Gestures as part of discourse in reasoning situations: Introducing two epistemic functions of gestures

Overview & Synopsis

In this paper, I present how gestures can contribute to reasoning actions in social epistemic processes. In an empirical study, I investigated possible benefits of students' use of gestures in social learning processes. Integrating an analysis of students' gestures in a reconstruction of epistemic processes led to the identification of epistemic functions of gestures as ways in which gestures contribute to the accomplishment of epistemic actions. Two of these epistemic functions appear to be of special interest when students carry out reasoning in social interaction. Therefore, they will be presented in this paper by means of illustrative examples.