Collective Review: Sandor S. Feldman (1959). Mannerisms of Speech and Gestures in Everyday Life / David McNeill (Ed.) (2000). Language and Gesture / Jan Bremmer & Herman Rooddenburg (Eds.) (1991). A Cultural History of Gesture. From Antiquity to the Present Day / Jean-Claude Schmitt (1992). Die Logik der Gesten im europäischen Mittelalter

Abstract

Language and gestures are traditionally viewed. New approaches try to combine them and see language and gesture as produced by interacting, and embodied minds challenge our understanding of what language is. I try to remind readers of the work by Sandor S. FELDMAN who as a psychoanalyst began to observe gestural manierisms of his patients and considered them a "window to the mind". This formulation than is used by psycholinguist McNEILL, editor of a volume focusing on this theme half a century later. However, gestures are is also embedded in cultural and historical contexts as well, to which the two other books by well known historians (SCHMITT, and BREMMER & ROODDENBURG) refer to. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs020155