Acceso usuarios
Paul Bouissac
As the semiotics of gestures is in the process of establishing itself as a semiautonomous branch of semiotics, a critical assessment of its methods and goals is in order. This article reviews some of the methodological problems which have hindered the scientific study of gestures, among which the dependence on linguistic models (the lexicon fallacy) and the reliance on phenomenological observations (restricted to the pragmatic sphere). It advocates the construction of broader theoretical perspectives (derived from evolutionary biology and ecology) and the development of methods of inquiry at different scales than the ones constrained by phenomenological observations (direct or mediated by recordings). It concludes by outlining future research on gestures as a new challenge for semiotics.
