David McNeill Livres

Bringing together twenty-five years of research, Why We Gesture offers a radical new perspective on gesture-speech unity.

Using data from more than ten years of research, David McNeill shows that gestures do not simply form a part of what is said and meant but have an impact on thought itself. Hand and Mind persuasively argues that because gestures directly transfer mental images to visible forms, conveying ideas that language cannot always express, we must examine language and gesture together to unveil the operations of the mind.

In March of 2011, a 9.0 earthquake struck off the northeastern coast of Japan, unleashing a tsunami onto the densely populated coast. Over 19,000 people would be left dead, or missing, and the disaster triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis since a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear plant. As the world offered support, people everywhere wondered how the Japanese, facing such horrific destruction, were able to exhibit such calm, selflessness, and fortitude in picking up the pieces. Blending history, science, and gripping storytelling, Strong in the Rain vividly explores the country beyond the headlines, as well as the personal and national stories behind the earthquake. Following the narratives of six individuals, including a worker in the Fukushima nuclear plant who returned to work during the meltdown and the mayor of a coastal town who stayed round the clock on the job without knowing the fate of his family, it offers a glimpse of the surprising ways the Japanese people stood strong in the face of disaster.

The book explores the intricate relationship between speech and thought, presenting a fresh perspective that challenges modern linguistic and psycholinguistic theories. Building on Vygotsky's foundational ideas, it emphasizes the organization of action, positing that speech emerges from sensory-motor representations that intertwine meaning and action. This work aims to provide a deeper understanding of how language and cognitive processes are interconnected.

Human language is not the same as human speech. We use gestures and signs to communicate alongside, or instead of, speaking. Yet gestures and speech are processed in the same areas of the human brain, and the study of how both have evolved is central to research on the origins of human communication. Written by one of the pioneers of the field, this is the first book to explain how speech and gesture evolved together into a system that all humans possess. Nearly all theorizing about the origins of language either ignores gesture, views it as an add-on or supposes that language began in gesture and was later replaced by speech. David McNeill challenges the popular 'gesture-first' theory that language first emerged in a gesture-only form and proposes a groundbreaking theory of the evolution of language which explains how speech and gesture became unified.