Synesthetic gestures: making the imaginary perceptible

ABSTRACT Among the repertoires of vernacular expression available for storytelling are gestural icons, called iconics, and gestural metaphors, called metaphorics in the terminology of David McNeill. Gesture analysts take such co-speech gestures as visual representations of visible phenomena but because they are body movements, all gestures impart tactile-kinesthetic qualities to expressive acts. They are thinking made perceptible outside the body and so disclose our corporeal investment in conceptualizing things. Gestures participate in a sensory ecology that interconnects visual, tactile, and kinesthetic perceptions with words in stories as well as with the worlds the stories conjure up. They are synesthetic holds on imaginary realities.