Speakers Co-Construct Knowledge in Gesture

Co-construction occurs in speech and gesture when individuals working collaboratively coordinate their speech and action so closely that one speaker s meaning seems to influence the production of meaning in the other. When speakers co-construct meaning, they seem to coordinate speech and gesture without overt scripting or direction. 

Miners co-construct similar gestures within a fraction of a second. These imitations are so closely coordinated that they seem deliberately synchronized. These gestures show how miners are attuned to the meanings expressed in both speech and gesture. When speakers co-construct gestures, the process of uptake is nearly instantaneous. 

When we examine the meanings that these miners articulate in speech, we discover that their speech is distracted and disjointed. If we look only at the grammar and logic of their speech, we might conclude that Libby s colleagues are—at best—inarticulate. Yet these women are otherwise forceful 

I began my research with the hope that 1 could convince agencies that they could take advantage of rhetorical theory to improve technical documentation in risky environments. My research has demonstrated that rhetoricians can also benefit from the methods of others in order to understand how individuals communicate outside of written texts. 

In chap. 9, we see how investigators interpret and transform information embodied in speech and gesture at the site of the investigation, but investiga- 

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