8.1 Speech and Gesture
The body provides a semiotic resource that is frequently exploited in political discourse. Gesture is therefore an important semiotic means by which politics is performed. Historically, certain gestures have come to acquire specific ‘political’ meanings. The clenched fist raised upwards and outwards, for example, has been used by various social movements, from labour and revolutionary movements to the civil rights movement in the USA, to symbolise solidarity and resistance. Images showing the gesture on particular occasions of use have achieved the status of iconic images, as in John Dominis’ photograph of two Black athletes standing on the medal podium with raised firsts during the 1968 Olympics. A more recent example, which has similarly gained traction and attention through its performance in the arena of sports, is the practice of taking the knee, which has come to stand as a symbol of support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Such gestures are examples of emblems (McNeill Reference McNeill1992). Emblems are gestures which have fixed meanings within a given speech community and which mean what they mean independently of any spoken language. That is, they have word-like status and are capable of standing alone as expressions of meaning. Other non-political examples include the ‘thumbs-up’ and the ‘okay’ gesture, which can be used to express ‘good’ with or without accompanying speech.Footnote 1 Gestures, in the form of emblems, are therefore a significant feature of political communication which are worthy of semiotic analysis. However, another category of gesture that is equally significant for political communication but which is relatively understudied in this context is co-speech gesture (Kendon Reference Kendon2004; McNeill Reference McNeill1992).
Co-speech gestures are gestures that are ‘co-produced with a linguistic message as part of a communicative act’ (Abner, Cooperrider and Goldin-Meadow Reference Abner, Cooperrider and Goldin-Meadow2015: 439) and whose meaning is dependent on the verbal context in which they occur.Footnote 2 Kendon (Reference Kendon2004: 3) notes that ‘visible bodily action is often integrated with speech in such a way as to appear as if it is its partner’. He therefore characterises co-speech gestures as the visible action component of utterances where utterances are defined as ‘any ensemble of action that counts for others as an attempt by the actor to “give” information of some sort’ (Reference Kendon2004: 7). Co-speech gestures are thus distinct from other bodily actions that might be performed in the course of discourse, such as scratching one’s head, which are not normally treated by audiences as communicative.Footnote 3 Co-speech gestures, in other words, are bodily actions which display ‘manifest deliberate expressiveness’ (Kendon Reference Kendon2004: 15) and are therefore perceived by audiences as fulfilling some communicative function rather than having been conducted in the service of a more practical aim.Footnote 4 Also excluded from the category of co-speech gestures are those postures or movements such as crossing one’s arms or legs which are sometimes described as ‘body-language’ and analysed as unintentionally revealing mental states and emotions.
Chiming with the notion of multimodal ensembles in social semiotics (e.g. Kress Reference Kress2010: 28), then, speech and gesture are seen as working together in ‘composite utterances’ (Enfield Reference Enfield2009). Gesture research investigates how gestures ‘collaborate with words in producing the meaning-complex of the utterance of which they are a part’ (Kendon Reference Kendon2004: 5). As with co-text images, speech and gesture may enter into different relations with one another in the co-production of meaning. And as with co-text images, a basic distinction can be made between complementary relations in which speech and gesture are to some extent co-expressive and supplementary relations in which information not supplied in speech is supplied in gesture (or vice versa).
McNeill (Reference McNeill1992: 23) argues that speech and gesture should be analysed within a unified conceptual framework as instantiations of a single underlying process. Across the cognitive sciences, researchers now recognise the fundamental unity of speech and gesture and approach them together as a tightly integrated system for communication (Alibali, Flevares and Goldin-Meadow Reference Alibali, Flevares and Goldin-Meadow1997: 444–445). From this perspective, gesture is not ancillary to language or reduced to a paralinguistic feature but is an integral feature of language. Within cognitive linguistics, gesture is incorporated into the system of symbolic units or constructions said to be constitutive of language (Kok and Cienki Reference Kok and Cienki2016; Steen and Turner Reference Steen, Turner, Borkent, Dancygier and Hinnell2013; Zima Reference Zima, de Mendoza Ibáñez, Oyón and Pérez-Sobrino2017; Zima and Bergs Reference Zima and Bergs2017). Here, it is argued that verbal and manual forms of expression which regularly co-occur are likely to be represented in the language system as multimodal constructions. Moreover, co-speech gestures that do occur regularly with particular forms of linguistic expression are shown to frequently reflect aspects of conceptualisation encoded by the verbal expressions they accompany (see Cienki Reference Cienki, Müller, Cienki, Fricke, Ladewig, McNeill and Teßendorf2013 for an overview). That is, speech and gesture are often found to exist in a complementary relation as coordinated expressions of a single underlying conceptualisation where they are observed to be intersemiotically convergent with respect to one or more specific dimensions of construal. For example, the temporal unboundedness of event-conceptualisations encoded with progressive aspect is reflected gesturally in repeated hand movements or movements which last longer compared to those occurring with perfect aspect (Duncan Reference Duncan2002; Hinnell Reference Hinnell2018; Parrill, Bergen and Lichtenstein Reference Parrill, Bergen and Lichtenstein2013). Similarly, aspects of source-frame imagery mapped in a verbally expressed metaphor also get represented in co-speech gestures (Cienki Reference Cienki and Koenig1998; Cienki and Müller Reference Cienki and Müller2008). For example, when people talk about numerical quantities as ‘small’ versus ‘large’, they produce metaphorical gestures which correspond to the ‘size’ of the quantity in question (Winter, Perlman and Matlock Reference Winter, Perlman and Matlock2013; Woodin et al. Reference Woodin, Winter, Perlman, Littlemore and Matlock2020). Cienki (Reference Cienki and Koenig1998, Reference Cienki, Cienki and Müller2008) has also shown that conceptual metaphors may be expressed in the gestural modality where the metaphor is not expressed verbally and that speech and gesture may be divergent with respect to metaphor by making use of different source-frames in relation to the same target-frame. As with co-text images, where consistencies are found between speech and gesture, this is taken as evidence for the conceptual (i.e., modal) properties of language. The focus in Cognitive CDA, however, is not on gesture as evidence but on coordination between speech and gesture in the expression of meanings whose conceptual properties serve ideological functions. That is, on the multimodal performance of power, prejudice and discrimination.
Co-speech gestures may be performed by various articulators and include facial expressions, head movements and hand movements. It is the latter, however, which are most common and which have received most attention in gesture research (Abner, Cooperrider and Goldin-Meadow Reference Abner, Cooperrider and Goldin-Meadow2015: 438), especially within cognitive linguistics.
Various systems for the classification of co-speech gestures have been proposed with most systems going by function rather than form (Abner, Cooperrider and Goldin-Meadow Reference Abner, Cooperrider and Goldin-Meadow2015; Cienki Reference Cienki2004; Kendon Reference Kendon2004; McNeill Reference McNeill1992; Müller Reference Müller, Santi, Guaïtella, Cavé and Konopczynski1998). In terms of function, a basic distinction that is frequently made is between referential, pragmatic and interactive gestures (Cienki Reference Cienki2022; Kendon Reference Kendon2004). Referential gestures identify or depict some aspect of the referential content of utterances. They can be divided further into: (i) deictic gestures, which serve to identify objects or locations in space and whose prototypical form is pointing; (ii) iconic gestures, which in their form or manner of execution depict properties of a concrete object, scene or action that is described literally in the utterance; and (iii) metaphoric gestures, which depict imagery that is iconic of a source-frame but which in the discourse context is ascribed metaphorically to a more abstract topic or idea.Footnote 5 In addition, some researchers have proposed a category of enactment gestures, where speakers imitate or act out a particular action that the hand or other articulator is actually involved in executing, such as when a speaker mimics writing with a pen (Cienki Reference Cienki and Pinar Sanz2015: 203).
Pragmatic and interactive gestures do not contribute semantic information but instead have a specific function within the dialogical exchange of which they are a part. Kendon (Reference Kendon2004: 158–159) divides pragmatic gestures into: (i) modal gestures, which provide an evaluative frame within which the content of the utterance is to be interpreted (e.g. epistemic, deontic) and thus serve to orient the audience in some way toward what is being said; (ii) parsing gestures, which serve a segmenting purpose similar to the intonational patterns of speech, marking out information structures and values like topic/comment and adding emphasis; and (iii) performative gestures, which are used to indicate the kind of speech act or interactional move a speaker is engaged in. Kendon applies the term interactive gestures to gestures used as a way of indicating to whom an utterance is addressed and those used to manage turn-taking (Reference Beer and De Landtsheer2004: 159).Footnote 6
Whichever function they are performing, gestures can be broken down into three distinct phases: preparation, stroke and retraction (Kendon Reference Kendon2004). In the preparation phase, the speaker readies themselves for the gestural stroke, which is the meaningful phase of the gesture and the one that is roughly co-timed with its affiliate verbal expression.Footnote 7 Following the stroke phase, the hands may return to a rest position in a retraction phase or ready themselves for a subsequent gesture in a continued sequence of gestural activity.
It should be noted at this point that gestural forms are flexible with respect to function (Kok, Bergman and Kopp Reference Kok and Cienki2016). The same gestural form may be associated with multiple functions across different contexts of use. Similarly, the same gesture may perform more than one function on any one occasion (Kendon Reference Kendon2004: 84). The meaning of a given gesture in a particular usage event may therefore be multilayered. While the range of meanings associated with a given gesture can be gleaned from previous context-of-use studies (Kendon Reference Kendon2004: 225–226), analysing specific gestural occurrences is therefore ultimately a matter of interpretation where, as Cienki (Reference Cienki, Semino and Demjén2017: 139) states, ‘one can at least begin with what the researcher sees from the context as the primary function of the given gesture’.
8.2 Gesture in Political Communication
Despite the general significance of gesture, there are relatively few studies that investigate gesture in political contexts of interaction. This is surprising given that shifts in political communication strategies and media practices have made the embodied performance of politicians more visible or more accessible to audiences, and therefore a more salient feature of political discourse.Footnote 8 Though political discourse has always been inherently multimodal, as Streeck (Reference Streeck2008: 156–157) observes, ‘the pervasive presence of television coverage has made the bodily expression of politicians central to their relationship with the public and their effectiveness as communicators’. This is even more the case in the era of social media and live streaming.
Early studies of gesture in political discourse focussed on the role of hand movements in eliciting and controlling applause (Atkinson Reference Atkinson1984; Bull Reference Bull1986). Bull (Reference Bull1986) analysed videotape footage of speeches delivered by several British political figures, including Arthur Scargill (then president of the National Union of Mineworkers). Scargill was found to be especially successful in arousing applause, which he achieved through rhetorical devices like three-part lists that were typically accompanied by synchronised hand gestures. Scargill was also observed to use hand gestures to quell the applause ‘so that he actually seems to conduct his audience’ (Reference Bull1986: 103). More recently, Chilton (Reference Chilton2004: 92-109) studied interaction in the UK parliament, noting in several places the importance of gestures for parliamentary performance and in the execution of parliamentary protocols around turn-taking. In both these studies, the focus was on gesture as a means of managing interactional organisation within the ongoing dialogic exchange in which they featured.
Streeck (Reference Streeck2008) studied the gestures of contenders for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party during the 2003 primary debates in the USA. He found that the politicians relied on a limited shared gestural code that consisted overwhelmingly of pragmatic gestures and particularly parsing and performative gestures, thus marking out information structure and specific rhetorical acts or moves. Based on detailed analysis of the gestures used by Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, Lempert (Reference Lempert2011, Reference Lempert2017) argues that politicians use gestures like the precision-grip (in which the thumb and the tip of index finger are in contact with one another) not only to highlight for special attention specific aspects of what they are saying, but to communicate something about the point they are making and possibly also to signal something about themselves. Lempert understands this in terms of ‘orders of indexicality’ (Silverstein Reference Silverstein2003) and argues that gestures have first-order indexicality (e.g. pinching the thumb and the index finger together to focus the audiences’ attention on a specific stretch of discourse), second-order indexicality (e.g. pinching to indicate that the point being made in a specific stretch of discourse is a particularly sharp or effective one) and potentially third-order indexicality (e.g. pinching to brand oneself as an argumentatively sharp or effective speaker).
Guilbeault (Reference Guilbeault2017) analyses multimodal expressions of viewpoint in Barak Obama’s 2008 speech A More Perfect Union. Rather than displaying convergence, Guilbeault shows how politicians can express deviating viewpoints across speech and gesture. He argues that, as the more implicit medium, ‘gestural deviations afford the opportunity to channel the uptake of speech in accord with viewpoint information the audience is not conscious of. Insofar as gestures can incline audiences toward accepting the speaker’s viewpoint, they have the capacity to persuade’ (Reference Guilbeault2017: 435).
Cienki (Reference Cienki2004) analysed gestures produced by George Bush and Al Gore in the 2000 US presidential debates for evidence of the strict father versus nurturant parent conceptual metaphors argued by Lakoff (Reference Lakoff1996) to underpin Republican versus Democratic values respectively. Cienki found that Bush’s gestures reflected the strict father model. By contrast, Gore’s gestures, in line with the observations of Streeck (Reference Streeck2008), were used more for discourse structuring purposes.
One explanation for the restricted repertoire of gestures observed by Streeck is that politicians have received training in what to do with their hands and other parts of their bodies. The result is a small and ‘safe’ set of gestures which can sometimes appear rigid, rehearsed and inauthentic. This does not appear to be the case for populist politicians, however, whose gestures break with the usual habitus of political communication to be more characteristic of gestures in natural face-to-face communication; that is, to be more ‘conversational’ in style (Cienki and Giansante Reference Cienki and Giansante2014). Sarah Palin and Sylvio Berlusconi, for example, were both found to engage in more co-verbal behaviours such as gazing directly at the viewing audience and use of pragmatic gestures than their non-populist opponents in televised debates and interviews (Reference Cienki and Giansante2014). Such a conversational style may be part of what gives a politician populist appeal as they are seen to communicate on a more personal level and in the same way as ordinary people (Reference Cienki and Giansante2014: 279). Fairclough recognises the role of gesture in communicative style when he states that:
Communicative style is a matter of language in the broadest sense – certainly verbal language (words), but also all other aspects of the complex bodily performance that constitutes political style (gestures, facial expressions, dress and hairstyle, and so forth). A successful leader’s communicative style is not simply what makes him or her attractive to voters in a general way, it conveys certain values which powerfully enhance the political ‘message’.
One politician whose gestural style is particularly unconstrained and idiosyncratic is Donald Trump. Hall, Goldstein and Ingram (Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016) analysed the co-speech gestures of Donald Trump and the contribution they may have made to his successful 2016 primary campaign. In Trump’s gestures they found a uniquely comedic style that ‘accrues entertainment value as it opposes the usual habitus associated with US presidential candidates’ (Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016: 74). For example, a frequent gestural play of Trump is to mimic and make fun of his political opponents through pantomime. Through such performances, Hall, Goldstein and Ingram argue that ‘Donald Trump has done for presidential campaigns what Jerry Springer did for tabloid talk shows: he has inserted a level of lowbrow drama, humour, and violence into the genre through exaggerated appeals to the body’ (Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016: 83). While for some audiences Trump’s gestures are considered vulgar or offensive, amongst his supporters they ‘suggest a man who is spontaneous and real instead of scripted. He is an unplanned man, even an honest man, who tells it how he sees it’ (Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016: 83). Another gesture observed by Hall, Goldstein and Ingram (Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016) is an iconic gesture in which the hand forms a pistol shape which Trump deployed alongside the speech act ‘You’re fired’ as part of a multimodal performative utterance. The gesture-speech combination is co-opted directly from his previous career on the television show The Apprentice and thus further blurs the boundary between politics and entertainment and between politicians and celebrity entertainers.
From a different perspective, linked to what they call the body-specificity hypothesis, Casasanto and Jasmin (Reference Casasanto and Jasmin2010) examined the gestures produced alongside positive versus negative speech during the final debates of the 2004 and 2008 US presidential elections. These debates involved two right-handed politicians (John Kerry and George W. Bush) and two left-handed politicians (Barak Obama and John McCain). Casasanto and Jasmin found that the right-handed speakers were more likely to use right-hand gestures when talking about positively valenced concepts and left-hand gestures when talking about negatively valenced concepts, while the reverse was the case for the left-handed speakers. Casasanto and Jasmin interpret this finding as evidence for the body-specificity hypothesis, according to which the different embodied experiences of right-handers versus left-handers leads to different associations between left/right and good/bad. For audiences able to recognise the handedness of the politicians, their gestures therefore provide a subtle evaluative framing.
The studies summarised here are united in providing detailed descriptive accounts of gesture in political communication. None of these studies, however, are conducted from an explicitly critical perspective. That is, they do not analyse gestures to consider, from a normative standpoint, their potential in communicating prejudice and legitimating discriminatory practices. In the two case studies that close this book, gesture-speech combinations are considered from the perspective of Cognitive CDA to highlight the role that gesture plays in the discursive performance of right-wing populism.
8.3 Performing Populism: The Gestural Style of Donald Trump
Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for the 2016 US presidential elections in June 2015 and was officially nominated as the Republican candidate on 19 July 2016 at the Republican National Convention. He was elected President of the United States on 8 November 2016. He served one term, losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. Trump is widely regarded as a right-wing populist politician. He successfully positioned himself in opposition to the mainstream political establishment claiming instead a platform for himself as a spokesperson for ‘the people’. The ideologies he espouses are nationalist, isolationist and protectionist. He campaigned on the slogan ‘make America great again’ and repeatedly made promises to ‘take our country back’. He identified specific groups as enemies who were then scapegoated. These included, on the one hand, elites who it is claimed are driven by self-motive and do not have the interests of ‘true Americans’ at heart and, on the other hand, immigrants who are likewise presented as a threat to the American people. Amongst Trump’s key policy proposals was to build a wall along the US–Mexico border in order to prevent undocumented migrants entering the USA. Other key policies were to renegotiate international trade deals which were seen as detrimental to the USA and, relatedly, to ‘bring jobs back home’.
Also characteristic of right-wing populism, Trump blurred the lines between politics and entertainment. One of the ways he did this was a unique gestural style which ‘true to entertainer type … violates many of the normative bodily standards of presidential propriety expected for the political stage’ (Hall, Goldstein and Ingram Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016: 82). Notable, for example, are Trump’s use of iconic gestures, his use of pantomime to lampoon other politicians, his use of pointing, and the contrastively expansive use he makes of the gestural space, which is suggestive of a ‘big personality’ (Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016: 83). He also uses more frequent pragmatic gestures. For example, one particular gestural formation that stands out in Trump’s repertoire for both its uniqueness and its frequency of use is an oscillation between an L-shaped gesture and a precision-grip used to convey that a sharp or effective point is being made.Footnote 9
The observations below are based on an analysis of a single text – a video recording of a campaign rally held in Buffalo, New York, on 18 April 2016 during the primary season.Footnote 10 The particular rally was chosen because New York is home turf for Trump, himself a New Yorker whose vernacular is ‘fuelled by linguistic and gestural features that are indexical of New York City’ (Hall, Goldstein and Ingram Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016: 92). That it is a ‘homecoming’ event contributes to a somewhat feverish atmosphere inside the arena. The result is a text that is rich in gesture. Indeed, Trump is a prolific gesturer and the text presents a near constant stream of gestural activity. I do not provide a moment-by-moment analysis of the text, however, and so not all of the gestures contained within it are considered below. I focus on gesture-speech combinations which are indicative of Trump’s own brand of populism and showmanship within a live event setting. These include enactment gestures and engagement with the audience through points and shrugs.
8.3.1 Building Walls
Hall, Goldstein and Ingram (Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016: 90) note that Trump ‘has developed a series of depictive gestures that coordinate with his promise to build a wall at the Mexican border’. These consist of various gestural forms which emphasise the size and solidity of the wall, including ‘wide outstretched arms to illustrate width, tall upright arms to illustrate height and a sharp L-shaped drawing pattern to illustrate strength’ (Reference Hall, Goldstein and Ingram2016: 90). An example from the present data can be seen in (1) where Trump is speaking about his proposed border wall and responding to challenges that he won’t be able to deliver this policy.
(1)
Do you know how easy that is? Beautiful precast concrete going up … [applause] … I’ll tell you one thing, if anybody gets to the top of the Trump wall, it’s gonna be a long way down, it’s gonna be very scary. It’s gonna be a real wall. (33:32)
As he utters (1), Trump performs a sequence of three gestures connected to the verticality schema that is inherent in the concept of a wall. Coinciding with ‘beautiful precast concrete going up’ he raises his hand from a lowered position to one above his head as in Figure 8.1. This gesture constitutes an iconic gesture in so far as it depicts the increase in vertical extent inherent to the wall going up.
Figure 8.1 Iconic gesture depicting wall going up
During a moment of pause for applause, Trump performs another gesture that can be analysed as an enactment gesture. As shown in Figure 8.2, Trump takes a moment to look up and point toward the top of his imagined wall as though he were actually looking up at the wall in front of him. The gesture, which receives continued applause, serves to highlight the scale of the proposed wall suggesting its impressiveness and its effectiveness in ‘protecting’ America from ‘outside’ elements. The pitch of his gaze and the hand pointing directly up imply a wall of considerable height.
Figure 8.2 Enactment gesture looking up and pointing to top of wall
The third gesture that Trump performs in the course of (1) coincides with the expression ‘if anybody gets to the top of the Trump wall, it’s gonna be a long way down’. The complete gesture in fact involves two iconic gestures. The first gesture depicts the upward motion of people scaling the wall. This gesture then segues into a second gesture depictive of the downward motion inherent in falling from the wall. This is shown in Figure 8.3. The gesture further implies the effectiveness of the proposed wall by presenting attempts to surmount it as dangerous and likely to have catastrophic consequences. Interestingly, while the risk of falling down the wall is only implied in the verbal expression, it is represented explicitly in the iconic gesture depicting downward motion. The gesture therefore allows Trump to demonstrate manually what cannot be said verbally – that attempts to overcome the wall could have potentially fatal consequences.
Figure 8.3 Iconic gesture depicting climbing up and falling down the wall
The semiotics of walls in the context of political borders has been explored by others (Demata Reference Demata and Musolff2019; Jones Reference Jones2012; Wodak Reference Wodak and Solomons2020b). In contrast to fences discussed in Chapter 7, the concept of a wall ‘has the connotation of being much more permanent and solid with the strong sense that it blocks movement as well as vision’ (Jones Reference Jones2012: 11). Images of walls, whether or not they come to be materially instantiated, reinforce a discourse of inclusion and exclusion. They distinguish people who belong on one side of the wall from people who belong on the other. They further evoke dystopian narratives by suggesting the need for protection from a dangerous and alien ‘Other’ who lies beyond the wall and is engaged permanently in an effort to overcome the defensive barrier it provides and inflict harm upon ‘us’. As Jones (Reference Jones2012: 25) states, walls impose ‘a sharpening of discursive distinctions between the people and places on the inside and the evil, dehumanized, and disorderly others who are kept out. They materially and symbolically mark the margins of the exceptional, civilized world and protect it from the perceived anomie on the outside’. Demata (Reference Demata and Musolff2019: 114) similarly states that the concept of the wall fulfils a critical aspect of alienisation, namely ‘the insecurity generated by the perception of dangers, real or projected, represented as coming from outside the nation, to the point that the very existence of the nation is under threat’. This idea of an alien and antagonistic entity on the other side of the wall is reinforced when Trump states of Mexican immigrants that ‘They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. They are rapists … And it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast’ (time.com, 16 Jun. 2015). The image of a wall therefore simultaneously plays on fear as well as feelings of safety afforded by a wall and contributes to a securitisation of immigration discourse (Wodak Reference Wodak and Solomons2020b: 162–163).
8.3.2 Pointing
Pointing occurs in many communicative contexts and performs many different functions (see Cooperrider and Mesh Reference Cooperrider, Mesh, Morgenstern and Goldin-Meadow2022). In political discourse, pointing is normally avoided for its perceived accusatory qualities, though this pertains only to the prototypical outward pointing gesture. Cooperrider (Reference Cooperrider2014) observes an instance of inward or self-pointing in political discourse where in a 2006 television interview Geroge W. Bush stated, ‘These people are willing to kill innocent people. They are willing to slaughter innocent people to stop the advance of freedom. So the free world has to make a choice’. As he uttered the phrase ‘free world’, Bush performed a self-directed point. The gesture, Cooperrider argues, ‘quietly creates a connection between Bush and a much broader and somewhat abstract entity – “the free world”’ (Reference Cooperrider2014: 1).Footnote 11 Donald Trump, however, uses a variety of pointing gestures, including both inward and outward points, to connect with his audience in different ways.
Pointing is an evolutionarily early form of communication which facilitates joint attention and was a key steppingstone for reference (Tomasello Reference Tomasello2008). The primary or prototypical function of pointing is deictic where it serves to identify the people, places and objects referred to in discourse (Cooperrider and Mesh Reference Cooperrider, Mesh, Morgenstern and Goldin-Meadow2022; Enfield, Kita and de Ruiter Reference Enfield, Kita and de Ruiter2007).Footnote 12 As such, it frequently co-occurs with deictic expressions like pronouns (I, we, you), possessive determiners (our, their), adverbs of place (here, there) and demonstratives (this, that) (Cooperrider and Mesh Reference Cooperrider, Mesh, Morgenstern and Goldin-Meadow2022). In cognitive grammar terms, pointing serves to specify ground elements (speaker, hearer, setting) and together with verbal expressions place them onstage as objects of conception.
Pointing takes many forms where it can be done with the head, the eyes, the elbow or even a foot (Kendon Reference Kendon2004: 199). Prototypically, however, it is performed by the hand with the index finger extended in a particular direction.Footnote 13 Once the body part doing the pointing has reached its furthest extent, the point is held in position before being retracted. The referent of the gesture is then discovered by projecting a straight line continuing in the same direction (Kendon Reference Kendon2004: 199). Such pointing gestures can vary by axis, direction and dimensionality as well as by the morphology of the hand (Fenlon et al. Reference Fenlon, Cooperrider, Keane, Brentari and Goldin-Meadow2019; Hassemer and McCleary Reference Hassemer and McCleary2018).
In the Trump text, at least four varieties of pointing gesture can be identified. Typical of live entertainment, Trump directly addresses his audience often singling out specific individuals as in (2) where he thanks an individual member of the audience for their show of support toward a previous remark.
(2)
Thank you man, thank you. (09:29)
As he utters the first ‘thank you’ in (2), Trump performs a prototypical outward pointing gesture, shown in Figure 8.4, whose trajectory connects with the intended addressee of the speech act. He retracts the gesture and performs it again on the second ‘thank you’. Directly connecting with audience members in this way represents a more personal engagement with the audience that is characteristic of populist leaders and serves to establish rapport.
Figure 8.4 Audience point (singular)
While the point in (2) picks out an individual audience member and is therefore grammatically singular, outward points are also used in a way that is grammatically plural. For example, in (3), Trump is talking about the influence of ‘special interests’, ‘lobbyists’ and ‘donors’ on other candidates like Ted Cruz and Hilary Clinton. He addresses the audience directly when he says, ‘they are not gonna do what’s right for you’ with emphatic stress on ‘you’. As Trump utters ‘you’, he points outward toward the audience directly in front of him as well as to the audience at home via the camera, as shown in Figure 8.5.
(3)
When their special interest calls, when their lobbyist calls, when their donors call, and they have a stake in the a deal, they are not gonna do what’s right for you. (44:20)
The gesture makes explicit that the ‘you’ he is talking about, whose interests will not be looked after by other candidates, is not you in the generic sense but includes you specifically.
Figure 8.5 Audience point (plural)
In contrast to outward points, inward or self-points point toward the speaker’s body, invariably the upper half of the torso near the mid-line (Cooperrider Reference Cooperrider2014: 7). Self-points involve a slightly different morphology where the index finger is rarely the sole digit extended and multiple digits or the whole hand are employed instead (Reference Cooperrider2014: 3). They are often co-produced with first person pronouns. For example, in (4), Trump is talking about American workers losing their jobs as the manufacturing companies they are employed by move production abroad.
(4)
They’ve been there for thirty years in many cases and now they are gone. Not gonna happen with me. (42:06)
As Trump utters ‘not gonna happen with me’, he performs a self-point as in Figure 8.6. From a referential perspective, self-points occurring with first person singular pronouns are functionally redundant. As Cooperrider (Reference Cooperrider2014: 7) points out, ‘self-points do not serve to disambiguate the referent of an otherwise ambiguous referring expression’. The intended referent of I and me is unambiguously the speaker. Neither do they serve to re-direct the audience’s visual attention, which is already held on the speaker (Reference Cooperrider2014: 7). For Cooperrider (Reference Cooperrider2014: 7), the gesture performs a contrasting function whereby the speaker contrasts themselves with some other implicit but contextually available subject. In (4), Trump contrasts himself with other politicians. The gesture-speech combination thus contributes to the populist positioning of himself as distinct or standing apart from other politicians by putting the interests of the American people first. Thus, as Cooperrider (Reference Cooperrider2014: 8) argues, self-points still fulfil an attention-orienting function but the attention is conceptual attention rather than perceptual attention.
Figure 8.6 Self-point
A further form of pointing that Trump is observed to perform is floor pointing. In floor points, the speaker points directly down to the ground. Floor points seem to be associated with place deixis. In the Trump text, they occur in conjunction with expressions referring to the city, state or country where the speaker and the audience are located as in (5), (6) and (7). Figure 8.7 shows the floor point co-timed with ‘Buffalo’ in (5) where, beginning on the preposition ‘to’, Trump performs a gesture in which, as the point unfolds, his hand rolls up and over into the downward point.
(5)
We right now have a trade deficit with Mexico of fifty-eight billion dollars a year not including all of the drugs that pour across the border and poison our youth, that we’re gonna stop when we let out great border patrol people go to work and when we build the wall. We’re gonna stop the drugs from coming to Buffalo. (48:44)
(6)
No New Yorker can vote for Kasich when he was one that approved NAFTA. He voted in favour of NAFTA which has been a disaster for your state. (14:22)
(7)
A hundred per cent if we negotiate tough. Number one we have to work with our companies to keep them where they are. Most importantly we have to keep them in the United States. (48:21)
In (5), (6) and (7) the gesture works in concert with the speech to reinforce the relevance of political policies for audience members by highlighting the impact (positive or negative) that they will have ‘here’.
Figure 8.7 Floor point
The final pointing gesture that Trump is observed to perform is distinct in its dimensionality. Trump performs several gestures in which the index finger is extended to form a point but rather than delineating a straight path in a particular direction, the hand follows a path which defines a circular enclosure. The gesture may be described as a looping point. It comes in one of two variants with the index finger either pointing up or down. The downward variant occurs with the second-person pronoun you, for example when Trump states ‘you’re gonna be so proud of our country again’ (31:34) and ‘you’re gonna be so proud of your president’ (39:51). The upward variant occurs with the first-person plural pronoun we as in (8):
(8)
And Cruz is a just a catastrophe. He didn’t even get fifty per cent in his own state. He was ay below fifty per cent. And he doesn’t represent what we need. (15:14)
In (8), as Trump utters ‘we’, he performs an upward looping point as shown in Figure 8.8. Importantly, the stroke phase of the gesture moves anti-clockwise and inwards slightly before moving outwards. The gesture serves to encompass both Trump and the audience within the referential scope of ‘we’. It thus aligns the speaker with the audience implying ‘I’m one of you’ or ‘we’re in it together’.
Figure 8.8 Upward looping point
8.3.3 Shrugs
Shrugs are compound enactments that typically consist of multiple gestures performed simultaneously (Debras Reference Debras2017). One primary or prototypical gesture associated with shrugs is an open hand supine (or ‘palm up’) gesture performed with lateral movement, which Kendon (Reference Kendon2004: 275) terms the PL (Palm Lateral) gesture. In this gesture, open hands with palms facing up move in a way that Kendon describes as follows:
[T]he movement of the hand or hands is lateral, away from the speaker’s mid-line. Sometimes this movement is extended so that the hand or hands move backwards, almost until they are positioned behind the speaker’s vertical median. In many cases the movement begins with an outward rotation of the forearm so that one’s impression is that of the hand or hands ‘opening’ as they move apart from one another.
Kendon (Reference Kendon2004: 265) further notes ‘a tendency for gestures of this kind to be combined with a raising of the shoulders in a “shrug”’. The PL gesture may therefore combine with other gestures that make up an idealised shrugging ensemble (Debras Reference Debras2017: 8). These include raised shoulders but also lateral head tilts and various forms of facial expression such as lowered mouth corners and pouts (Reference Debras2017: 8).Footnote 14
Shrugs are typically modal gestures that appear in various stance-taking contexts (Debras Reference Debras2017; Jehoul, Brône and Feyaerts Reference Jehoul, Brône and Feyaerts2017). For Streeck (Reference Streeck2009: 189–191) shrugs function as ‘displays of distancing and disengagement’. They have been associated with a suite of more specific meanings that include ignorance, indifference, incapacity, indetermination, powerlessness and obviousness (Debras Reference Debras2017; Jehoul, Brône and Feyaerts Reference Jehoul, Brône and Feyaerts2017).Footnote 15 In all cases, shrugs not only function as an expression of the speaker’s viewpoint but as an invitation to the hearer to intersubjectively align with that viewpoint. For Trump, shrugs are used to express a further range of modal meanings that include disbelief, dismay, dissatisfaction and disdain often with more than one evaluation expressed simultaneously. Within the text, they frequently occur in the context of rhetorical questions suggesting a multimodal construction at a schematic level. For example, (9)–(12) are each accompanied by some form of shrug as shown in Figure 8.9 (a) - (d) respectively.
(9)
Isn’t it crazy? You know we do all have a first amendment right and they really violate our first amendment right but what are you gonna do right? (09:15)
(10)
So the conservatives they will say like Jeb Bush used to get up ‘He is not a conservative’. Who cares? I am a conservative but I’m a free trader. (49:14)
(11)
Jeb Bush had the biggest fund. I think it was a hundred and forty-eight million. Can you believe it? A hundred and forty-eight million dollars. You might as well throw it right out the window. What just a waste. (44:33)
(12)
We as you know protect Japan. We protect Germany. We protect South Korea. We protect Saudia Arabia. And you know what? We’re dying with these deals. These deals are terrible. (51:08)
Example (Footnote 9) is uttered in the context of protesters having just entered and being immediately escorted from the arena. As he utters ‘what are you gonna do?’ he performs the shrug shown in Figure 8.9a. The ‘what are you gonna do?’ construction is a strong contender for a more specific multimodal construction similar to ‘what do I care?’ (Valenzuela Reference Valenzuela2017). In this context, the gesture-speech combination expresses resignation to the inevitable presence of protesters. But it also expresses indifference to them, implying their irrelevance. This is reinforced through infantilisation where, as they are escorted from the arena, Trump addresses the protesters directly saying, ‘go home to mommy, bye’. In (Footnote 10), as he utters ‘who cares?’, Trump performs the gesture shown in Figure 8.9b. ‘Who cares?’ is another contender for a specific multimodal construction. In (Footnote 10), the gesture-speech combination similarly expresses a lack of interest but directed toward another viewpoint, that of Jeb Bush, rather than toward an activity. In the compound enactment, the PL gesture combines with a facial expression that implies puzzlement or bemusement. It communicates something that may be glossed as ‘I don’t get it’. Thus, through the complete multimodal ensemble presented in (Footnote 10), Trump dismisses Jeb Bush’s view of him as unconservative as irrelevant, relating to a politics of old which Trump is not beholden to. This is reinforced where, as Trump quotes Bush, he gives a physical and verbal impersonation of him as straight, stiff and stilted. In (Footnote 11), Trump performs the shrug in Figure 8.9c coinciding with ‘can you believe it?’. The gesture-speech combination is an expression of disbelief not in an epistemic sense but in the sense of defying belief. It evaluates Jeb Bush as incapable and the proposition that he had a campaign fund of $148m as unfathomable. It essentially asks, ‘how could someone like Jeb Bush be entrusted with such a large sum of money?’. Finally, in (Footnote 12), Trump performs a series of shrugs coinciding with ‘And you know what?’, ‘We’re dying with these deals’ and ‘These deals are terrible’. The gesture shown in Figure 8.9d is the one coinciding with ‘We’re dying with these deals’. The utterance is in the context of current international trade deals which Trump is promising to renegotiate. Implicit in the co-speech gesture is the rhetorical question ‘what are we doing with these trade deals?’. The facial expression that features as part of the gesture is a grimace indicating disapproval or even pain. The gesture thus works alongside speech to express dissatisfaction or disdain towards current arrangements.
Figure 8.9 Shrugs (a), (b), (c) and (d)
Beside their particular modal functions, what is noteworthy about the gestures in (9)–(12) is that, like the linguistic expressions they accompany, they belong to an informal register not normally associated with political discourse. These composite utterances are indexical instead of the way ordinary people talk and gesture. They therefore contribute to the discursive positioning of Trump as a ‘man of the people’ not just by means of what he says but by means of how he says it.
8.4 Legitimation in the Hands of Nigel Farage
This final case study analyses the gestural components of legitimating and delegitimating moves made in the anti-immigration discourse of Nigel Farage, including denial, othering, proximisation and quantification, which are known to be characteristic of anti-immigration discourse more generally (Cap Reference Cap, Koller, Kopf and Miglbauer2019b; Martin Rojo and van Dijk Reference Martin Rojo and van Dijk1997; van Dijk Reference van Dijk1992; van Leeuwen Reference van Leeuwen2007; van Leeuwen and Wodak Reference van Leeuwen and Wodak1999).
Although never elected as a member of the UK parliament, Nigel Farage is a key figure in British politics (Crines and Heppell Reference Crines and Heppell2017). As leader of the UK Independence Party (2006–2009, 2010–2016) and the Brexit Party (2019–2021), Farage has been instrumental in charting the course of British politics over the last decade and a half, culminating in the 2016 vote to leave the European Union. A persistent campaign issue for Farage has been immigration to Britain, which he regularly claims is excessive or out of control, thereby constituting a threat to ‘the British people’, and so must be curbed (Cap Reference Cap, Koller, Kopf and Miglbauer2019b). Farage has traded on an image of himself as a ‘man of the people’ in contrast with ‘elite’ politicians and as a ‘saviour’ on a mission to regain control of Britain’s borders and to reinstate ‘lost British values’ (Kelsey Reference Kelsey2016). This presentation of himself has earned him the status of an ‘every day celebrity politician’ (Wood, Corbett and Filnders Reference Wood, Corbett and Flinders2016) who simultaneously possesses the qualities of ‘charisma’ and ‘authenticity’. As such, alongside leaders such as Heinz-Christian Strache (Austria), Viktor Orbán (Hungary) and Donald Trump (United States), Nigel Farage represents a canonical example of a right-wing populist politician who blurs the boundaries between politics and entertainment (Wodak Reference Wodak2015a). Farage has his own YouTube channel that features short videos made specifically for this channel. These videos take a range of forms but include a documentary-style series Nigel Farage Investigates, which borrows interdiscursively from the genre of investigative journalism to offer critical exposés of current affairs issues, thus fusing politics and infotainment. Like Donald Trump, Farage is a frequent gesturer whose gestural style is more free and flamboyant than is associated with traditional forms of political discourse.
Examples are taken from texts spanning a seven-year period from 2013– 2020. They consist of four speeches delivered as leader of the UK Independence Party and the Brexit Party and a video from Farage’s YouTube series Nigel Farage Investigates addressing the ‘migrant crisis’. With the exception of one speech, all texts were accessed via YouTube. The texts and their sources are displayed in Table 8.1.
Table 8.1 Data sources in Nigel Farage study
| Date | Title | Source | Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 August 2020 | Nigel Farage investigates: The migrant crisis hits Priti Patel’s backyard | www.youtube.com/watch?v=INy6s0Hw6mg | NF20 |
| 22 November 2019 | Brexit Party ‘Contract with the People’ Speech | www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgylhO9w_E4 | NF19 |
| 29 June 2016 | Brexit Party Speech on Immigration and Brexit | Link is no longer available | NF16 |
| 4 March 2015 | Brexit Party Speech on Immigration | www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSB0JoMO0S4 | NF15 |
| 20 September 2013 | UKIP Party Conference Speech | www.c-span.org/video/?315254-1/united-kingdom-independence-party-conference-speech-nigel-farage | NF13 |
8.4.1 Pragmatic Gestures
8.4.1.1 Focussing
Farage defines immigration as the dominant political issue for the UK. He does this via gestural as well as verbal means. For example, in (13), as he utters the final sentence ‘It is the single most important biggest question that is currently urgently facing our country’, he performs a series of seven punctuated gestures involving downward strokes repeated at regular intervals to coincide with the words underlined, in which the palm of the hand is held upwards with all five digits being drawn together so that they are in contact with one another at their tips as in Figure 8.10. This gestural form is known as the grappolo. It is typically a parsing gesture used to mark the primary topic of concern in the speaker’s current discourse (Kendon Reference Kendon2004: 204). As Kendon (Reference Kendon2004: 230) states, ‘it seems to be an action by which a speaker can bring a topic to the fore and emphasize that it is this that is to demand attention’. It is iconic of the act of seizing which, in the context of a parsing gesture, metaphorically represents the speaker’s ‘seizing’ of a topic (Kendon Reference Kendon2004: 231). In (13), the gesture therefore works in concert with speech to focus attention on immigration as a key topic not only in the current moment of interaction but more broadly in British politics.
(13)
And, yes, on immigration, we’ve certainly changed the debate on immigration. This is a debate that I think is vital. It is the single most important biggest question that is currently urgently facing our country. (NF13 07:07)
Figure 8.10 Grappolo gesture in focussing
8.4.1.2 Denial
Van Dijk (Reference van Dijk1992) shows that politicians expressing prejudiced sentiments or seeking sanction for discriminatory actions must take discursive steps to counter the potential accusation that their opinions or proposed actions are racist or extremist and to present them instead as rational and legitimate. There are several ways that speakers can achieve this that amount to acts of denial (van Dijk Reference van Dijk1992). An example is presented by (14):
(14)
The establishment have done everything they can to close down debate on this issue and the decry anybody that dares to discuss the issue somehow as being bad and racist. And we will not have that. This issue must be debated. And I say that I mean we’re a nation that has always been open minded to immigration. Of all the countries in Europe, we’ve been that most open to people from different cultures coming here from around the world. But it is, of course, a question, ladies and gentlemen, of scale because more people have settled in this country in 2010 than came here for the previous 1000 years. It is totally and utterly out of control. Now I’m not against immigration. Far from it. And there are many people who come to Britain who we really should look up to and admire. They are people that come here, they work hard, they pay taxes, they contribute to our life, they obey the law, they are not a drain on the health service. Of course, we welcome and we understand why people want to come into this country. But we’ve got to control it. (NF13 07:32)
In (14), Farage is careful to argue that he is not against all immigration. He performs a series of rhetorical moves associated with denial strategies in discriminatory discourse, including positive self-presentation and concessions to the positive contributions of some immigrants (cf. van Dijk Reference van Dijk1992). He also issues an outright rebuttal or refutation of the charge that he has just relayed which includes a gestural component. As Farage utters ‘now I’m not against immigration’, he performs an open hand prone (or ‘palm down’) gesture in which the hands move from the centre of the podium outward through the horizontal plane toward the corners of the podium, as shown in Figure 8.11. He repeats this same gesture as he utters ‘far from it’. This gesture is an example of a performative gesture. Just as speakers are able to perform speech acts through spoken language, so they can confirm, deny, accept, dismiss, refuse, reject etc. through gestures. The gestural form accompanying example (14) is one associated with acts of denial and negation (Kendon Reference Kendon2004: 248; see also Bressem and Müller Reference Bressem, Müller, Müller, Cienki, Fricke, Ladewig, McNeill and Bressem2014). Both components of the utterance occurring as part of example (14) therefore carry the same illocutionary force. In other words, they collaborate in the performance of the speech act so that the composite utterance constitutes a multimodal embodied enactment of denial.
Figure 8.11 Open hand prone with lateral movement in denial
8.4.1.3 Epistemic Authorisation
In order to attain legitimation, political speakers must convince audiences that their reasons for action are based on facts rather than opinion. Politicians, in other words, are behoven to ‘imbue their utterances with evidence, authority and truth’ (Chilton Reference Chilton2004: 23). One way of doing this verbally is the presentation of numbers and statistics which, as van Dijk (Reference van Dijk and Cottle2000b: 46) states, ‘are the rhetorical device to suggest precision and objectivity, and hence credibility’. Where numbers are ‘predominantly meant as signals of precision and truthfulness’ (van Dijk Reference van Dijk1988: 88), epistemic claims are therefore frequently backed up by facts and figures which the speaker presumes will be accepted by the hearer as authoritative (Chilton Reference Chilton2004: 117). One gestural form implicated in this process of epistemic authorisation is the precision-grip.
The index finger to thumb – ‘IFT’ – precision grip belongs to the same larger family as the grappolo (Kendon Reference Kendon2004). In this precision-grip, however, the thumb touches only the index finger, making contact with its distal phalange or its distal interphalangeal joint to form a ring, while the remaining fingers are curled in and touching the palm (Lempert Reference Lempert2011: 247). Like the grappolo, IFT precision-grips are used to ‘make prominent some specific fact or idea’ (Kendon Reference Kendon2004: 240) and thus function as parsing gestures. However, based on careful context-of-use studies, Kendon observes that they also function modally where they are ‘related to ideas of exactness, making something precise’. As Kendon (Reference Kendon2004: 241) observes, precision-grips are ‘brought into play whenever, for the speaker, “making precise” or clarification seems necessary or important in gaining the agreement, the conviction or the understanding of the interlocutor’. In political discourse, one context in which precision-grips are found is therefore alongside numerical or statistical information as in (15).
(15)
So just think on this. In what is already the most crowded country in Europe, the fact that we have to build one new dwelling every seven minutes just to cope with current rates of immigration. (NF15 03:39)
In (15), Farage is talking about the purported pressure that immigration places on housing and other resources. As he utters ‘every seven minutes’ he executes the precision-grip gesture shown in Figure 8.12. In this multimodal utterance, speech and gesture are therefore working together as co-expressions of precision and objectivity intended to give credence to the argument that immigration presents a strain on resources and should therefore be stopped or reduced.
Figure 8.12 Precision grip in epistemic authorisation
8.4.2 Referential Gestures
8.4.2.1 Deixis and Proximisation
A fundamental move in discursively constructing prejudice and legitimating discriminatory actions is othering – the act of constructing a dichotomous contrast between ‘us’ versus ‘them’ (Chovanec Reference Chovanec2019; Chovanec and Molek-Kozakowska Reference Chovanec and Molek-Kozakowska2017; Reisigl and Wodak Reference Reisigl and Wodak2001). For Reisigl and Wodak, othering is the ‘simplest and most elementary form of linguistic and rhetorical discrimination’ which involves ‘identifying persons or groups of persons by naming them derogatorily, debasingly or vituperatively’ (Reference El Refaie2001: 45). There are various ways in which the Other can be distinguished from the in-group, for example, along cultural and linguistic lines. Perhaps the most basic way of defining an Other and the one that is most likely to be performed gesturally is through de-spatialisation, where people are defined as coming from or belonging to a different place (Reisigl and Wodak Reference Reisigl and Wodak2001).
In legitimising immigration control, anti-immigration discourses often also rely on a spatial proximisation strategy in which the Other, constructed as physically and culturally distant, is construed as moving toward and arriving in the country of the in-group to present a threat to their corporeal selves and/or their cultural identity (Cap Reference Cap2013; Reference Cap, Koller, Kopf and Miglbauer2019b; Chovanec Reference Chovanec2019; Hart Reference Hart2010). For Cap (Reference Cap, Koller, Kopf and Miglbauer2019b: 74), proximisation is ‘a forced construal operation meant to evoke closeness of an external threat, to solicit legitimisation of preventive means’. There is an inherently deictic dimension to this pattern of conceptualisation as the scenario is presented from the perspective of the self, situated socially as a member of the in-group as well as geographically in the location of the in-group (Chilton Reference Chilton2004). Othering and spatial proximisation are exemplified in example (16), where the Other, represented by the de-personalising metonymic noun phrase ‘these little dinghies’, is construed in the verb phrase as infiltrating the territory of the in-group.
(16)
And yet, every day, we’re seeing these little dinghies landing on our beaches in Kent. They are getting all the way though some of them. (NF20 01:25)
Othering and proximisation are simultaneously realised in the gesture accompanying (16), shown in Figure 8.13. When Farage utters the phrase ‘these little dinghies’, his left hand is far removed from his torso, while his line of sight extends past his hand, as if looking into the distance. This part of the gesture explicitly establishes a distal location from where immigrants are construed as coming. Then, co-timed with ‘landing on our beaches’, Farage moves his hand closer towards his body. This gestural sequence therefore involves two distinct strokes. In the first stroke, Farage moves his hand away from his torso before, in a second stroke, moving it back towards it, thereby constituting a two-part sequence where the Other is depicted as moving from a distal location toward the in-group. The complete gesture may therefore by analysed as a manual realisation or enactment of othering plus proximisation which is simultaneously expressed in the spoken component of the utterance. Crucially, this gesture also involves an element of metonymy where Farage’s body stands for the in-group or their territory. This provides a deictic point of reference relative to which the Other is defined and their movement is construed.
Figure 8.13 Extended hand in othering and inward movement in spatial proximisation
This type of composite utterance, representing a multimodal enactment of othering plus proximisation, is not an isolated instance within the data. For example, (17) presents a similar pattern:
(17)
Even today, there are boats coming across the English Channel. And we all know that the Border Force bring them in to Dover, they are kept with the police for twenty-four hours, and then virtually everybody disappears. (NF19 18:15)
As with the previous example, othering and proximisation are also enacted in the gestural component of the utterance. Coinciding with the critical phrase ‘bring them in’, Farage performs the two-handed gesture shown in Figure 8.14 in which his hands similarly move from a distal position back toward his torso. In both of these examples, then, the image, constructed multimodally, is of an alien Other arriving at and entering the territory of the in-group. In (17), however, the utterance may further be analysed as an appeal to the body-politic metaphor with Farage’s body providing a material or metonymic instantiation of the nation-as-body in the body-politic.Footnote 16 As Farage utters ‘bring them in’, he turns his body so that his hands, representing migrants, occupy the space that his body previously marked. The image is of the ‘body’ incorporating or absorbing a foreign entity. This is reinforced verbally where he states, “and then everybody virtually disappears”.
Figure 8.14 Inward movement coinciding with ‘bring them in’
8.4.2.2 The body-politic
Another example in which the gesture may be analysed as appealing to the body-politic metaphor is provided by (18). In the body-politic metaphor, the nation is construed metaphorically as a body (Musolff Reference Musolff2010a, Reference Musolff, Okulska and Cap2010b). In the situated performance of political discourse, the nation-as-body in the body-politic may be represented materially and/or metonymically by the actual body of the speaker. For example, in (18), coinciding with the verbal metaphor ‘open-door immigration’, Farage moves his hands apart along the horizontal axis in an action resembling opening, as shown in Figure 8.15.
(18)
How can you plan forwards for public service provision when you have open-door immigration and you’ve got no idea in five years’ time, with the nearest 2 million, how many people will actually be living in the country? (NF16 09:51)
The gesture is therefore similarly metaphoric in that it draws on the open/close element of the container schema to conceptualise the abstract notion of a country in terms of a container that can be opened or closed. In this metaphor, the country is a container and its people (i.e., the nation) are its contents. In the situated performance of this metaphor, however, the content of the container is represented materially by the speaker’s own body.
Figure 8.15 Open-arms gesture exposing the body coinciding with ‘open-door immigration’
An entailment of the body-politic metaphor is that nations, like bodies, are vulnerable to harm. This entailment is frequently exploited in discriminatory discourses where it serves to justify policies of exclusion or expulsion (Musolff Reference Musolff2010a, Reference Musolff, Okulska and Cap2010b, Reference Musolff2016). It is exploited in (18) where the open arms gesture leaves Farage’s body physically exposed thereby connoting vulnerability to harm. When mapped across in the body-politic metaphor, the gesture therefore implies that the nation is similarly vulnerable to harm from immigration.
Evidence that the open-arms gesture accompanying example (18) is indeed metaphoric, and is not a performative gesture associated, for example, with the illocutionary force of questioning or part of a beat gesture, comes from the fact that a gesture involving a similar ‘opening’ movement occurs with the same phrase elsewhere in the data within a different illocutionary context. For example, the verbal phrase ‘open-door immigration’ is repeated in example (19) where it is accompanied by the open-arms gesture shown in Figure 8.16. This suggests that the gesture is semantically bound with the phrase ‘open-door immigration’ rather than occurring as part of a speech act or regular rhythmic movement.
(19)
Many big businesses have increased their profits by keeping wages artificially low. And I know that it’s been a boon for the rich. Because if you’re very wealthy, open-door immigration means cheaper nannies, cheaper chauffeurs, and cheaper gardeners. But the vast majority of British people want change. (NF15 04:24)
Figure 8.16 Another open-arms gesture exposing the body coinciding with ‘open-door immigration’
8.4.2.3 Quantification
A typical way that immigration is constructed as a threat is through quantifications, where immigration is described as occurring in large and unsustainable numbers, often in support of a claim that immigration leads to social and economic problems (Gabrielatos and Baker Reference Gabrialetos and Baker2008; Reisigl and Wodak Reference Reisigl and Wodak2001; van Dijk Reference van Dijk, Zapata-Barrero and Yalaz2018). Quantifications may be expressed directly through explicit reference to degrees of magnitude or indirectly through words that include large quantities as part of their meaning (e.g. flood, pour).
Research in cognitive linguistics shows that when we talk about magnitudinal domains like quantity, weight, duration and pressure we often refer to degrees of magnitude in terms of physical size or extent in space (Lakoff and Johnson Reference Lakoff and Johnson1980; Winter, Marghetis and Matlock Reference Winter, Marghetis and Matlock2015). Thus, we describe quantities as ‘large’ versus ‘small’ and periods of time as ‘long’ versus ‘short’. Cognitive linguistic studies of gesture have shown that such metaphoric conceptualisations of magnitude, across different domains, also receive gestural representation. For example, Woodin et al. (Reference Woodin, Winter, Perlman, Littlemore and Matlock2020) found that, for greater versus lesser quantities, speakers are more likely to gesture using an open rather than a closed hand configuration, using two hands rather than one, with an outward rather than an inward movement, and with a wider distance between the gesturing hands. This pattern was found to be particularly pronounced for gestures accompanying expressions containing extreme adjectives, such as ‘huge number’ versus ‘tiny number’.
In the present data, several instances of quantification can be found in which Farage characterises immigration as excessive or as leading to excessive numbers of people in the country. Consider examples (20) and (21):
(20)
What it looks like is that, not just the midlands and the north anymore, but because of the sheer volume of people we’re having to accommodate, increasingly it looks like hotels in the southern part of England are also filling up and this one appears to be in Priti Patel’s own constituency. (NF20 02:19)
(21)
Now there are many other things that we simply can’t put a cost on. Social cohesion. A sense in our cities or market towns that we are one community living together. That of course has become increasingly divided, fragmented, segmented within our towns and cities, because the sheer pace of people coming has been too great to integrate. (NF16 11:35)
Example (20) refers to the quantity or amount of people, conceptualized in terms of volume, migrating to Britain while example (21) refers to the rate at which they have been coming. Both domains, quantity and rate, are magnitudinal. Verbally, the degree of magnitude in each case is construed as extreme through the adjective ‘sheer’. In both instances, coinciding with ‘sheer’ and lasting the duration of the noun phrase, Farage also performs a gesture of the kind associated with extreme degrees of magnitude, with the palms open and facing each other, held wide apart as shown in Figures 8.17 and 8.18. Thus, the gestural component in (20) functions alongside ‘sheer’ to express large quantity or amount while the gestural component in (21) functions to express a rapid rate in the iterative process of immigration. Of course, quantity and rate are related such that, in the case of immigration, a rapid rate of immigration leads, within a given time frame, to a larger number of people in the country. Thus, quantification in (20) and (21) is realised multimodally with the gesture providing a tangible, visual representation of scale that indicates excessive levels of immigration. Gestures are particularly significant in contexts of quantification where the size of the gesture accompanying non-specific quantifiers is shown to influence estimations of the numbers involved (Lorson et al. Reference Lorson, Macuch Silva, Hart and Winter2024).
Figure 8.17 Open hand gesture of magnitude coinciding with ‘sheer volume’
Figure 8.18 Open hand gesture of magnitude coinciding with ‘sheer pace’
While the gestures accompanying examples (20) and (21) express a number is size metaphor, the gesture accompanying (22) expresses a metaphor, co-expressed in speech, that is richer in imageability and which explicitly constructs immigration as a threat.
(22)
And what about primary school places? With an explosion in the birth rate of newly arrived people, we estimate that we are going to have to find another 200,000 primary school places by 2020. (NF16 09: 27)
The phrase ‘explosion’ in example (22) could be analysed as a frozen metaphor that no longer has any figurative sense. However, the concomitant gesture, which is shown in Figure 8.19, clearly presents the metaphorical source-frame thus indicating the active figurativity of the conceptualisation underlying the verbal phrase (cf. Müller Reference Müller2008). As Farage utters ‘an explosion’, he performs a gesture in which the hands move quickly upward and outward in a way that is iconic of an actual explosion but which here is functioning metaphorically to characterise a rapid increase in numbers. As explosions burst outward in a violent and abrupt fashion, often causing damage, this metaphoric gesture serves to construes current immigration levels as having harmful effects.
Figure 8.19 Movement of hands up and outward iconic of an explosion
In (23), as Farage utters ‘massive oversupply’, starting from a low position, his arm sweeps over and across his body so that the palm of his hand comes to face his chest as shown in Figure 8.20. The gesture is similar to the one accompanying ‘these little dinghies landing on our beaches’ in example (16) but here the arc of the gesture, moving through both the vertical as well as the horizontal plane, provides the additional meaning of ‘large numbers’ and carries the connotation of being overwhelmed. The gesture also resembles another metaphor frequently found in anti-immigration discourse where immigration is construed in terms of oceanic waves.
(23)
(NF14 18:03)
Figure 8.20 Arced movement toward chest coinciding with ‘massive oversupply’
8.4.2.4 Aspectising
Closely connected with quantification is aspectising. Aspect concerns the way an event or process is construed as unfolding through time (Comrie Reference Comrie1976). A primary distinction is between perfective aspect, in which events and processes are treated as bounded and complete, and imperfective or progressive aspect, in which they are treated as unbounded and ongoing, either in the sense of being continuously in progress or in the sense of regularly reoccurring (Langacker Reference Langacker1987; Talmy Reference Couldry2000). In anti-immigration discourses, immigration is usually construed as a present and, crucially, ongoing issue. That is, it is construed with imperfective aspect, which ‘conveys greater immediacy’ (Radden and Dirven Reference Radden and Dirven2007: 190) and implies that a situation will continue to endure unless some interventionist action is taken (Fausey and Matlock Reference Fausey and Matlock2011). In this sense, imperfective construals realise a rhetorical strategy of temporal proximisation by presenting the problem as current and accumulating, thereby suggesting the need for immediate mitigation (Cap Reference Cap2013; Hart Reference Hart2014b).
In English, imperfective aspect is marked by various lexical and grammatical means, including progressive verb constructions (e.g. is verbing), periphrastic verb constructions (e.g. keep verbing, continue to verb), and adverbial phrases (e.g. continuously, over and over, every few seconds). Cognitive linguistic studies of gesture have shown that aspectual distinctions are also reflected in co-speech gestures (Duncan Reference Duncan2002; Hinnell Reference Hinnell2018; Parrill, Bergen and Lichtenstein Reference Parrill, Bergen and Lichtenstein2013). For example, imperfective-marked speech is associated with gestures that are of longer duration and greater complexity, such as those involving repetition, than gestures associated with perfective-marked speech (Duncan Reference Duncan2002). In the situated discourse of Farage, the construal of immigration as an ongoing problem is enacted multimodally through gesture as well as through speech. For example, in the spoken component of example (24), migrants are described as arriving at regular and uninterrupted intervals. In the gestural component of (24), immigration is similarly construed imperfectively. Hinnell (Reference Hinnell2018: 794) shows that continue in periphrastic constructions continue to verb and continue verbing is marked in its gestural asynchrony where gesture onset precedes the onset of the target utterance. In relation to (24), immediately preceding ‘continuous days’, Farage performs the gesture shown in Figure 8.21 in which the hands rotate forwards along the sagittal axis.
(24)
Today is day eleven of migrants coming into Dover. That’s a record for continuous days. (NF20 00:38)
Hinnell (Reference Hinnell2018) shows that cyclic gestures of this kind are associated with imperfective aspect where they are taken to ‘indicate an uninterrupted event progression’ (Reference Hinnell2018: 9). This is perhaps motivated by the fact that, culturally, cyclical motion is associated with continuity (Jamalian and Tversky Reference Jamalian and Tversky2012).
Figure 8.21 Cyclic gesture immediately preceding ‘continuous days’
Hinnell (Reference Hinnell2018) shows that repetition of gestures is also a feature associated with imperfective aspect and especially with the periphrastic keep construction. The gesture performed as part of (25) may therefore similarly be analysed as expressing imperfective aspect and thus construing immigration as an enduring issue.
(25)
(NF15 03:53)
As Farage utters ‘unlimited supply’, he performs a sweeping gesture, shown in Figure 8.22, which he repeats three times in the course of the co-timed verbal expression. Thus, while in the spoken component of (25), ‘unlimited supply’ suggests the potential for continuous, open-ended immigration, in the gestural component, this potential is presented as the current reality via a gesture whose meaning, in this context of use, is interpretable as something like ‘keeps coming’. In the context of immigration discourse, aspect is linked with quantification and legitimation where the imperfective aspect implies a perpetual enlargement of the immigrant population unless some interventionist action is taken.
Figure 8.22 Inward sweeping gesture repeated three times to coincide with ‘unlimited supply’
CDA identifies a range of specific rhetorical moves fundamental to the communication of prejudice and the legitimation of discrimination and exclusion, including denial, epistemic authorisation, othering, proximisation, quantification and aspectising. The analysis presented here shows that, in spoken discourse, these moves are enacted multimodally through gesture as well as speech. Thus, if we are to gain a full and proper understanding of the semiotic means by which right-wing populism is performed, then gesture cannot be ignored and must be given the central attention it deserves alongside speech. Enormous amounts of information are communicated by gesture. If CDA involves excavating texts to find the meanings in them, gesture represents an as yet undiscovered site.
