List of Figures

Acknowledgements      

Preface

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.