Gesture Language and Word Language. 451 



GESTUEE LANGUAGE AND WORD LANGUAGE. 



" Gesture language and word language" are the titles of some 

 very interesting chapters in an important work by Mr. Edward 

 Burnett Tylor,* who brings before the public a class of facts, 

 not indeed new, but very little known, and not, we believe, 

 previously placed in a philosophical light. " Gesture language" 

 — how little does the term convey, except to the few who are 

 acquainted with its remarkable character and development. 

 All nations use gesture more or less, as a means of communi- 

 cating their ideas. In infancy and childhood it forms a very 

 important part of the signs by which feelings are made known 

 and thoughts communicated ; and while the adults of some 

 races — like the English— acquire the habit of repressing and 

 limiting its use under natural or conventional restraints, others 

 — like the French and Italians — can scarcely recite a single 

 fact, or express the commonest emotion, without an amount of 

 gesticulation that indicates the real or supposed inefficiency of 

 mere words to gratify their desire of communicating to others 

 what they know or feel themselves. Nor does the quantity of 

 gesture employed by civilized races afford any indication of 

 the capacities of their various languages. The English, with 

 a copious and remarkably rich language, use little action; 

 while the Germans, with a similar language, admitting of a 

 greater range of combination, use more gesture; and the Italians 

 exceed the French, notwithstanding that the former have one 

 of the richest and the latter the poorest language of the Latin 

 stock. The infant expresses itself by gesture and inarticulate 

 sounds. Infantile races have few articulate sounds and em- 

 ploy gesture, not as a mere adjunct to, but as an essential 

 portion of their speech. Hence the question arises in the 

 minds of those who believe that man has worked his way up 

 from humble beginnings to his present stage of civilization, 

 whether gesture language preceded word language in the order 

 of development, and whether, after all, the ultimate and uni- 

 versal speech should not be sought in pantomimic action rather 

 than in set forms of words. 



It is not to be supposed that any race of people ever 

 existed who did not make sounds the definite meaus of 

 indicating objects or expressing thoughts; but until some 

 progress is made in processes of inflection or agglutination, 

 articulate sounds are the materials out of which a language 

 may be compounded rather than language itself. Any one 



* Researches into the Early History of Mankind, and the Development of 

 Civilization. By Edward Burnett Tylor, Author of " Mexico and the Mexicans." 

 Murray. 



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