Gesture and language dialectic

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Abstract
A classic psycholinguistic problem is parole, in its modern formulation, ‘performance’. This paper looks at aspects of parole or performance from a new direction, arguing that it is organized as a dialectic of unlike cognitive modes, a dialectic of gesture imagery and language. This dialectic is the key to the evocation, organization, and ultimate execution of meaningful actions shaped to take linguistic form in discourse — imagery, as embodied in the gestures that accompany speech, and the categorical-sequential thinking of speech itself. Both modes are essential components of psycholinguistic performance. A dialectic moreover naturally incorporates the context of speaking in an integral way and we shall develop a theoretical description of context as part of the analysis of performance. Such a dialectic model is self-motivating, self-directed and does not need a guiding hand (hidden or otherwise) of an executive.

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