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Adam Kendon
Adam Kendon (4 April 1934 – 14 September 2022) was one of the world's foremost authorities on the topic of gesture, which he viewed broadly as meaning all the ways in which humans use visible bodily action in creating utterances including not only how this is done in speakers but also in the way it is used in speakers or signers when only visible bodily action is available for expression.
Kendon was born on 4 April 1934 in London, son of the writer Frank Kendon and Elizabeth Cecilia Phyllis Horne, a school teacher.
At the University of Cambridge, he read Botany, Zoology and Human Physiology, as well as Experimental Psychology for the Natural Sciences. At the University of Oxford, he studied Experimental Psychology, focusing on the temporal organization of utterances in conversation, using Eliot Chapple's chronography. Then he moved to Cornell University to study directly with Chapple on research leading to his D. Phil. from Oxford in 1963. His thesis topic—communication conduct in face-to-face interaction—spelled out the interests he would pursue in subsequent decades. He is noted for his study of gesture and sign languages and how these relate to spoken language.
After completing the D. Phil., he accepted a position in the Institute of Experimental Psychology at Oxford, where he worked in a research group with Michael Argyle and E.R.W.F. Crossmann. He initially focused on sign systems in Papua New Guinea and Australian Aboriginal sign languages, before developing a general framework for understanding gestures with the same kind of rigorous semiotic analysis as has been previously applied to spoken language.
Important influences on his theoretical understandings included: Erving Goffman, Albert Scheflen, Ray Birdwhistell, and Gregory Bateson. Becoming aware of Scheflen's work in 1965, while still at Oxford, he managed to meet him in Philadelphia, where he shared his earliest work; as a result, he was first invited to join William S. Condon's research team at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in 1966-67, and then to join Scheflen's research team at Bronx State Hospital in 1967. He never actually worked with Birdwhistell directly, but they were in contact, and he did work with films made available to him by Birdwhistell.
In 1976 he took up an appointment in Canberra, Australia at the Department of Anthropology in the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. He undertook filming everyday interaction in Papua New Guinea but also was able to record a sign language in use in the valley where he worked where there was a considerable number of deaf persons. His publication of this work, in three articles in 1980, proved to be a pioneering study; no other accounts on sign language from this part of the world were to appear until the beginning of the twenty-first century. This work was republished as a monograph together with a new essay written by colleagues bringing the original work up to date. After this he undertook a major investigation of the sign languages in use among indigenous Australians - these are sign languages used for ritual reasons or for practical reasons in situations where speech might is impractical or inappropriate. These are known as alternate sign languages, distinguishing them from primary sign languages developed among deaf people. Extensive documentation of his research in Australia is available at the library of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
In 1988, he returned to Philadelphia, teaching for two years at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Kendon then moved to Naples, Italy and undertook fieldwork on the use of gesture in everyday interaction among Neapolitans and also published a translation of a 19th Century book about Neapolitan gesture (by Andrea de Jorio), comparing it to gesturing among the Greeks and Romans. In 2004 he published an important general book on the phenomena of gesture which drew extensively on his work in Naples as well as his work in New Guinea and Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Since then he has published various articles on gesture and related topics, including discussions of the place of gesture in theories about language origins.
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Adam Kendon
Adam Kendon (4 April 1934 – 14 September 2022) was one of the world's foremost authorities on the topic of gesture, which he viewed broadly as meaning all the ways in which humans use visible bodily action in creating utterances including not only how this is done in speakers but also in the way it is used in speakers or signers when only visible bodily action is available for expression.
Kendon was born on 4 April 1934 in London, son of the writer Frank Kendon and Elizabeth Cecilia Phyllis Horne, a school teacher.
At the University of Cambridge, he read Botany, Zoology and Human Physiology, as well as Experimental Psychology for the Natural Sciences. At the University of Oxford, he studied Experimental Psychology, focusing on the temporal organization of utterances in conversation, using Eliot Chapple's chronography. Then he moved to Cornell University to study directly with Chapple on research leading to his D. Phil. from Oxford in 1963. His thesis topic—communication conduct in face-to-face interaction—spelled out the interests he would pursue in subsequent decades. He is noted for his study of gesture and sign languages and how these relate to spoken language.
After completing the D. Phil., he accepted a position in the Institute of Experimental Psychology at Oxford, where he worked in a research group with Michael Argyle and E.R.W.F. Crossmann. He initially focused on sign systems in Papua New Guinea and Australian Aboriginal sign languages, before developing a general framework for understanding gestures with the same kind of rigorous semiotic analysis as has been previously applied to spoken language.
Important influences on his theoretical understandings included: Erving Goffman, Albert Scheflen, Ray Birdwhistell, and Gregory Bateson. Becoming aware of Scheflen's work in 1965, while still at Oxford, he managed to meet him in Philadelphia, where he shared his earliest work; as a result, he was first invited to join William S. Condon's research team at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in 1966-67, and then to join Scheflen's research team at Bronx State Hospital in 1967. He never actually worked with Birdwhistell directly, but they were in contact, and he did work with films made available to him by Birdwhistell.
In 1976 he took up an appointment in Canberra, Australia at the Department of Anthropology in the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. He undertook filming everyday interaction in Papua New Guinea but also was able to record a sign language in use in the valley where he worked where there was a considerable number of deaf persons. His publication of this work, in three articles in 1980, proved to be a pioneering study; no other accounts on sign language from this part of the world were to appear until the beginning of the twenty-first century. This work was republished as a monograph together with a new essay written by colleagues bringing the original work up to date. After this he undertook a major investigation of the sign languages in use among indigenous Australians - these are sign languages used for ritual reasons or for practical reasons in situations where speech might is impractical or inappropriate. These are known as alternate sign languages, distinguishing them from primary sign languages developed among deaf people. Extensive documentation of his research in Australia is available at the library of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
In 1988, he returned to Philadelphia, teaching for two years at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Kendon then moved to Naples, Italy and undertook fieldwork on the use of gesture in everyday interaction among Neapolitans and also published a translation of a 19th Century book about Neapolitan gesture (by Andrea de Jorio), comparing it to gesturing among the Greeks and Romans. In 2004 he published an important general book on the phenomena of gesture which drew extensively on his work in Naples as well as his work in New Guinea and Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Since then he has published various articles on gesture and related topics, including discussions of the place of gesture in theories about language origins.