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== Research throughout the ages == Gestures have been studied throughout time from different philosophers.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Kendon|first=A|author-link=Adam Kendon|year=1982|title=The study of gesture: Some observations on its history|journal=Recherches Sémiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry|volume=2|issue=1|pages=45–62}}</ref> [[Quintilian|Marcus Fabius Quintilianus]] was a [[Roman people|Roman]] [[Rhetoric]]ian who studied in his Institutio Oratoria on how gesture can be used on rhetorical discourses. One of his greatest works and foundation for [[communication]] was the "[[Institutio Oratoria]]" where he explains his observations and nature of different oratories.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Quintilian|title=Quintilian {{!}} Roman rhetorician|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia Britannica|access-date=2018-10-15|language=en|archive-date=2018-09-06|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180906151519/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Quintilian|url-status=live}}</ref> A study done in 1644, by [[John Bulwer]] an [[English people|English]] [[physician]] and early [[Baconian method|Baconian]] [[Natural philosophy|natural philosopher]] wrote five works exploring human communications pertaining to gestures.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Wollock | first1 = J | year = 2002 | title = John Bulwer (1606–1656) and the significance of gesture in 17th-century theories of language and cognition | journal = Gesture | volume = 2 | issue = 2| page = 227 | doi = 10.1075/gest.2.2.06wol }}</ref> Bulwer analyzed dozens of gestures and provided a guide under his book named Chirologia which focused on hand gestures.<ref>{{cite book|title=Chirologia: or the Naturall Language of the Hand|url=https://archive.org/details/b30324907|last=Bulwer|first=J|year=1644|location=London|author-link=John Bulwer}}</ref> In the 19th century, [[Andrea De Jorio]] an Italian [[antiquarian]] who considered a lot of research about [[body language]] published an extensive account of gesture expressions.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lw8tzmu9-GYC|title=Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity|last=de Jorio|first=A|publisher=[[Indiana University Press]]|year=2002|isbn=978-0253215062|author-link=Andrea de Jorio|orig-year=1832|access-date=2015-11-17|archive-date=2012-09-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120920170752/http://books.google.com/books?id=lw8tzmu9-GYC|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Andrew N. Meltzoff]] an American psychologist internationally renown for infant and child development conducted a study in 1977 on the imitation of facial and manual gestures by newborns. The study concluded that "infants between 12 and 21 days of age can imitate the facial and manual gestures of parents".<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Meltzoff|first1=A. N.|last2=Moore|first2=M. K.|date=1977-10-07|title=Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates|journal=Science|volume=198|issue=4312|pages=74–78|issn=0036-8075|pmid=897687|doi=10.1126/science.897687|bibcode=1977Sci...198...75M|doi-access=}}</ref> In 1992, [[David McNeill|David Mcneill]], a professor of [[linguistics]] and [[psychology]] at the [[University of Chicago]], wrote a book based on his ten years of research and concluded that "gestures do not simply form a part of what is said, but have an impact on thought itself." Meltzoff argues that gestures directly transfer thoughts into visible forms, showing that ideas and language cannot always be express.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo3641188.html|title=Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought.|last=McNeill|first=D|date=1992|publisher=University of Chicago Press |access-date=2018-12-05|archive-date=2018-12-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181205193712/https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo3641188.html|url-status=live}}</ref> A peer-reviewed journal Gesture has been published since 2001,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/gest/issues|title=Gesture Issues|date=2016|website=benjamins.com|publisher=Benjamins|access-date=2016-10-11|archive-date=2015-05-01|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150501194533/https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/gest/issues|url-status=live}}</ref> and was founded by [[Adam Kendon]] and [[Cornelia Müller]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.gesturestudies.com/history.php|title=A brief history of the origins of the ISGS|last=Müller|first=Cornelia|website=ISGS: International Society for Gesture Studies|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161011231434/http://www.gesturestudies.com/history.php|archive-date=2016-10-11|url-status=dead}}</ref> The International Society for Gesture Studies (ISGS) was founded in 2002.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://gesturestudies.com/|title=International Society for Gesture Studies (ISGS)|last=Andrén|first=Mats|website=gesturestudies.com|access-date=2016-10-11|archive-date=2016-10-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161011231131/http://gesturestudies.com/|url-status=live}}</ref> Gesture has frequently been taken up by researchers in the field of dance studies and performance studies in ways that emphasize the ways they are culturally and contextually inflected. Performance scholar Carrie Noland describes gestures as "learned techniques of the body" and stresses the way gestures are embodied corporeal forms of cultural communication.<ref>Noland, Carrie. ''Agency and Embodiment : Performing Gestures/producing Culture''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009. p. 2. </ref> But rather than just residing within one cultural context, she describes how gestures migrate across bodies and locations to create new cultural meanings and associations. She also posits how they might function as a form of "resistance to homogenization" because they are so dependent on the specification of the bodies that perform them.<ref>Noland, Carrie. "Introduction." ''Migration of Gesture''. Ed. Carrie Noland and Sally Ann Ness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. p. x. </ref> Gesture has also been taken up within [[queer theory]], [[ethnic studies]] and their intersections in [[performance studies]], as a way to think about how the moving body gains social meaning. [[José Esteban Muñoz]] uses the idea of gesture to mark a kind of refusal of finitude and certainty and links gesture to his ideas of ephemera. [[José Esteban Muñoz|Muñoz]] specifically draws on the African-American dancer and [[drag queen]] performer [[Kevin Aviance]] to articulate his interest not in what queer gestures might mean, but what they might perform.<ref>Muñoz, José Esteban. ''Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity''. New York: New York University Press, 2009. </ref> Juana María Rodríguez borrows ideas of [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]] and draws on Noland and Muñoz to investigate how gesture functions in queer sexual practices as a way to rewrite gender and negotiate power relations. She also connects gesture to [[Giorgio Agamben]]'s idea of "means without ends" to think about political projects of social justice that are incomplete, partial, and legibile within culturally and socially defined spheres of meaning.<ref>Rodríguez, Juana María. ''Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings''. New York: NYU Press, 2014. </ref> Within the field of linguistics, the most hotly contested aspect of gesture revolves around the subcategory of Lexical or Iconic Co-Speech Gestures. Adam Kendon was the first to hypothesize on their purpose when he argued that Lexical gestures do work to amplify or modulate the lexico-semantic content of the verbal speech with which they co-occur.<ref name="Kendon" /> However, since the late 1990s, most research has revolved around the contrasting hypothesis that Lexical gestures serve a primarily cognitive purpose in aiding the process of speech production.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":2" /> As of 2012, there is research to suggest that Lexical Gesture does indeed serve a primarily communicative purpose and cognitive only secondary, but in the realm of socio-pragmatic communication, rather than lexico-semantic modification.<ref name=":3" />
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