Environmentally-Coupled Signs and Gestures

Environmentally-coupled gestures are defined by Goodwin (2007) as gestures that can only be interpreted by taking into account the physical environment of the speaker. Lexical signs, unlike spoken words, can be also be environmentally-coupled because the visual-manual modality allows for signs to be articulated on or near elements in the environment. The speech articulators are largely hidden from view and do not permit environmental coupling. This commentary provides examples of environmentally-coupled signs, which can only be explained within a language-as-situated approach. However, such expressions are also constrained by internal, systematic properties of language, indicating that both language-as-situated and language-as-system approaches are necessary to account for the non-arbitrary (iconic and indexical) properties of language.