K Cooperrider
Biographic Data
| ID | 58755 |
|---|---|
| NAME | K Cooperrider |
| GIVEN NAMES | K |
| FAMILY NAME | Cooperrider |
| SIGNATURE | COOPERRIDER K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5127-9377 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Emblems: Meaning at the interface of language and gesture
Emblems—the THUMBS UP, the HEAD SHAKE, the PEACE SIGN, the SHHH—are communicative gestures that have a conventional form and conventional meaning within a particular community. This makes them more “word-like” than other gestures and gives them a distinctive position at the interface between language and gesture. Here we provide an overview of emblems as a recurring feature of the human communicative toolkit. We first discuss the major defining f…
Fifteen ways of looking at a pointing gesture
The human pointing gesture may be viewed from many angles. On a basic description, it is an intentional movement, often of the hand, by which one person tries to direct another’s attention toward something; it is, in short, a bodily command to look. But this definition is only a start. Pointing may also be seen as a semiotic primitive, a philosophical puzzle, a communicative workhorse, a protean universal, a social tool, a widespread taboo, a par…
The ups and downs of space and time: Topography in Yupno language, culture, and cognition
Much prior research has investigated how humans understand time using body-based contrasts like front / back and left / right. It has recently come to light, however, that some communities instead understand time using environment -based contrasts. Here, we present the richest portrait yet of one such case: the topographic system used by the Yupno of Papua New Guinea, in which the past is construed as downhill and the future as uphill. We first s…
Emblems: Gestures at the interface
Emblems-the THUMBS UP, the HEADSHAKE, the PEACE SIGN, the SHHH-are communicative gestures that have a conventional form and conventional meaning within a particular community. These and other features make them more "word-like" than other gestures. It also positions them at the interface between different communicative phenomena-language and gesture, speech and sign-and between different fields. Here we provide an overview of this recurring featu…
How Pointing is Integrated into Language: Evidence From Speakers and Signers
When people speak or sign, they not only describe using words but also depict and indicate. How are these different methods of communication integrated? Here, we focus on pointing and, in particular, on commonalities and differences in how pointing is integrated into language by speakers and signers. One aspect of this integration is semantic —how pointing is integrated with the meaning conveyed by the surrounding language. Another aspect is stru…
Universals and diversity in gesture: Research past, present, and future
At the dawn of anthropology, gesture was widely considered a “universal language”. In the 20th century, however, this framing fell out of favor as anthropologists rejected universalism in favor of relativism. These polemical positions were largely fueled by high-flying rhetoric and second-hand report; researchers had neither the data nor the conceptual frameworks to stake out substantive positions. Today we have much more data, but our frameworks…
The Palm-Up Puzzle: Meanings and Origins of a Widespread Form in Gesture and Sign
During communication, speakers commonly rotate their forearms so that their palms turn upward. Yet despite more than a century of observations of such palm-up gestures, their meanings and origins have proven difficult to pin down. We distinguish two gestures within the palm-up form family: the palm-up presentational and the palm-up epistemic. The latter is a term we introduce to refer to a variant of the palm-up that prototypically involves later…
Foreground gesture, background gesture
Do speakers intend their gestures to communicate? Central as this question is to the study of gesture, researchers cannot seem to agree on the answer. According to one common framing, gestures are an “unwitting” window into the mind ( McNeill, 1992 ); but, according to another common framing, they are designed along with speech to form “composite utterances” ( Enfield, 2009 ). These two framings correspond to two cultures within gesture studies –…
The Co-Organization of Demonstratives and Pointing Gestures
Demonstratives and pointing gestures are universal, early emerging, and ubiquitous, and it has long been claimed that there is a special relationship between them. But what exactly is the nature of this relationship? The present study investigates this question using a referential communication task. Speakers referred to targets that were near or far and pointed with the hand (more ambiguous) or a laser pointer (less ambiguous). Demonstratives an…
Gesture for Linguists: A Handy Primer
Humans communicate using language, but they also communicate usinggesture- spontaneous movements of the hands and body that universally accompany speech. Gestures can be distinguished from other movements, segmented, and assigned meaning based on their forms and functions. Moreover, gestures systematically integrate with language at all levels of linguistic structure, as evidenced in both production and perception. Viewed typologically, gesture i…
Body-directed gestures: Pointing to the self and beyond
The tangle of space and time in human cognition
Nose-pointing: Notes on a facial gesture of Papua New Guinea
This article describes a previously undocumented deictic facial gesture of Papua New Guinea, which we call nose-pointing . Based on a video corpus of examples produced by speakers of Yupno, an indigenous language of Papua New Guinea’s Finisterre Range, we characterize the gesture’s morphology — which involves an effortful scrunching together of the face, or S-action , in combination with a deictic head movement — and illustrate its use in differe…
Across time, across the body: Transversal temporal gestures
Talk about time is commonly accompanied by co-speech gesture. Though much recent work has looked at how time is construed as space in the languages of the world, few studies have examined temporal gestures in any detail. Our focus is on a particular pattern among American English speakers — transversal temporal gestures — in which time is conceptualized as moving from left to right across the body. Based on numerous examples elicited in a control…
Body-directed gestures: Pointing to the self and beyond
Foreground gesture, background gesture
Do speakers intend their gestures to communicate? Central as this question is to the study of gesture, researchers cannot seem to agree on the answer. According to one common framing, gestures are an “unwitting” window into the mind ( McNeill, 1992 ); but, according to another common framing, they are designed along with speech to form “composite utterances” ( Enfield, 2009 ). These two framings correspond to two cultures within gesture studies –…
Across time, across the body: Transversal temporal gestures
Talk about time is commonly accompanied by co-speech gesture. Though much recent work has looked at how time is construed as space in the languages of the world, few studies have examined temporal gestures in any detail. Our focus is on a particular pattern among American English speakers — transversal temporal gestures — in which time is conceptualized as moving from left to right across the body. Based on numerous examples elicited in a control…
Nose-pointing: Notes on a facial gesture of Papua New Guinea
This article describes a previously undocumented deictic facial gesture of Papua New Guinea, which we call nose-pointing . Based on a video corpus of examples produced by speakers of Yupno, an indigenous language of Papua New Guinea’s Finisterre Range, we characterize the gesture’s morphology — which involves an effortful scrunching together of the face, or S-action , in combination with a deictic head movement — and illustrate its use in differe…
Gesture for Linguists: A Handy Primer
Humans communicate using language, but they also communicate usinggesture- spontaneous movements of the hands and body that universally accompany speech. Gestures can be distinguished from other movements, segmented, and assigned meaning based on their forms and functions. Moreover, gestures systematically integrate with language at all levels of linguistic structure, as evidenced in both production and perception. Viewed typologically, gesture i…
Universals and diversity in gesture: Research past, present, and future
At the dawn of anthropology, gesture was widely considered a “universal language”. In the 20th century, however, this framing fell out of favor as anthropologists rejected universalism in favor of relativism. These polemical positions were largely fueled by high-flying rhetoric and second-hand report; researchers had neither the data nor the conceptual frameworks to stake out substantive positions. Today we have much more data, but our frameworks…
The Co-Organization of Demonstratives and Pointing Gestures
Demonstratives and pointing gestures are universal, early emerging, and ubiquitous, and it has long been claimed that there is a special relationship between them. But what exactly is the nature of this relationship? The present study investigates this question using a referential communication task. Speakers referred to targets that were near or far and pointed with the hand (more ambiguous) or a laser pointer (less ambiguous). Demonstratives an…
Across time, across the body: Transversal temporal gestures
Talk about time is commonly accompanied by co-speech gesture. Though much recent work has looked at how time is construed as space in the languages of the world, few studies have examined temporal gestures in any detail. Our focus is on a particular pattern among American English speakers — transversal temporal gestures — in which time is conceptualized as moving from left to right across the body. Based on numerous examples elicited in a control…
Nose-pointing: Notes on a facial gesture of Papua New Guinea
This article describes a previously undocumented deictic facial gesture of Papua New Guinea, which we call nose-pointing . Based on a video corpus of examples produced by speakers of Yupno, an indigenous language of Papua New Guinea’s Finisterre Range, we characterize the gesture’s morphology — which involves an effortful scrunching together of the face, or S-action , in combination with a deictic head movement — and illustrate its use in differe…
The tangle of space and time in human cognition
Body-directed gestures: Pointing to the self and beyond
Gesture for Linguists: A Handy Primer
Humans communicate using language, but they also communicate usinggesture- spontaneous movements of the hands and body that universally accompany speech. Gestures can be distinguished from other movements, segmented, and assigned meaning based on their forms and functions. Moreover, gestures systematically integrate with language at all levels of linguistic structure, as evidenced in both production and perception. Viewed typologically, gesture i…
The Co-Organization of Demonstratives and Pointing Gestures
Demonstratives and pointing gestures are universal, early emerging, and ubiquitous, and it has long been claimed that there is a special relationship between them. But what exactly is the nature of this relationship? The present study investigates this question using a referential communication task. Speakers referred to targets that were near or far and pointed with the hand (more ambiguous) or a laser pointer (less ambiguous). Demonstratives an…
Foreground gesture, background gesture
Do speakers intend their gestures to communicate? Central as this question is to the study of gesture, researchers cannot seem to agree on the answer. According to one common framing, gestures are an “unwitting” window into the mind ( McNeill, 1992 ); but, according to another common framing, they are designed along with speech to form “composite utterances” ( Enfield, 2009 ). These two framings correspond to two cultures within gesture studies –…
The Palm-Up Puzzle: Meanings and Origins of a Widespread Form in Gesture and Sign
During communication, speakers commonly rotate their forearms so that their palms turn upward. Yet despite more than a century of observations of such palm-up gestures, their meanings and origins have proven difficult to pin down. We distinguish two gestures within the palm-up form family: the palm-up presentational and the palm-up epistemic. The latter is a term we introduce to refer to a variant of the palm-up that prototypically involves later…
Universals and diversity in gesture: Research past, present, and future
At the dawn of anthropology, gesture was widely considered a “universal language”. In the 20th century, however, this framing fell out of favor as anthropologists rejected universalism in favor of relativism. These polemical positions were largely fueled by high-flying rhetoric and second-hand report; researchers had neither the data nor the conceptual frameworks to stake out substantive positions. Today we have much more data, but our frameworks…
How Pointing is Integrated into Language: Evidence From Speakers and Signers
When people speak or sign, they not only describe using words but also depict and indicate. How are these different methods of communication integrated? Here, we focus on pointing and, in particular, on commonalities and differences in how pointing is integrated into language by speakers and signers. One aspect of this integration is semantic —how pointing is integrated with the meaning conveyed by the surrounding language. Another aspect is stru…
The ups and downs of space and time: Topography in Yupno language, culture, and cognition
Much prior research has investigated how humans understand time using body-based contrasts like front / back and left / right. It has recently come to light, however, that some communities instead understand time using environment -based contrasts. Here, we present the richest portrait yet of one such case: the topographic system used by the Yupno of Papua New Guinea, in which the past is construed as downhill and the future as uphill. We first s…
Emblems: Gestures at the interface
Emblems-the THUMBS UP, the HEADSHAKE, the PEACE SIGN, the SHHH-are communicative gestures that have a conventional form and conventional meaning within a particular community. These and other features make them more "word-like" than other gestures. It also positions them at the interface between different communicative phenomena-language and gesture, speech and sign-and between different fields. Here we provide an overview of this recurring featu…
Fifteen ways of looking at a pointing gesture
The human pointing gesture may be viewed from many angles. On a basic description, it is an intentional movement, often of the hand, by which one person tries to direct another’s attention toward something; it is, in short, a bodily command to look. But this definition is only a start. Pointing may also be seen as a semiotic primitive, a philosophical puzzle, a communicative workhorse, a protean universal, a social tool, a widespread taboo, a par…
Emblems: Meaning at the interface of language and gesture
Emblems—the THUMBS UP, the HEAD SHAKE, the PEACE SIGN, the SHHH—are communicative gestures that have a conventional form and conventional meaning within a particular community. This makes them more “word-like” than other gestures and gives them a distinctive position at the interface between language and gesture. Here we provide an overview of emblems as a recurring feature of the human communicative toolkit. We first discuss the major defining f…
Hearing Impairment and Communication (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Linguistics (11 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Gesture (9 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (9 works) · Communication (8 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Communication (6 works)