Sign Language Studies

Maalej, Zouhair.
Gesture, Speech and Sign (review)
Sign Language Studies - Volume 2, Number 1, Fall 2001, pp. 116-131

Gallaudet University Press

Zouhair Maalej - Gesture, Speech and Sign (review) - Sign Language Studies 2:1 Sign Language Studies 2.1 (2001) 116-131 Book Review Gesture, Speech and Sign Gesture, Speech and Sign, by Lynn Messing and Ruth Campbell, editors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, xxv, 227 pp., cloth, $85.00) Gesture, Speech and Sign is an edited collection of eleven papers, including a preface and an introduction. It is organized into three parts: the Neurobiology of Human Communication; the Relationships among Speech, Signs, and Gestures; and Epilogue: A Practical Application. In the preface the editors define the scope of the book as "a genuinely interdisciplinary scientific study of gesture," thus implying that the book is about gesture in relation to sign and speech. Most of the contributors refer to Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought by David McNeill (1992). Synopsis Preface. Messing and Campbell explain the difference between action and gesture, arguing that "gestures work communicatively in ways that other actions do not" and operate under "constraints of a psychological and cognitive nature" (ix). Invoking linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurological evidence, Messing and Campbell present the view that signed languages (SLs) are not mere gestures, arguing that they are full-fledged languages on par with their verbal counterparts. They explain, however, that the reason that the investigation of gestures in SLs has been lagging behind has to do...