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Article published In:
Gesture
Vol. 18:1 (2019) ► pp.1–30

Gesture reuse as distributed embodied cognition

| University of Southern Denmark
| University of Southern Denmark

In this paper, we investigate the intimate link between hands and minds – or rather: How the hands are a means for exploring thoughts in collaboration with others. Specifically, this study investigates a series of locally occurring instances of gestural reuse in naturally occurring psychotherapeutic interaction. The repetition of gestural sequences and formats in interaction has been researched as serving pragmatic functions of building cohesion (McNeill & Levy, 1993) and managing different aspects of turn-taking (Koschmann & LeBaron, 2002). Taking a micro-analytic approach to the study of gesture, we show how reusing other participants’ gestures in the context of psychotherapy serves additional functions: As affordances for shared, embodied cognition. The study contributes to the growing body of research on gesture as a co-participated, co-operative (Goodwin, 2013, 2018) and embodied phenomenon that criss-cross the boundaries of inside-the-skull, individual-centered and socially distributed cognition.

Keywords: gesture repetition, embodied cognition, distributed cognition, cognitive ethnography, psychotherapy
Article outline
  • Introduction: Minded hands
    • Gestural reuse as distributed, embodied cognition
  • Data, methods, and analytical procedures
  • Findings: Embodied and distributed therapy
    • ‘Going fast’: Enacting and identifying a therapeutically salient instance of dialogical behavior
    • Co-operative re-articulation in a gestural haptic and visuo-spatial format
    • Conceptual transformation and incorporation
  • Conclusion and discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • Transcription conventions
  • References
Published online: 11 September 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.00031.phi
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