We Jeopardy watchers are sizing up the guest hosts who are auditioning to fill the late Alex Trebek’s shoes. My friend Betsy couldn’t stand guest host Buzzy Cohen because, she says, “his constant hand movements drive me crazy. He moves his hands to accentuate every syllable he speaks.” Well, I think Buzzy can’t help it. Gesturing is an integral part of speaking and is usually unconscious.
Gesture and language are an integrated, synchronized system in which thoughts, language, and hands are linked together. In fact, gesture and speech both originate in the same regions of our brains and both arise from a single speaking process. Each plays its own role in communication: language is linear and segmented; gesture is instantaneous and symbolic. Both reveal our thoughts.
Think about this:
- We gesture when we’re on the phone and nobody’s around to see it.
- Blind people gesture to each other.
- A woman born with no arms nevertheless senses that she’s gesturing. “When I talk, my phantoms gesticulate. In fact, they’re moving now as I speak.”
I don’t know what Buzzy Cohen’s gestures reveal about him,
or whether some of his gesturing is a conscious effort on his part. Like Betsy,
he doesn’t get my vote for permanent Jeopardy host, but not because of his
gesturing. I didn’t even notice it.
For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.
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