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Comments on idea of motor resonance and status of emblems

Posted by feyparrill on 28 Aug 2007 at 15:04 GMT

I really like the idea of using culture as a way of separating action from semantics. It's a nice addition to the typical "meaningful vs. meaningless hand movement" comparisons. Your use of the term "motor resonance" also caught my eye. You may mean something much more neurally specific, but I thought I'd mention that a number of gesture researchers have been interested in the idea of "resonance" between participants in a discourse, and have tried to use gesture as a variable in measuring it. Other terms that get used in this discussion include "interpersonal sensitivity", "rapport", "mimicry", "mirroring"... This could be an interesting avenue to explore. Susan Duncan (U. Chicago) put together a panel on this research at a meeting of the Cognitive Science Society a few years ago. Names that might be worth looking into include Janet Bavelas, Frank Bernieri, Judith Hall.
Some claims in the intro also caught my attention. While I know one can't go into a lot of detail in an introduction, there are a few statements that I'm not sure I'd agree with. I figure if I point them out you'll be prepared for any future objections. First, emblems are sometimes produced along with speech, and in such cases it's not always clear that they are intentional and that participants are really aware of them. The way you put it is certainly a safe generalization to make, though. Second, the form of an emblem is not always arbitrary. Emblems can be iconic and metaphoric as well. For example, some offensive emblems iconically depict some aspect of a taboo act. The difference is in degree of conventionalization.