Kendon, Adam

Adam Kendon is a leading authority on the study of gesture but has also published pioneering studies on the organization of behaviour in face-to-face interaction. In a scholarly career that extends over nearly forty years, Kendon has published over one hundred articles and several books all of which deal, in various ways, with the the role of the body in face-to-face interaction. He is, at present, a ‘scholar-at-large’, dividing his time between Philadelphia and the Island of Procida in the Bay of Naples. He is a co-editor (with Cornelia Müller) of the international journal Gesture that has been published by John Benjamins of Amsterdam since 2001 and was made an Honorary President of the International Society of Gesture Studies in 2005.

Adam Kendon was born in London in 1934, but grew up near Cambridge. His father, Frank Kendon, was a poet and journalist who was associated with Cambridge University Press and a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. At an early age, Adam Kendon developed an interest in natural history, with a special interest in social behaviour, first in birds, later in humans. By the time he was eighteen he had decided to study psychology which, however, he regarded as a branch of biology rather than philosophy. He attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he read for the Natural Sciences Tripos. He read Botany, Zoology and Human Physiology for Part I of the Tripos and Experimental Psychology for Part II, in which he took a First Class. In 1956 he moved to Balliol College, Oxford. Supported by a grant from the Medical Research Council, he became an Advanced Student at the Institute for Experimental Psychology (as it was then known). He worked on the temporal organization of utterances in conversation, using the methods of ‘interaction chronography’ that had been developed by Eliot Chapple, an American anthropologist and pioneer in interaction studies (See Chapple 1939, 1940; Chapple and Coon 1942). After three years at Oxford, Kendon was awarded an English Speaking Union scholarship to study at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. While there he made contact with Eliot Chapple, who at that time had a laboratory at Rockland State Hospital at Rockland, New York. He was able to work with Chapple and the work he undertook was written up in his dissertation “Temporal Aspects of the Social Performance in Two-Person Encounters.” For this he was awarded the degree of D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1963.

Kendon remained at Oxford as a member of the Institute (later Department) of Experimental Psychology, and joined a research group on social skills, directed by E. R. W. F. Crossman and Michael Argyle. In this work an attempt was made to extend to the study of social interaction the ideas and methods developed at Cambridge under Professor Sir Frederick Bartlett, among others, in analyzing perceptuo-motor skills (see Saito 1999 for an overview of Bartlett’s work). It was proposed that participants in interaction could be regarded as skilled performers who, to qualify as conversationalists, must deploy various actions and monitor various sources of information in a continuous manner. In this work Kendon was influenced by the work of Erving Goffman, who had shown in “Alienation from interaction” (Goffman 1957) and “On face work” (Goffman 1955), how occasions of interaction could be studied as behavioural systems, maintained through the sustained and skillful performances of the participants.

Crossman, in studying skilled work in an industrial context, had shown the importance of understanding how workers deployed their visual attention as they carried out their manual tasks (such as making cigars). He suggested to Kendon that a study of where people looked in conversation could likewise throw light on the organization of conversational skill. The research Kendon undertook in consequence (partly in collaboration with Professor Jacques Ex who was visiting Oxford from the Catholic University of Nijmegen), was published in 1967 as “Some functions of gaze direction in social interaction” (Kendon 1967). In this paper consistencies in the relationship between where a conversationalist looked and turns at talk were demonstrated. These suggested that gaze served both monitoring and signalling functions in conversation and could, for example, play a role in the process by which the coordination of turn taking is achieved. This paper became quite famous, earning the status of a “Citation Classic” in Current Contents in 1981.

While at Oxford, Kendon became acquainted with the work of Albert Scheflen (see Scheflen 1964, 1973) and Ray Birdwhistell (see Birdwhistell 1970). This work convinced him that undertaking detailed studies of all aspects of observable behaviour in interaction was necessary for any advance in understanding how interaction is accomplished and he felt that the systematic observational methods that Birdwhistell and Scheflen were developing within a framework inspired by the methods of structural linguistics, provided a sound basis upon which to proceed. In 1965 he was able to visit Scheflen in Philadelphia. Subsequently, Scheflen arranged for Kendon an appointment as a Research Associate under Henry Brosin at the Western Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute in Pittsburgh. Here Kendon worked closely with William Condon, learning his methods of micro kinesic linguistic analysis (see Condon and Ogston 1967, Condon 1976). He also met Ray Birdwhistell. In 1967 Kendon went to Cornell University for one year as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Psychology and Sociology, but he then joined Albert Scheflen’s Project on Human Communication, established at Bronx State Hospital in New York with funds from the National Institutes of Health. Kendon worked with Scheflen on the study of the spatial ecology of everyday life in urban homes. In collaboration with Andrew Ferber he undertook a detailed study of the structure of human greetings, among other things (Kendon and Ferber 1973).

The series of publications that eventuated from this period, together with the work done at Oxford, were published together in a revised and updated form in 1990 by Cambridge University Press under the title Conducting Interaction (Kendon 1990). Besides re-printing his seminal papers on gaze direction in interaction and interactional synchrony, this book also includes the study of greetings, a study of a human courtship interaction and a study of the spatial-orientational arrangements that can be observed in conversational interaction. In this work Kendon offered his concept of the “F-formation” which suggests that the way in which participants in interaction dispose themselves in space and orient to one another is the ‘behavioral material’ for the processes by which what Goffman (1963) termed the ‘working consensus’ of occasions of focused interaction is established and maintained. These ideas were developed in a theoretical essay entitled “Behavioural foundations of frame attunement in face-to-face interaction” (first published in 1985), which is included in this collection (Kendon 1990, Chapter 8).

Writing in the American Anthropologist, Christian Heath described this collection of papers as “a landmark in the development of naturalistic research on social interaction. It powerfully demonstrates the analytic rewards of utilizing film and video to explicate the fine details ofin situ human conduct, and provides a distinctive methodological orientation for an anthropology of social interaction”. Heath points out that although Kendon had clearly been guided by the methodological and theoretical frameworks of Goffman, Scheflen and Birdwhistell, he nevertheless developed “a unique analytic orientation to the study of social interaction.” Heath continues: “The detailed studies of interactional organization found in this collection beautifully reveal the emergence of [Kendon’s] framework, and demonstrate its ability to explicate the systematics that underly the fine, yet fundamental, details of human sociability” (Heath 1992).

The paper that Kendon published on human greetings (originally published as Kendon and Ferber 1973) was informed by the outlook and methods of ethology (thereby reflecting Kendon’s continuing biological and natural history orientation). It attracted the attention of Derek Freeman at Australian National University. Derek Freeman was head of the Department of Anthropology in the Research School of Pacific Studies at Australian National University. He was interested in establishing a human ethology laboratory in his Department and wrote to Kendon inviting him to apply for a Research Fellowship there, which would make this possible. Accordingly, in 1974, Kendon and his family left for Australia.

The Human Ethology Laboratory that Kendon helped organize was later joined by the ethnographic film makers Timothy and Patsy Asch and the laboratory came to be known as the Human Ethology and Iconic Recording Laboratory, reflecting the emphasis on film documentation that it came to have. In his own work, however, Kendon turned, increasingly, to the study of gesture. He came to regard this as a coherent domain of human visible action, closely involved with, and sometimes functioning in place of, linguistic action. Kendon had been impressed by the observations that Birdwhistell had summarized on kinesics (see Kendon 1972b for an exposition of Birdwhistell’s kinesic project) and had, while at Cornell University, undertaken a micro-analytic study of the organization of the flow of body motion in a single speaker. This demonstrated how speech and bodily action were coordinated. The paper that resulted, “Some relationships between body-motion and speech” (Kendon 1972a), was later described by David McNeill as the true starting point for the recognition that gestures “are integral parts of the processes of language and its use” (McNeill 2005, p. 13). Kendon expressed this point of view again with great clarity in a paper published in 1980 under the title “Gesture and speech: two aspects of the process of utterance” (Kendon 1980b). Kendon came to see that the study of ‘gesture’, as a distinguishable domain of action intimately involved in utterance, could merit development as a field of study in its own right (Kendon 1986). From 1980 onwards ‘gesture’ became his main preoccupation.

As part of his work in the Department in Canberra, Kendon went on an expedition to the Enga in the highlands of New Guinea, with a view to filming various aspects of their social behaviour, including greetings. He did this in the company of Ranier Lang of the Department of Linguistics at Australian National University, who was a student of the Enga language and was particularly interested in the role of interpreters working between Enga and Tok Pisin. While there Kendon had the opportunity to make some films of a young deaf woman who used a sign language. This sign language, prevalent in the Enga valley where Kendon was working, is an example of an ‘isolated’ or ‘natural’ sign language. Apparently it had arisen following an epidemic of meningitis that left many children deaf. Thanks to the help of a hearing Enga assistant fluent in this sign language, Kendon undertook a detailed analysis of it, published in a series of three papers in Semiotica (Kendon 1980a).

Following this, Kendon was prompted to inquire about the sign languages that were said to be in use among Australian Aborigines. Kendon discovered that these sign languages, which have been elaborated not because of deafness but because of ritual speech-avoidance under certain circumstances and which belong, thus, to the class of what may be called alternate sign languages, had received almost no scientific attention. He proceeded to take up their study and obtained research support from various sources (including the National Science Foundation, the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Australian Institute for Torres Straits Islander and Aboriginal Studies and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation) and, over the course of the following ten years, examined almost every aspect of these sign languages which were still in active use among the central desert Aborigines, including the Warlpiri, among other groups. In 1988 he published a book (Kendon 1988) which remains, to this day, the only full-scale study of Australian Aboriginal sign languages. In this book, besides discussing the history of what is known of these sign languages, their place in Aboriginal culture and how they can compare with other kinesic systems including primary (or deaf) sign languages, Kendon examines in great detail the relation between the structure of these sign languages and that of the spoken languages of their users. He found there is a close relationship at the morpho-semantic level. He suggested that these sign languages could be compared to writing systems in which the units of expression are the semantic units of the spoken language rather than phonetic or phonological units.

In 1988 Kendon went to live in Philadelphia and taught for two years at the Annenberg School of Communications. At the same time, he began to develop a new line of research suggested by the comparative work of David Efron (1941). Efron, in a study of immigrants in Manhattan, had shown that Southern Italians made use of an elaborate vocabulary of gestures which could be used independently of speech and that in this they differed from another cultural group, East European Jews. Efron demonstrated that this difference is the product of differences in cultural tradition, leaving open the question as to why such differences should arise. Kendon decided that a study of gesture among Southern Italians in their original settings might throw light on why gesture played such an important role for them. He proposed that the ecology of everyday social life might offer circumstances in which the elaboration of gesture might be adaptive. Accordingly, in 1991 (through the good offices of Pio Enrico Ricci Bitti of Bologna and Pina Boggi Cavallo of Salerno) he obtained an invitation to the University of Salerno as a Vistiting Professor. He was also granted research funds from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research of New York. In this way he began what became a long association with Campania, especially with the city of Naples. In 1996, thanks to Jocelyn Vincent Marrelli and Carla Cristilli, he was appointed as a Visiting Professor at the Istituto Universitario Orientale (now the Università degli Studi di Napoli “Orientale”) where he was able to collaborate with students in the collection and analysis of a great deal of video recordings of everyday interaction in Naples. At the same time (with help from the Istituto Italiano per Gli Studi Filosofici), he undertook a deep study of the work of Andrea de Jorio, a priest and pioneer of Italian archaeology who, in 1832, had published a book on Neapolitan gesture. De Jorio wrote this book as a kind of handbook for the interpretation of the images on the ancient vases, frescoes and mosaics that had come to light in the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, for he believed that there was continuity in the expressive culture of present day Neapolitans with that of the ancient Greeks who had founded the city some two and a half millenia before. In effect, de Jorio had undertaken a detailed ethnographic study of Neapolitan gesture use. Kendon made a full English translation of de Jorio’s book and this, together with a lengthy discussion of de Jorio’s work and its place in the development both of gesture studies and of Neapolitan archaeology, was published in 2000 under the title Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity (see De Jorio 2000). Rather to Kendon’s surprise, this publication received wide notice, being reviewed in the Economist, the New York Review of Books, and the The New Republic, as well as in a number of scholarly journals

Since 1991 Kendon has spent increasing amounts of time in southern Italy, mainly in Naples. From 2002-2005 he was a Visiting Professor at both the “Orientale” and at the University of Calabria. Both before and during these years, Kendon was able to collaborate extensively with many students in directing their graduation theses and in several cases this work resulted in significant studies of gesture use in Naples and how it is used in spoken discourse. Some of this work has been published in a number of separate papers (Kendon 1993, 1995, 2001, 2004a, Kendon and Versante 2003) but it also is prominently featured in Kendon’s most recent major publication, his book Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance (Kendon 2004).

This book, published in 2004 by Cambridge University Press, is proably the most significant contribution to gesture studies to appear since David McNeill’s Hand and Mind (1992) and must be ranked among the most important books on gesture to be published in English since David Efron’s book of 1941. It makes a serious claim to establish the domain of ‘gesture’ as a coherent and separable field of study. It contains an extended and detailed history of the study of gesture, there are chapters which provide detailed descriptions of gesture use in conversation (unmatched in any other publication), an extensive study of gestures with meta-discursive or pragmatic functions, as well as chapters which discuss how gesture develops when used without speech (as in sign languages), cultural variations in gesture, and an attempt to propose an ecological theory to account for why cultures vary in gesture use.

In the three main areas of his research, Kendon has worked within an empirical framework that follows a unique style. He shows how human behaviour can best be understood through naturalistic observations and fine-grained structural studies of interactions, signs, or gestures in their everyday contexts. This work is both ethological and ethnographic in its approach and represents an ethological and ethnographic approach to the study of what is often today referred to as the multimodality of communication in human interaction.

Whoever has had the chance to analyze data with him, remains fascinated by his capacity to “see” structural patterns of behaviour in their natural contexts. And it is this combination of meticulous observations of behaviour in context, a radical clear-cut analytic style, along with in-depth knowledge of the historical literature that characterize his work in general – not only his pioneering work on human gestures.

But anyone who has had the opportunity to work with Kendon also knows that he is not just a keen observer, an acute ethologist and well versed in the literature of his chosen fields. They soon learn of some of his other interests. For example, they learn that he is a great devotee of the poetry of Edward Lear and the works of Lewis Carroll, which, given the slightest excuse, he will quote from extensively. He is accomplished at Indian cuisine, he is fond of wine and especially particular about tea. He is very devoted to cats and (over the years) has been a host to a great many. He practises photography extensively and though he has twice entered exhibitions, his works in this medium are mostly to be seen at his house. In 2005, however, the association Artefactory 41.14 of Procida published a set of 12 photographic postcards, “The Cats of Corricella – I gatti di Corricella”, a series of images showing cats as they are so often found among the brilliantly coloured fishing nets and boats of this little fishing village on the Island of Procida. Kendon also occasionally writes poetry (or rather, as he will tell you, one of his cats does this for him). An example of this poetry, entitled “The Growth Point”, has been published as an appendix to David McNeill’s book Gesture and Thought (McNeill 2005).

He has been married for many years to Margaret Rhoads of Philadelphia. He has three children (two live in Australia, one near Washington, D.C.) and (so far) four grandchildren.

Bibliography

 

Books as author

1. Kendon, A. Studies in the Behavior of Face-to-Face Interaction. pp.viii + 260. Lisse, Netherlands: Peter De Ridder Press, 1977, (= Vol.6, Studies in Semiotics. Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana). [Includes 5 previously published published papers, one paper not published elsewhere and a methodological appendix].

2. Kendon, A. Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, Semiotic and Communicative Perspectives Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp. xviii+ 542. [Presents the results of the research on Australian Aboriginal sign languages that the author began in 1978. The book was awarded the 1990 Stanner Prize, a biennial award given by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander Studies, Canberra, Australia. Reviews include: Times Literary Supplement, August 25-31 1989; American Anthropologist 1990, 92: 250-251; Language in Society, 1991, 20: 652-659; Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 1990, 35(1): 85-86]

3. Kendon, A. Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in Focused Encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. A volume in the series Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics, John Gumperz, series editor. [Includes five papers that appeared in Studies (No. 1, above), one theoretical paper previously published in 1985 and a specially written Chapter on the history of structural studies of interaction. For reviews see American Anthropologist 1992, 94: 705-706; Contemporary Psychology, 1992, 37: 30-31].

4. Kendon, A. 2004. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. x+400. [Chapters 1-6 of this book introduce the field and provide a survey of the history of the study of gesture from antiquity to 2003 and a survey of gesture classifications. Chapters 7-13 offer detailed studies of how speakers use gesture in everyday conversation. Representational, deictic and pragmatic gestures are extensively discussed and illustrated. Chapters 14-15 deal with gesture when used in the absence of speech and discuss the relationship between gesture and sign language. Chapter 16 discusses gesture, culture and the communication economy. Chapter 17 presents a concluding evaluation of the status of gesture. There are numerous illustrations and a full bibliography].

Books translated

5. Kendon, A. 2000. Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity. An English translation, with an Introductory Essay and Notes of La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano (‘Gestural expression of the ancients in the light of Neapolitan gesturing’) by Andrea de Jorio (1832). Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Pp. cvii+517.

Books as editor

6. Kendon, A., Harris, R.M., Key, Mary R., eds., The Organization of Behavior in Face to Face Interaction. [= Papers from a Pre-Congress Conference held in conjunction with the IXth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographic Sciences, Chicago, 1973]. The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1975 (= Volume in World Anthropology, Proceedings of IXth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographic Sciences, Chicago, 1973). [Includes an introduction by Kendon].

7. Kendon, A., editor, Nonverbal Communication, Interaction and Gesture: Selections from Semiotica (Vol.41, Approaches to Semiotics). The Hague: Mouton and Co. 1981 [Includes as an Introduction by Kendon an extended critical survey of methodological and theoretical issues in the field].

Articles in journals and edited volumes

A. REPORTS OF ORIGINAL RESEARCH

8. Roberts, J.M., Sutton-Smith, D., Kendon, A., Strategy in games and folktales. Journal of Social Psychology, 1963, 61:185-199.

9. Kendon, A. Some functions of gaze direction in social interaction. Acta Psychologica, 26:22-63, 1967. [Reprinted in Kendon, 1977 and Kendon, Conducting Interaction 1990; also in: M. Argyle, ed. Social Encounters: Readings in Social Interaction Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company 1973 and in Social Psychology: Supplementary Readings, produced by National University Consortium for Telecommunications in Teaching, Lexington, Mass.: Ginn Custom Publishing 1981)]. (Listed as a Citation Classic in Current Contents: Social and Behavioral Sciences 1981 13(44) p.24]

10. Kendon, A. and Cook, M. Consistency of gaze patterns in social interaction. British Journal of Psychology, 1969, 60: 481-494..

11. Kendon, A. Movement coordination in social interaction. Acta Psychologica, 1970, 32:1-25. [Reprinted with corrections in S. Weitz, ed. Nonverbal Communication: Readings with Commentary. New York: Oxford University Press 1974 (First Edition) 1979 (Second Edition). Reprinted in Kendon, 1977 and Kendon, Conducting Interaction 1990].

12. Kendon, A. Some relationships between body motion and speech. In A. Seigman and B. Pope, editors, Studies in Dyadic Communication. Elmsford, New York: Pergamon Press, 1972,pp.177-216.

13. Kendon, A. and Ferber, A. A description of some human greetings. In R.P. Michael and J.H. Crook, eds., Comparative Behaviour and Ecology of Primates. London: Academic Press, 1973, pp.591-668. [Reprinted in Kendon, 1977 and in Kendon, Conducting Interaction 1990]

14. Kendon, A. The F-Formation System: Spatial-Orientational Relations in Face to Face Interaction. Man Environment Systems 1976, 6: 291-296 [A much expanded version of this paper appears in Kendon, 1977 and is reprinted in Kendon, Conducting Interaction 1990].

15. Kendon, A. Some functions of the face in a kissing round. Semiotica 1975 15, 299-334. [Reprinted in Kendon, 1977; Kendon, ed., 1981 and in Kendon, Conducting Interaction 1990]

16. Kendon, A. Gesticulation, speech and the gesture theory of language origins. Sign Language Studies, 1975, 9, pp.349-373. (Reprinted in a revised form in W. Stokoe, ed. Sign and Culture: A Reader for Students of American Sign Language. Silver Spring, Maryland: Linstok Press 1980).

17. Kendon, A. Gesture and speech: two aspects of the process of utterance. In M.R. Key, ed., Nonverbal Communication and Language, The Hague: Mouton, 1980, pp.207-227.

18. Kendon, A. A description of a deaf-mute sign language from the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea with some comparative discussion. Part I: The formational properties of Enga signs. Semiotica, 1980 32,1-34.

19. Kendon, A. A description of a deaf-mute sign language, etc. Part II: The semiotic functioning of Enga signs. Semiotica,1980 32, 81-117.

20. Kendon, A. A description of a deaf-mute sign language, etc. Part III: Aspects of utterance construction. Semiotica,1980 32, 245-313.

21. Kendon, A. The sign language of the women of Yuendumu: A preliminary report on the structure of Warlpiri sign language. Sign Language Studies, 1980 27,101-112.

22. Ciolek, T.M. and Kendon, A. Environment and the spatial arrangement of conversational interaction. Sociological Inquiry 1980 50,237-271. Special issue on Language and Social Interaction edited by D. Zimmerman and C. West.

23. Kendon, A. Some uses of gesture. In Deborah Tannen and Muriel Saville-Troike, eds. Perspectives on Silence. Norwood,N. J.: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1985, pp.215-234.

24. Kendon, A. Iconicity in Warlpiri sign language. In P. Bouissac, M. Herzfeld and R. Posner, eds., Iconicity: Essays on the Nature of Culture. Festschrift for Thomas A. Sebeok on his 65th Birthday, Tubingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 1986, pp. 437-446.

25. Kendon, A. Knowledge of sign language in an Australian Aboriginal community. Journal of Anthropological Research.1984 40,556-576.

26. Kendon, A. Variation in Central Australian Aboriginal Sign language: A preliminary report. Language in Central Australia 1985,1(4):1-11.

27. Kendon, A. Simultaneous Speaking and Signing in Warlpiri Sign language Users. Multilingua 1987, 6: 25-68.

28. Kendon, A. Parallels and divergencies between Warlpiri sign language and spoken Warlpiri: analyses of signed and spoken discourses. Oceania, 1988, 58: 239-254.

29. Kendon, A. Gestures as illocutionary and discourse structure markers in Southern Italian conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 1995, 23 (3): 247-279.

30. Kendon, A. (1997). Alcuni modi di usare i gesti nella conversazione. In M. Carapezza, D. Gambararra and F. Lo Piparo, eds. Linguaggio e cognizione.Atti del XXVIII Congresso della Società di Linguistica Italiana, Palermo 27-29 ottobre 1994. Roma, Bulzoni, pp. 215-223.

31. Kendon, A. 2000. Language and Gesture: Unity or Duality. In D. McNeill, ed. Language and Gesture: Window into Thought and Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 47-63

32. Kendon, A. and Versante, L. (2003). Pointing by hand in Neapolitan. In Sotaro Kita, ed. Pointing: Where Language Culture and Cognition Meet. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 109-137.

33. Kendon, A. 2004. Contrasts in gesticulation: A Neapolitan and a British speaker compared. In C. Mueller and R. Posner, eds. The Semantics and Pragmatics of Everyday Gesture. Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag, pp. 173-193.

34. Kendon, A. (2003). Some uses of the head shake. Gesture, 2:2: 147-182.

B. LITERATURE REVIEWS, THEORETICAL DISCUSSIONS AND CRITICAL ESSAYS

35. Argyle, M. and Kendon, A. The experimental analysis of the social performance. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol.III. L. Berkowitz, editor. New York:Academic Press, 1967, pp.55-98. (Reprinted in J. Laver and S. Hutchinson, eds. Communication in Face to Face Interaction. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books (= Penguin Modern Linguistics Readings).

36. Kendon, A. How people interact. In The Book of Family Therapy. A. Ferber, M. Mendelsohn, and A. Napier, editors.New York: Science House, 1972, pp.351-386.

37. Kendon, A. Review of Kinesics and Context by R.L.Birdwhistell, American Journal of Psychology, 85:441-456, 1972. [Reprinted in Kendon 1977]

38. Kendon, A. The role of visible behaviour in the organization of social interaction. In M. Von Cranach and I. Vine, editors, Social Communication and Movement: Studies of Interaction and Expression in Man and Chimpanzee. London: Academic Press,1973, pp.29-74.

German translation (published in 1984): “Die Rolle sichtbaren Verhaltens in der Organisation sozialer Interaktion.” In Nonverbale Kommunikation: Forschungsberichte zum Interaktionsverhalten. Klaus Scherer, Harald G. Walbott (Hgg.), 2. Aufl., Weinheim: Beltz, S 202-235.

39. Kendon, A. Introduction. In A. Kendon, R.M. Harris, and M.R.Key, editors, The Organization of Behavior in Face to Face Interaction, The Hague: Mouton and Co. (= Volume in World Anthropology, Proceedings of IXth International Congress ofAnthropological and Ethnographic Sciences, Chicago, 1973), pp.1-16.

40. Kendon, A. Some theoretical and methodological aspects of the use of film in the study of social interaction. In G.P.Ginsburg, ed., Emerging Strategies in Social Psychological Research. London and New York: John Wiley. 1979, pp.67-91.

41. Kendon, A. Differential perception and attentional frame in face-to-face interaction: Two problems for investigation. Semiotica, 1978, 24: 305-315.

42. Kendon, A. Developments in the study of face-to-face interaction. Sociolinguistics Newsletter, 1978, 9: 19-23.

43. Kendon, A. Some emerging features of face-to-face interaction studies. Sign Language Studies, 1979, 22: 7-22.

44. Kendon, A. Features of the structural analysis of human communicational behavior. In Walburga von Raffler Engel, ed., Aspects of Nonverbal Communication. Lisse, Holland: Swets and Zeitlinger B.V. 1980, pp.

45. Kendon, A. The organization of behavior in face-to-face interaction: Observations on the development of a methodology. In P. Ekman and K. Scherer, eds. Handbook of Research Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981, pp. 440-505.

46. Kendon, A. Introduction: Current issues in “nonverbal communication”. In A. Kendon, ed., Nonverbal Communication, Interaction and Gesture: Selections from Semiotica (Vol.41, Approaches to Semiotics). The Hague: Mouton and Co. 1981 pp.1-53.

47. Kendon, A. Geography of gesture. Semiotica 1981 37129-163.

48. Kendon, A. Nonverbal communication. In T.A.Sebeok, General Editor. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter 1986, Volume II (N-Z), Pp. 609-622.

49. Kendon, A. Behavioral foundations for the process of frame attunement in face-to-face interaction. In G.P. Ginsburg, M. Brenner, and M. von Cranach eds. Discovery Strategies in the Psychology of Action. London: Academic Press. 1985, p.229-253. [Reprinted in Kendon, Conducting Interaction 1990]

50. Kendon, A. The study of gesture: some observations on its history. Recherches Semiotique/Semiotic Inquiry 1982, 2 (1) 25-62.

51. Kendon, A. Gesture and Speech: How they interact. In Wiemann and R. Harrison, eds. Nonverbal Interaction (= Sage Annual Reviews of Communication, Volume 11), Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications 1983, pp.13-46.

52. Kendon, A. Gesture. Journal of Visual Verbal Languaging 1983 21-36. [This paper originally presented to Connecticut College as a lecture in the De Litteris series. An excerpt appears in Connecticut College Alumni Magazine 1982 59 12-15. It was selected, along with one other lecture, to represent ten years of De Litteris lectures].

53. Kendon, A. Did gesture have the happiness to escape the curse at the confusion of Babel? In Aaron Wolfgang, ed., Nonverbal Behavior: Perspectives, Applications, Intercultural Insights. Lewiston, New York and Toronto: C.J. Hogrefe, Inc., 1984 pp.75-114.

54. Kendon, A. Some reasons for studying gesture. Semiotica, 1986, 62: 1-28 (= Special Issue of Semiotica “Approaches to Gesture”, A. Kendon and Thomas D. Blakely, Guest Editors)

55. Kendon, A. Current issues in the study of gesture. In J-L. Nespoulous, P. Perron and A.R. Lecours, eds. Biological Foundations of Gesture Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, Associates, 1986, pp. 23-47. [Reprinted in Journal for the Anthropological Study of Human Movement, 1989, 5 (3): 101-134].

56. Kendon, A. On Gesture: Its complementary relationship with speech. In A. Seigman and S. Feldstein, eds. Nonverbal Communication. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum,Associates. 1987, pp. 65 – 97.

57. Kendon, A. Erving Goffman’s approach to the study of face-to-face interaction. In A. Wootton and P.Drew, eds., Erving Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988, pp. 14-40.

58. Kendon, A. How gestures can become like words. In F. Poyatos, ed., Crosscultural Perspectives in Nonverbal Communication. Toronto: C. J. Hogrefe, Publishers, 1988, pp. 131-141.

59. Kendon, A. Some context for context analysis: a view of the origins of structural studies of face-to-face interaction. In A. Kendon Conducting Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

60. Kendon, A. Signs in the cloister and elsewhere. Semiotica , 1990, 79, pp. 307-329. [A critical essay review of Monastic Sign Languages, J. Umiker-Sebeok and T. A. Sebeok, eds., Mouton De Gruyter, 1987].

61. Kendon, A. Some considerations for a theory of language origins. Man (N. S.) 1991, 26: 602-619.

62. Kendon, A. Gesticulation, quotable gestures and signs. In M. Moerman and M. Nomura, eds., Culture Embodied. Senri Ethnological Studies, No. 27. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnography. 1990, pp. 53-77.

63. Kendon, A. Abstraction in gesture. Semiotica, 1992, 90 (3/4): 225-250.

64. Kendon, A. Human gesture. In T. Ingold and K. R. Gibson, eds., Tools, Language and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 43-62.

65. Kendon, A. Some recent work from Italy on quotable gestures (’emblems’). Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 1992, Vol. 2 (1), pp. 77-93.

66. Kendon, A. The negotiation of context in face-to-face interaction. In Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin, eds., Rethinking Context: Language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 323-334.

67. Kendon, A. Space, time and gesture. Degrès, 1993. Vignt et unième anné, No. 74,b, 3-16.

68. Kendon, A. Do gestures communicate? A review. Research on Language and Social Intraction, 1994, 27 (3): 175-200.

69. Kendon, A. Andrea De Jorio – the first ethnographer of gesture? Visual Anthropology, 1995, 7: 375-394

70. Kendon, A. Reflections on the study of gesture. Visual Anthropology, 1996, 8: 121-131.

71. Kendon, A. Gesture in language acquisition. Multilingua. 1996, 15: 201-214

72. Kendon, A. and Sigman, S. J. Ray L. Birdwhistell 1918 – 1994. Semiotica. 1996, 112 (3/4), 231-261.

73. Kendon, A. Gesture. Annual Review of Anthropology, 1997, 26: 109-128

74. Kendon, A. Die wechselseitige Einbettung von Geste und Rede. In Caroline Schmauser and Thomas Knoll, eds. Körperbewegungen und ihre Bedeutungen. Berlin: Arno Spitz GmbH, 1998, pp. 9-19.

75. Kendon, A. Gesture as communication strategy. [Review essay of Marianne Gullberg’s Gesture as a communication strategy in second language discourse].Semiotica, 2001, 135: 191-209.

76. Kendon, A. Historical observations on the relationship between research on sign languages and language origins theory. In David Armstrong, Michael A. Karchmer and John Vickery Van Kleve, eds. The Study of Signed Languages: Essays in Honor of William C. Stokoe. Washginton, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2002, pp. 35-52.

77. Kendon, A. On the origins of modern gesture studies. In Justine Cassell, Susan Duncan and Elena Levy, Eds. Gesture and the Dynamic Dimension of Language: Essays in Honor of David McNeill. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007.

C. SHORTER PUBLICATIONS

78. Scheflen, A.E., Kendon, A., and Schaeffer, J.A. A comparison of videotape and moving picture film in research in human communication. In Videotape Techniques in Psychiatric Training and Treatment, Milton M. Berger, editor. New York: R. Brunner, Inc., 1970.

79. Kendon, A. Commentary on “Appearances, Words, and Signs” by Wm. C. Stokoe Jr., in R.W. Wescott, G.W. Hewes, and W.C.Stokoe Jr., eds, Language Origins. Silver Springs, Maryland: Linstok Press, 1974.

80. Kendon, A. Looking in conversation and the regulation of turns at talk: a comment on the papers of G. Beattie and D.R. Rutter, et al. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 1978 17, pp.23-24.

81. Kendon, A. Coordination and framing in face-to-face interaction. In M. Davis, ed., Interaction Rhythms New York: Human Sciences Press 1982, pp.351-363.

82. Kendon, A. Clouds, Camels, Chalk and Cheese. Semiotica,1981, 36: 365-380.

83. Kendon, A. ‘Gesture’, ‘Kinesics’, ‘Sign Language: Introduction’, ‘Alternate Sign Languages’, ‘Nonverbal Communication.’ Contributions to The International Encyclopedia of Communcations. Eric Barnow, ed. Philadelphia and New York: Annenberg School of Communications and Oxford University Press, 1989.

84. Kendon, A. Sign languages in cross-cultural perspective. Contribution to the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, W. Bright, ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 1991.

85. Kendon, A. Sign Languages. Contribution to The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. D. Horton, ed. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. In Press

86. Kendon, A. Kinesics. Contribution to R. E. Asher and J. M. Y. Simpson, eds., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 4:1845-1848. Oxford: Pergamon Press (a Division of Elsevier Science), 1993.

87. Kendon, A. Alternate sign languages. Contribution to R. E. Asher and J. M. Y. Simpson, eds., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 1:85-89. Oxford: Pergamon Press (a Division of Elsevier Science), 1993.

88. Kendon, A. Faces, gestures, synchrony …. Review of Fundamentals of Nonverbal Behavior. Robert S. Feldman and Bernard Rimè, editors. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Semiotica., 1994, 102 (3/4): 311-322.

89. Kendon, A. Cues of context. [=Review of Peter Auer and Aldo di Luzzo (eds). Contextualization of Language.] Semiotica, 1996, 109: 349-356.

90. Kendon, A. An agenda for gesture studies. The Semiotic Review of Books, 1996, 7.3: 7-12.

91. Kendon, A. Some topics in Gesture Studies. In Anna Esposito, Maja Bratanic, Eric Keller, Maria Marinaro, Eds. The fundamentals of verbal and non verbal communication and the biometrical issues. Amsterdam: IOS Press BV for NATO SERIES PUBLISHING, In Press.

D. BOOK NOTICES, SHORT REVIEWS and BRIEF COMMENTARIES

92. Kendon, A. The behavior of communication: a review of How Behavior Means and Body Language and the Social Order by A.E. Scheflen. Contemporary Psychology, 1974 19: 526-527.

93. Kendon, A. Two-person conversation: A Review of Face-to-Face Interaction by S. Duncan and D. Fiske. Contemporary Psychology, 1978.

94. Kendon, A. A firework for the Semiotics of human action: a review of Manwatching by Desmond Morris. Semiotica,1981 29 184-192.

95. Kendon, A. Review of Language in Sign, J. Kyle and B. Woll, eds. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 1984 123-127.

96. Kendon, A. Review of Five Fingers for Survival by William Washabaugh. Nieuwe West-Indische Gids – New West Indian Guide. 1987.

97. Kendon, A. Review of “Language” and intelligence in monkeys and apes. Sue Parker and Kathleen Gibson, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1990. Man (N.S.) 1991

98. Kendon, A. Review of A Cultural History of Gesture. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenberg, eds. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1992. American Anthropologist., 1993, 95: 458-459

99. Kendon, A. Review of Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: The Semantics of Human Interaction by Anna Wierzbicka. Mouton De Gruyter 1991. Word. 1994, 45: 98-101.

100. Kendon, A. Review of Dane Archer’s film “A World of Gestures”. American Anthropologist, 1993, 95: 520-521.

101. Kendon, A. Review of Sue Savage Rumbaugh, et al. Language Comprehension in Ape and ChildMan.

102. Kendon, A. Comment on “Signs of the origin of syntax” by D. F. Armstrong, W. C. Stokoe and S. E. Wilcox. Current Anthropology, 1994, 35: 361-362.

103. Kendon, A. Review of Language in its Cultural Embedding by Harald Haarmann. Canberra Anthropology, 1994, 17(2): 147-149.

104. Kendon, A. Review of Gesture and the Nature of Language by D. F. Armstrong, W. C. Stokoe and S. E. Wilcox (Cambridge University Press 1995). Language in Society, 1997, 26: 297-317.

105. Kendon, A. Review of Hearing Gesture: How Our Hands Help Us Think by Susan Goldin Meadow (Cambridge, Mass.: Bellknap Press 2003). Gesture, 2004, Vol. 4, No. 1, 91-101.

106. Kendon, A. Cats of Corricella – I gatti di Corricella. 12 Photographs as postcards. Procida: Artefactory 41.14, 2006

Author

Cornelia Müller