem, Journal of Pragmatics