Cognitive Linguistics 22–3 (2011), 437–458This study investigates metaphoric gestures in face-to-face conversation. It is
found that gestures of this kind are mainly performed in the central gesture
space with noticeable and discernable configurations, providing visible evidence
for cross-domain cognitive mappings and the grounding of conceptual
metaphors in people’s recurrent bodily experiences and in what people habitually
do in social and cultural practices. Moreover, whether metaphorical thinking
is conveyed by gesture exclusively or along with metaphoric speech, the
manual enactment of even conventional metaphors manifests dynamism in
communicating metaphors. Metaphoric gestures can provide salient, additional
information about the aspect of the conceptualization which is the
speaker’s focus of attention in real-time multimodal communication.
