Abstract

This contribution reviews the main researches on hand gestures focusing on taxonomic studies, looking for classifying them, and neuropsychological studies, that demonstrate neurological basis of production of gestures, using methodologies like MEG. Through the different lines of this research, two not-necessarily exclusive perspectives emerges: according to a group of researchers, the function of gestures would be mainly communicative, and so the gestures of the speaker would help the listener in the comprehension of linguistic message; according to another group of researchers, the function of gestures would be to facilitate the speaker in the retrieval of the word in processes of linguistic production. Recently, these lines of research are converging; studies in interaction, using fine technologies, are going towards the idea the communication is a multimodal process.