Part I. Gestures – Moving Words or Words in Action?
Gestures – A Bird’s Eye View
Prosody as Gesture
Understanding Facial Expressions
Cultural Gestures
Diversity in Asian Language and Culture
Asian Gestures
Multimodal Modulation Hypothesis (MMH)
Hierarchy Through Gesture
Diversity in Asian Gestures
Bowing
Gesturing Properly
Verbal – Gestural Languages: Division of Labour
Border-crossing Gestures
Part II. Gesture in Asia – Mapped Though Film
Head
Raised eyebrows
Voice
Upper body
Arms
Lower body
Feet
Part III. Future Gestures in an Asian Context
The Evolution of Gestures
Smartphone Gestures
Gestures in a Digital Age
Emoji and Acronym Ambiguity: Interpreting Generational Disparities in Digital Communication
Decoding Gestures: The Complexities in an Increasingly Mobile World
‘Translingual, Transcultural, and Transmedial’: Individual Differences
Transnational Gestures
Fandom Gestures: Transcending Borders and Cultures
Sharing Memes and Emojis: An Act of Solidarity
Gesture Diversity
Future Gestures: Less Hierarchical?
Online Gestures Matter
AI Gestures in Films
Future of Human Language
Filmography
Interviewees
Bibliography
Jieun Kiaer holds the YBMK KF Professorship in Korean Linguistics at the University of Oxford. As a linguist, pragmatist, and specialist in Asian studies, she has published extensively in the fields of theoretical and applied linguistics as well as translation studies. Her research goes beyond the traditionally Western and text-focused approaches to language, embracing non-European and multi-modal perspectives to offer a more nuanced understanding of human communication.
Loli Kim is Postdoctoral Researcher on the Leverhulme Sea, Song and Survival: The Language and Folklore of the Haenyeo Women project at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford. As a multimodalist, semiotician, and specialist in Asian studies and film, she publishes across fields of multimodality, semiotics, translation, and film and media studies – all drawn together by cross-cultural perspectives that seek to contextualise Asian discourses in their own cultures, and to develop the methodological tools needed for doing so.