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What is called in pragmatics an utterance, and what is called a body gesture or a facial gesture, are all acts of communication. Is there any term in any context or discipline, that unites these different modalities of communication/expression under one umbrella term?

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    sorry I can't give you a definite answer, but David McNeill has studied this extensively and has come up with a nice (and empirically grounded) categorization of gesture. Alas I can't remember them but see Hand and Mind books.google.com/books/about/Hand_and_Mind.html?id=3ZZAfNumLvwC
    – mobileink
    Dec 17, 2016 at 20:30
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    Yes, McNeill's work is the place to start. Dan Everett has a recent review article on McNeill's trilogy of books on the subject.
    – jlawler
    Dec 17, 2016 at 22:33
  • Thanks guys, but these look like old-school pragmatics narratives that preceded the proper integration of cognition science and psychology in describing discourse and communication. Was there any umbrella term I'm unable to pluck out of those references?
    – matanox
    Dec 18, 2016 at 15:43
  • I don't follow your comment. McNeill doesn't look "old-school" to me. What does "proper integration of cognitive science. ... etc." mean? Regarding "utterance", see Bakhtin's brilliant "Speech Genres" essay (books.google.com/books/about/…). Gestures are utterances!
    – mobileink
    Dec 18, 2016 at 20:30

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