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No chapter abstract available.

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Interest in studying the relationship between language and culture can be traced back at least to the eighteenth century. Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835), Franz Boas (1858–1942), Edward Sapir (1884–1939), and Benjamin Whorf (1897–1941) are prominent scholars who all emphasized the relationship between language, thought, and culture. However, a unified sub-discipline focusing on the relationship between language and culture has never been fully developed. Taking the United States alone, Duranti (2003) distinguishes between three different paradigms in the history of the study of language as culture, which is summarized in Table 1.1.

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The purpose of this chapter is to assess the future of Cultural Linguistics as a tool for exploring a variety of linguistic phenomena along with their intra-group and inter-group cultural instantiations. As a subfield of linguistics, Cultural Linguistics has the potential to bring forth a model that successfully melds together complementary approaches, e.g., viewing language as ‘a complex adaptive system’ and bringing to bear upon it concepts drawn from cognitive science such as ‘distributed cognition’ and ‘multi-agent dynamic systems theory’. This will allow us to move away from essentialist models of the entity we call ‘language’ (Frank 2008) and hence to adopt and build on theoretical approaches, e.g., ‘enactive cognitivism’, already being exploited by researchers working in related areas more characteristic of the cognitive sciences, that is, by those who no longer subscribe to the tenets of ‘classic cognitivism’. The paradigm emerging from research in Cultural Linguistics draws on a highly nuanced multi-disciplinarily informed approach that allows for a greater appreciation for individual choices and the motivations behind these choices as they coalesce into and around ‘cultural conceptualizations’ (Sharifian 2008, 2009a; Chapter 9, this volume).

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No chapter abstract available.

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The term and the notion of ‘linguistic relativity’ are usually associated with the names of the American linguist Edward Sapir (1884–1939) and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941), who developed the ideas of Sapir’s teacher Franz Boas (1858–1942), one of the founders of North American anthropology and linguistics. For these scholars, the diversity of languages was one of the central facts about human beings and potentially, at least, had implications for conceptualization of natural and social situations. In the 1920s and 1930s, Sapir and Whorf both proposed a ‘principle of linguistic relativity’ with an explicit reference to Einstein’s theory of relativity: This amounted to maintaining that differences between the languages of speaker and analyst constituted a factor that had to be taken explicitly into account in any analysis of social and cultural life – just as in Einstein’s relativity, the velocity and direction of the measurer him- or herself had to figure in the determination of those of any other entity. In neither case was there a privileged fixed point or centre from which everything else could be judged.

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Cognitive anthropology is “the study of the relation between human society and human thought” (D'Andrade 1995: 1). Human thought has two aspects: It is both a process (thinking) and a product (thoughts). Cognitive anthropologists tend to divide between those who focus on the process of thinking (e.g., cognition in practice, distributed cognition studies) and those who study the content, form, organization, and distribution of cultural understandings (e.g., cultural models, cultural consensus, and other cultural domain studies). Both approaches and various schools within them will be described in this chapter, as well as some that bridge the thinking–thoughts divide.

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The concept of ‘cultural semiotics’ can be interpreted in three ways. First, as referring to a methodological tool which can be recognized simultaneously in various disciplines of contemporary humanities and social sciences. It can also be considered as a concept representing the diversity of methods for analysing various aspects of culture as a research object in semiotic theory and applied semiotics, and finally, as one of the subdisciplines of semiotics and culture studies. In the last case, cultural semiotics has a holistic view to culture and features of discipline.

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Part A (Meredith Marra)

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The term ‘ethnopragmatics’ designates an approach to language in use that sees culture as playing a central explanatory role. It is a reconceptualization of the approach to ‘cross-cultural pragmatics’ inaugurated by Anna Wierzbicka’s (2003 [1991]) ground-breaking volume of this name. Ethnopragmatics involves a threefold alignment of objectives, methodological tools, and evidence base (Goddard 2006).

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This chapter aims to discuss the relationship between language and culture from the perspective of context. In my research, I have argued that native-like knowledge of language can be determined as knowing preferred ways of saying things and preferred ways of organizing thoughts (Kecskes 2007a, 2010 a-c, 2013, see also Wray 2002). How do these ‘preferred ways’ come about? Speech community members develop unique ways of using the linguistic code with other members of the same community. In this system, certain words or sequences are preferable when expressing certain phenomena, like ‘shoot a film’, ‘dust the furniture’, ‘make love’, and so on. It is also desirable to say certain things in particular speech situations, such as ‘help yourself’ at the table, ‘welcome aboard’ when greeting a new employee, ‘be my guest’ when answering a request, ‘stick around’ when asking someone to stay and the like. If we feel that we need to mitigate our criticism towards someone, we start the conversation with, for instance, ‘not that I cannot understand your act, but …’. If we ask for clarification we often say ‘what’s your point? …’, ‘please make your point … why don’t you make clear what your point is?’ And so on and so forth, we could continue to demonstrate how conventionalized language use is.

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Part A of this chapter is Farzad Sharifian’s original contribution to the first edition of the present handbook, edited by him in 2015. The editors of the new edition decided to include it as a reprint rather than revising and updating it, in order to pay tribute to Farzad Sharifian’s outstanding contribution to the theoretical foundation, popularization, and dissemination of Cultural Linguistics. In Part B, the editors provide an overview of developments in Cultural Linguistics over the last decade, both in terms of recent studies along these lines and relating to the refinement of its theoretical framework.

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The various chapters in this handbook highlight the multifariously intertwined and inseparable connections between language and culture. At its root, language consists of conventionalized units, structures, and patterns of form and meaning that have been moulded in their cultural surroundings and are renegotiated in discursive interactions of speakers sharing their experiential contexts to varying extents. Thus, the study of linguistic forms and their meanings is inherently reflective of the underlying culturally based knowledge and conventions as expressed through language use.

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No chapter abstract available.

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This chapter focuses on the historical evolution and critical debates associated with research in the area of language, culture, and identity, with special attention paid to the different social processes emphasized in representations of the relationships among and between the three concepts. The exposition starts from the premise that although debates about these representations have been at times contentious, the diverse approaches undertaken by researchers over the years reveal underlying preoccupations with different kinds of issues and questions. The larger portion of the chapter is devoted to elucidating these preoccupations and their associated relevancies.

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The relationship between language and gender has been the focus of interest in a number of disciplines such as linguistics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and biology. Each discipline has explored a particular aspect pertaining to this topic: biology and psychology-based studies have explored the brains of males and females examining how language is processed and learned, sociology has looked into gender and socialization, anthropology has focused on how gender roles in different cultures are defined, while the perspective found in the field of linguistics has been on differences in language use of men and women.

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The terms ‘language’ and ‘culture’ are often used in politeness research as if they were synonyms. In this chapter, I tease these two terms apart and chart their complex relation with politeness. I firstly discuss traditional models of politeness and impoliteness which analyse politeness in purely formally linguistic terms. I foreground the problems of such an analysis and then I examine the discursive approach to politeness which tries to develop a more context-based perspective. This approach is more able to chart the complex relations between the terms ‘language’, ‘culture’, and ‘politeness’. In my discussion, I will emphasize the norm-setting role of the elites. I then focus on the way that different cultures have been described in relation to politeness norms, where certain cultures have been labelled as collectivist or individualist cultures, positive or negative politeness cultures, and discernment and volition-based cultures. I question the validity of classifying whole cultures as tending towards certain styles of politeness or impoliteness.

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This chapter departs from the conventional handbook format by presenting a more or less continuous argument throughout. Instead of a historical survey of positions, issues, and research contributions, these matters are treated in relation to a single question, namely the proper understanding of language, since this has fundamental consequences for what social inquiry into language, culture, and interaction could possibly be like. The error is to abstract language from its uses as if it was a thing independent of them. Making this mistake confounds the understanding of what words mean. Language, culture, and interaction are, in the first place, words, expressing concepts. “Language is an instrument. Its concepts are instruments.”

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For linguistics and sociology, language, culture, and discourse are non-exhaustive topics. There is a wide plurality of views on discourse, so many that we cannot properly account for them all. For instance, Fairclough (1995) investigates discourses in processes of social and cultural change, or “re-contextualization”, showing how discourse is a social practice that produces ideological work, which therefore can be manipulated and used to produce (or fight) inequalities. ‘Climate change’ is an example of how, over the decades, what were once ‘fringe’ views in society are now ‘mainstream’ as the ‘dominant’ discourse (what is said, who is saying it) has changed. As such, our intention in this chapter is not to provide a thorough account of different views but to collect together affinities in these views. These affinities may be glossed as approaches that take language as representative of culture (“correspondence” approaches) and approaches that treat language as constitutive of the activities it describes (“reflexive” approaches).

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The term subculture is ambiguous. This is not just due to the fact that the term culture can be defined in many ways. What adds to the broad meaning scope of the term is the polysemy of the suffix sub-. There are at least three senses of this suffix that could be argued to be relevant for the notion of a ‘subculture’. The first meaning refers to a classification that is more specific than that of an overarching class (as in subcategory, subgenre). In this meaning, subcultures are particular types of culture, and they are a part of culture in a broader sense. A second meaning of sub- is spatial (as in subway, submarine), i.e., it describes something that is located underneath something else. Applying a metaphorical reading, subcultures could be viewed as social formations that operate in the underground or, to some extent, below the level of public visibility. The third meaning of sub- often expresses a negative evaluation, as it describes something that is of lesser value than something else or not quite something else (as in substandard, suboptimal) or, in the personal realm, someone who is subordinate to someone else (as in sub-delegate, sub-officer). This would characterize a subculture as a somehow corrupt or subordinate form of culture – a reading that is less prominent today but clearly used to affect early research on subcultures.

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Historical linguistic evidence is a key element in the reconstruction of prehistoric cultures, the migrations of people bearing cultures, and the diffusion of cultural elements. ‘Culture history’ in a wider sense, with more of an emphasis on material culture, was widely used as the term for a dominant approach in archaeology in the first half of the twentieth century, but the term went out of favour. The field of linguistic prehistory, however, continues many of the aims and methods of culture history with emphasis on historical linguistic evidence, often combined with the findings of archaeology and other disciplines such as palaeobiology and biological genetics. The scholar of the Austronesian language family, Robert Blust, a prominent advocate and successful practitioner of opening the ‘window’ of language on to prehistory and culture history, reminds us that humans have been “inadvertently recording the stuff of social and cultural history in … daily speech since long before the advent of writing” (1996: 28). This record is largely preserved in the languages spoken in recent times and can be interpreted by historical linguistics to teach as much as, and in some areas, much more than archaeology can about the prehistoric past.

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Kinship provides one particularly useful domain for the examination of language and thought relations. There are several advantages it offers, as well as at least one drawback. First, and maybe most importantly, anthropologists and linguists have much clearer analytic control of denotative meaning, connotative associations, and figurative extension than for almost any other domain. This control includes both terminological contrast (i.e., ‘an uncle as opposed to, for instance, a father’) and reference (i.e., ‘how do you tell if someone actually is an uncle’). Second, we have extensive presentations and analyses of the social and cultural structures and forms (including groups, legal rights, behavioural obligations, economic relations, and so forth) with which different kinds of kinship terminologies are associated. Third, there now exists some collection of systematic data patterns of actual behaviour among kinsfolk that can be directly compared with patterns of terminological usage. Fourth, both kinship terminologies and patterned (and socially enjoined) relations among kin are universal and universally important – all cultures have them. Fifth, anthropologists and others have been collecting and publishing systematic data on kinship terminologies, groups, and rights for over 150 years. The one clear drawback is that denotative reference – almost uniquely – is defined by relative products (such as ‘uncle’ is a ‘parent’s brother’) rather than directly by features (a ‘table’ is a flat surface on which one places things that typically rests on legs and typically falls within a certain size range, depending on what kind of a table it is) and that, thus, kinterms are binary (one is ‘someone’s uncle’ vs. simply ‘an uncle’), whereas most other terms are unary (it is simply ‘a table’). Connotative associations and figurative extension for kinship terms seem more like what is common for other domains.

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Do the ways that we talk about colour play a role in the ways that we can think about colour? If two languages have different colour words, does that mean that speakers of those languages think about colour in different ways? Are some colour words or colour concepts more significant, more ‘basic’ than others? And if so why and in what way does that matter, if at all? These questions, and there are further related ones, are the basis for an extended research tradition more than 50 years old. In this chapter, I aim to describe the parts of this research tradition relevant to understanding the ways that colour language might be thought to influence colour cognition. It is, however, impossible to address this general question without acknowledging the size and scope of the relevant research. It ranges from ethnography and descriptive linguistics to cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Virtually every element of this research tradition is contested (see, e.g., Saunders and van Brakel 1997). The seemingly innocuous questions with which this chapter begins have been the ground for high controversy: “The battlefield of colour” (Regier et al. 2010). In this chapter, I will address those parts and aspects of the tradition as well as those elements of the controversy that are relevant to understanding colour language, specifically, in relation to thought and culture.

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In answer to the question “In which language does the phrase ‘I love you’ feel stronger?,” Rie, a native speaker of Japanese with English as a second language (L2), points out that the Japanese avoid expressing their emotion overtly: “… silence is beautiful in Japanese society. We try to read an atmosphere” (Dewaele 2008: 1768). Veronica Zhengdao Ye, a Chinese scholar who immigrated to Australia, had made a similar point about the expression of emotion in China compared with how it is done in the West: “We do not place so much emphasis on verbal expression of love and affection, because they can evaporate quickly” (Ye 2004: 140). She explains that she prefers the Chinese way of expressing emotions: “subtle, implicit and without words” (Ye 2004: 139–140). She describes her first parting from her parents, just before boarding the plane that would take her to Australia: We fought back our tears and urged each other repeatedly to take care; we wore the biggest smiles to wave good-bye to each other, to soothe each other’s worries. Just like any other Chinese parting between those who love each other – there were no hugs and no ‘I love you’. Yet I have never doubted my parents’ profound love for me. ( Ye 2004: 141)

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No chapter abstract available.

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This chapter surveys the literature on the embodied and enculturated grounding of human language and cognition with a focus on the cognitive linguistic contributions to the study of language, culture, and embodiment. In particular, the survey also adopts the perspective of Cultural Linguistics. As a multidisciplinary area of research that explores the relationship between language, culture, and conceptualization and the function of cultural models at the level of cultural cognition, Cultural Linguistics integrates interests and concerns of Cognitive Linguistics with those of linguistic and cognitive anthropology (see, e.g., Palmer 1996; Sharifian 2015, 2017).

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In The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker (1994: 15–16) celebrates the acquisition of language as “one of the wonders of the natural world”, the mundane yet remarkable ability of human beings to “shape events in each other’s brains” with words. By the utterance of a sequence of sounds, for instance, a one-year-old child manipulates the mental awareness of a caretaker to an undetected soiled diaper or a preference for warm or cold milk. Yet Pinker (1994: 18) argues, along the lines of various innatist or linguistic nativist perspectives, this ability is “not a cultural artifact … but a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains”. Chomsky (1965) famously postulated a theory of Universal Grammar which sought to explain how young children could so readily adopt most of the complex deep structures embedded in any language, not to mention creatively generate acceptable sentences of incredible variety. Chomsky (1965) argued this feat could only be accomplished by means of a genetically inherited Language Acquisition Device, a hypothesized cognitive structure of pre-programmed constraints and possibilities, which exists a priori in children as a set of ‘switches’ (for instance, between a Subject-Verb-Object or a Subject-Object-Verb pattern) that are then calibrated to the specific primary language a child is reared in.

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A foundational aspect of communication is language, as the use of language allows for the presentation and transfer of knowledge, thoughts, and ideas (Altarriba et al. 2023). The world has become more and more linguistically diverse, not only in terms of the number of spoken or known languages, but in terms of the richness of those languages and the degree to which individuals master and use multiple languages (Altarriba and Heredia 2008). Yet linguistic knowledge is often influenced by the surrounding cultural context in which it is used. A longstanding question within the study of language and communication has been whether language influences thought or if thought influences language (Carroll 1956; Fedorenko and Varley 2016; Gleitman and Papafragou 2005, 2013). There has been some question as to whether or not thought can exist without language or whether thought and language are two separate entities (Fedorenko and Varley 2016; Gleitman and Papafragou 2005, 2013). However, it is important to note that this question of whether thought or language acts as a dominant, influencing factor in communication often neglects to take culture into account and whether culture acts as a moderating variable within the language-thought relationship (see, e.g., Altarriba 1993). For the purposes of this chapter, culture is defined as the surrounding sociocultural context that either affects or is affected by language use, form, and function. The works reviewed in this chapter highlight the importance of understanding the relationship between culture, language, and cognition, and understanding to what degree culture and language influence cognition.

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Cultural scripts are representations of cultural norms which are widely held in a given society and are reflected in language. To be faithful to the ‘insider perspective’ and at the same time intelligible to the outsider, these representations are formulated in simple words and phrases which are cross-translatable between English (the main lingua franca of the globalizing world) and any other natural language. Such a mode of representation depends on the outcomes of the decade-long cross-linguistic semantic research conducted within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage program (see Chapter 7, this volume). The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is believed to correspond to the ‘intersection of all languages’. As illustrated in the present chapter, cultural scripts articulate cultural norms, values, and practices using this metalanguage as a medium of description and interpretation. For a selection of NSM-based publications on cultural scripts, see, for example, Ameka (2006), Gladkova (2014a), Goddard (2010), Hasada (2006), Nicholls (2014), Peeters (2013), Priestley (2014), Travis (2006), Wong (2006), Ye (2006) and Yoon (2004). See also Goddard (2006), Wierzbicka (2006), Goddard and Wierzbicka (2004) and Levisen (2012). (For a broader perspective on the theme of this chapter, including a discussion of the historical perspectives, critical issues, and future directions, see Chapter 7, this volume.)

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Language, culture, and metaphor are connected in a million ways. Since our focus in the chapter is on metaphor, the best way to go about discussing their relationships is to start out from metaphor. The key notion of Cultural Linguistics is “cultural conceptualization” (Sharifian 2015, 2017a, 2017b). Conceptualizing the world is to a great extent metaphorical (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). However, conceptualization rests on cognitive processes, and thus cultural conceptualization is both cultural and cognitive in nature. There is no cultural conceptualization without our cognitive apparatus participating in it. Since metaphor/metaphorization is a fundamental cognitive process, the theories of metaphor that are most relevant to the study of cultural conceptualization are cognitive theories. We assume that with the help of such theories of metaphor we can begin to understand the role of metaphor in cultural phenomena.

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Prototype theory is closely linked to the work of the American cognitive psychologist Eleanor Rosch and her colleagues. This work has profoundly changed the mainstream model of human categorisation, far beyond its original home territory in psychology. Although several elements of what was to become ‘prototype theory’ had been established and worked out by earlier researchers, it is the studies of Rosch and her colleagues (see below for references and the overview in Rosch 1978) that have convinced researchers across the various disciplines that it is not necessary to describe their data in terms of the classical model of categories. The significant impact of these studies is reflected by the term ‘Roschian revolution’, which is commonly used for the perspective shifts they initiated in the 1970s.

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Space is a fundamental attribute of the world all mobile foraging creatures live and operate in, and they all display biological adaptations for representing – in some sense – locations, directions, and movements in space. Conceptualizing where things are, and where things are going, and acting on these conceptualizations, is central to human cognition, and provides the framework for concrete thinking about objects and events. Since Kant (1768 [1991]), space has been taken to provide the basis for organizing a major component of human cognition, and underlies more abstract conceptualizations of, for example, time, kinship, and social relations.

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Space and time are frequently considered to be universal, transcultural domains of human language and thought, and the language of space, time, and motion has been intensively researched in recent decades. Space is widely viewed as the principal source domain for the linguistic and conceptual structuring, through metaphoric mapping, of time. At lexical and constructional levels, the spatial and temporal domains are closely related. In many languages, temporal meanings have been shown to be expressed by words and construction types whose primary meanings are analysed as being spatial. Typological studies have shown that lexical space-time mapping is indeed widespread (Haspelmath 1997), and constructional space-time mapping been analysed in languages as typologically and geographically disparate as English (Clark 1973; Lakoff and Johnson 1999), Aymara (South America: Núñez and Sweetser 2006), Chinese (Yang Sinha and Filipovic 2023; Yu 1998, 2012), and Wolof (West Africa: Moore 2006).

Pages: 115

No chapter abstract available.

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Intercultural communication is a highly diverse field; it is being studied within numerous academic and para-academic disciplines and from a range of more or less interdisciplinary perspectives. Intercultural communication is of concern to researchers and practitioners in various strands of linguistics, translation studies, media and communication research, business and management, ethnography, psychology, pedagogy, sociology, philosophy, and international relations – and this list may not be exhaustive. Moreover, a conglomerate of synonymous or related terms exists, such as ‘cross-cultural communication,’ ‘intercultural training,’ ‘intercultural competence,’ and ‘intercultural integration.’ A search on https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="https://amazon.com">https://amazon.com (conducted on September 9, 2024) for ‘intercultural communication’ (all searches with quotation marks) yielded more than 4,000 results and for ‘cross-cultural communication’ another 924 hits for books alone. A search conducted on the same day in ProQuest (all data bases) turned out 8,902 hits for ‘intercultural communication’ and 2,951 for ‘cross-cultural communication’ published in the last ten years – and these hits only include the relevant works published in English. Within the framework of this chapter, it is impossible to survey the myriad of books and articles individually. Instead, the attempt is made here to trace basic orientations, theoretical positions and philosophical models toward the triangular constellation of language, culture, and (intercultural) communication that, implicitly or explicitly, underlie most works and approaches, and to highlight the particular contribution cultural linguistics can make and has already made to the field.

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The relationship between language and culture is complex and the subject of several chapters in this Handbook. This chapter will consider how different varieties of English reflect the culture and pragmatic norms of their speakers. While different varieties of English can be distinguished by their distinctive use of morphosyntactic and phonological features, although many share non-standard forms, it is the reflection of the local culture and the pragmatic norms of its speakers that really create a distinctive variety of English. This process has been called acculturation (Kachru 2005; Sridar 2012) which is the process by which a language takes on the cultural cloak of its speakers. In the case of varieties of English, acculturation is often accompanied by deculturation, where the new variety of English divests itself of cultural references to older varieties, such as British English. And when the new varieties of English are postcolonial, this typically occurs at what Schneider (2007, 2010: 381) has called the ‘nativisation’ stage of a new variety of English, a stage at which ties with the country or origin are weakening and interethnic contacts are strengthening. Acculturation is accomplished through several means. These are presented below, along with examples.

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Language, like culture, is variously represented in societies. Geographical dispersion of social groups within a society can be associated with regional linguistic or dialectal differences and, within the same location, social differentiation can be expressed in sociolects. The matter is complicated by the movement of groups across cultural settings and the role of language in helping to maintain the distinctiveness of groups of different origin. The phenomenon of the ‘spread of English’ (García and Otheguy 1989: 1) has entailed significant linguistic change worldwide, in that it has led to the emergence of new Englishes and added to the linguistic repertoires of many cultures.

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This chapter overviews the current literature on the complex interplay between language, culture, and higher education, drawing from various academic disciplines. It critically analyzes the indispensable role of English in worldwide knowledge dissemination, acknowledging its liberating potential while also critiquing its inherent hegemonic influence that often perpetuates colonial legacies, cultural othering, and stereotypes. Linked to this, the chapter further argues for rejecting essentialist, ethnocentric perspectives on language and culture, calling for adhering to transcultural and translanguaging approaches. Through historical and theoretical analyses, such approaches are viewed as a more inclusive means for educators to transcend rigid linguistic and cultural boundaries, highlighting the role of English in perpetuating colonial hegemony while advocating for its decolonization in higher education.

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For the past 60 years, culture has been one of the most contested concepts in Western academia. This is due in part to: (1) the notorious difficulty of defining the term (Williams 1983); and (2) its use as a causal explanation of individual behaviour. But certainly the biggest source of ‘culture trouble’ over the past half-century has been the development of anti-foundationalist, neo-Marxist, and postcolonial ‘critical’ philosophies, and their problematizing of the standard macro-variables of social science, including culture.

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The term ‘culture’ splits fairly neatly into two senses: The anthropological one, which refers to the totality of practices that distinguish a community, large or small, and the narrower sense of artistic enterprise. Within the former definition, we shall see that culture pervades language in ways that reflect several senses of the term. Within the latter, culture ranges from high to low, from Homer of the Odyssey to Homer of The Simpsons. Both types of culture offer stiff challenges to the theory and practice of translation, as well as opportunities to theorize and practise the art, or science, in creative ways.

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Effective communication in the workplace is much more than just a matter of convenience; it is an essential skill that can significantly impact harmony among employees, innovation, and organizational success. Given the increasing diversity in today’s interconnected world, understanding and navigating the dynamics of intercultural communication is no longer an aspiration; it is a necessity for organizations and individuals aiming to thrive in ever more complex societies.

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In everyday interaction, language and gesture are conceived as modalities that form an integrated system, as interwoven components of an utterance’s construction that may be orchestrated in line with each other or complementarily, depending on the corresponding occasion (Kendon 2004; McNeill 1992). The relationship among cognition, language, gesture, context, and interaction has traditionally been examined in a unidirectional manner, predominantly emphasizing the influence of cognition on gesture. Furthermore, the roles of cultural sedimentation and the cultural environment have been approached from various perspectives, yet seldom considered from a metaperspective. This study adopts a praxeological and phenomenological approach, positing that gestures are fundamentally actions that are both cognitive and communicative. They manifest as both ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ phenomena, being observable to others while simultaneously experienced internally. Gestures are adaptive to the environment and, in turn, help to structure it. Made by embodied individuals, gestures reflect their biographical experiences of inhabiting and understanding life-worlds, thereby exerting a reciprocal influence on cognition.