Abstract

A literature review is presented for hand gestures, offering a critical comparison among different both theoretical and empirical contributions, mainly with reference to social psychology and psycholinguistics. First, contributions about gestures' structure and form (hand gesture typological taxonomies), then contributions about gestures' functions(mainly on the basis of gesture-verbal associations) are discussed. Finally, both theoretical and methodological guidelines are given for future research developments, in order to foster a better comprehension of the phenomenon, especially with reference to relevant social-psychological areas such as persuasive communication.