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[[File:Us navy helicopter landing signals illustration.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Military [[aircraft marshalling|air marshallers]] use hand and body gestures to direct flight operations aboard [[aircraft carrier]]s.]]
A '''gesture''' is a form of [[non-verbal communication]] or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, [[speech]]. Gestures include movement of the [[hand]]s, [[face]], or other parts of the [[Human body|body]]. Gestures differ from physical non-verbal communication that does not communicate specific messages, such as purely [[Emotional expression|expressive]] displays, [[proxemics]], or displays of [[joint attention]].
Gesture processing takes place in areas of the brain such as [[Broca's area|Broca's]] and [[Wernicke's area]]s, which are used by [[speech]] and [[sign language]].
==Research==
Gestures have been studied throughout the centuries from different perspectives
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.
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.
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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 linguist 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">Kendon, Adam. (2004) ''Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-83525-9}}</ref> 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" />
==Typology (categories)==
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==Neurology==
Gestures are processed in the same areas of the brain as [[speech]] and [[sign language]] such as the left [[inferior frontal gyrus]] ([[Broca's area]]) and the posterior [[middle temporal gyrus]], posterior [[superior temporal sulcus]] and [[superior temporal gyrus]] ([[Wernicke's area]]).<ref name="Xu">Xu J, Gannon PJ, Emmorey K, Smith JF, Braun AR. (2009). [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2779203/pdf/pnas.0909197106.pdf Symbolic gestures and spoken language are processed by a common neural system.] Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 106:20664–20669. {{doi|10.1073/pnas.0909197106}} {{PMID|19923436}}</ref> It has been suggested that these parts of the brain originally supported the pairing of gesture and meaning and then were adapted in [[human evolution]] "for the comparable pairing of sound and meaning as voluntary control over the vocal apparatus was established and spoken language evolved".<ref name="Xu"/> As a result, it underlies both symbolic gesture and spoken language in the present [[human brain]]. Their common neurological basis also supports the idea that symbolic gesture and spoken language are two parts of a single fundamental semiotic system that underlies human discourse.<ref name=McNeill/>
The linkage of hand and body gestures in conjunction with speech is further revealed by the nature of gesture use in blind individuals during conversation. This phenomenon uncovers a function of gesture that goes beyond portraying communicative content of language and extends [[David McNeill]]'s view of the gesture-speech system. This suggests that gesture and speech work tightly together, and a disruption of one (speech or gesture) will cause a problem in the other. Studies have found strong evidence that speech and gesture are innately linked in the brain and work in an efficiently wired and choreographed system. McNeill's view of this linkage in the brain is just one of three currently up for debate; the others declaring gesture to be a "support system" of spoken language or a physical mechanism for lexical retrieval.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Iverson |first=Jana M. |author2=Esther Thelen |title=Hand, Mouth and Brain |journal=Journal of Consciousness Studies |year=2005 |url=http://cspeech.ucd.ie/~fred/docs/IversonThelen.pdf |accessdate=1 October 2013 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131004215359/http://cspeech.ucd.ie/~fred/docs/IversonThelen.pdf |archivedate=4 October 2013 |df= }}</ref>
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