Why pointing with the index finger is not a universal (in sociocultural and semiotic terms).

By David P. Wilkins. 2003

216 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/136f6963b150145ac018e7587ffc6cbdcba13a46

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. Michael Tomasello
2. Ulf Liszkowski
3. J. Carpendale
4. Ailidh B. Carpendale
5. Sotaro Kita
6. De Ruiter
7. C. A L I F O R N I A
8. E. Rt

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Ailidh B. Carpendale
2. De Ruiter
3. Sotaro Kita
4. Michael Tomasello
5. Ulf Liszkowski
6. J. Carpendale
7. J. Peter
8. Martha W. Alibali

In Language and Linguistics

1. J. Carpendale
2. Michael Tomasello
3. Ailidh B. Carpendale
4. Ulf Liszkowski
5. De Ruiter
6. C. A L I F O R N I A
7. E. Rt
8. H. C. L. A. R. K. S. Ta N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y

Citations in the corpus

• Postcards from the mind: The relationship between speech, imagistic gesture and thought (2007, background): “…and pointing gestures have conventionalized form-meaning mappings shared within a given linguistic community (Kendon, 1988; Kendon & Versante, 2003; Wilkins, 2003), imagistic gestures have a form-meaning relationship that is ‘idiosyncratic’ (McNeill, 1992).2 This implies that the meaning of these…”
• The Development of Pointing: From Personal Directedness to Interpersonal Direction (2010, methodology): “In some cultures, other means for directing attention using body parts such as the lips may be used by adults [Wilkins, 2003].”
• Beyond WEIRD: Towards a broad-based behavioral science (2010, unknown): “In fact, although widespread, index-finger pointing is neither universal nor necessarily the predominant manner of pointing even where it is found (Enfield 2001; Wilkins 2003).”
• Cross-cultural variation of speech-accompanying gesture: A review (2009, background): “A different system of pointing gestures is found among the speakers of Arrernte (an Australian Aboriginal language in Central Australia) (Wilkins, 2003).”
• Coordinating with each other in a material world (2005, background): “Depending on the culture, people prefer to point with hands, fingers, thumbs, lips, eyes, or chin (e.g. Enfield, 2001), and when people use their hands, they make further distinctions with hand shapes (e.g. Kendon and Versante, 2003; Wilkins, 2003).”
• Individual differences in social, cognitive, and morphological aspects of infant pointing (2011, background): “In particular, reproducing action styles and gestures without objects might relate to the emerging form of the extended index finger, because this form has been suggested not to be culturally universal and so possibly is learnt by imitation (Wilkins, 2003).”