The Linguist

26 The Linguist Vol/64 No/4 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist REVIEWS There was also a beautifully told one-man show, Penguin, by Syrian artist Hamzeh Al Hussien and Amy Golding. It details Hamzeh's experience of the Za'atari refugee camp and journey to Gateshead. It's told in English and Arabic with captions for the audience, and while it has quite dark moments it is also hilarious. The use of Arabic brought a vocal and energetic crowd of Arabic speakers. The folk band Mavky, whose members escaped the war in Ukraine, had been trying to find platforms to perform traditional folk songs in Ukrainian. We gave them a stage and hearing such melancholic but resilient lyrics in the face of everything that's happened deeply resonated with both artists and community. How important is it to ensure performers are heard in their native languages? It's essential. It means a huge amount to others who speak that language, but also to solely English speakers embracing a world that is striving to unite people. Ensuring there is diverse global representation, with as many languages as possible, is key to our programme selection process. What is it like running the festival in an increasingly hostile climate? I feel fortunate that we've had zero incidents of hostility and intimidation. We are increasing our vigilance and security, but Sheffield is generally a safe place to live. In 2007, it became the first City of Sanctuary in the UK, sparking the movement that now includes countless towns and cities across the UK and the globe. I see the festival as a vehicle to promoting this aspect of the city's identity. This year it gained City of Languages status, which is well deserved. On a walk down the Moor Market, or a trip on the 88 bus, you hear multiple languages – the soundscape of a city enriched by other cultures. Could you tell us about your plans? As we are not core funded we have to give much of our time voluntarily. A lot of that is in bid writing and sourcing funding, although we are grateful we've never been turned away by our chief funder, Arts Council England. This uncertainty hasn't stifled our planning for another huge programme in 2026. We are incredibly motivated by our audiences and communities. Long may the festival continue! Providing the general reader with introductions to lesser known or lesser understood aspects of linguistics research (e.g. pragmatics, neurolinguistics, gesture) would appear to be the main aim of this OUP series. Lauren Gawne, in Gesture: A slim guide, has produced a primer on the range of gesture study, categorisation, cultural variation and cognition. Her focus is on gesture as the deliberate actions, primarily of the hands, arms and head, that accompany speech; or as the author puts it "the intentional communicative movement of the body". Some findings: A longitudinal study of Italian immigrants in the USA showed that the cohort used fewer gestures the greater their assimilation into the new culture and language. Other research reveals that Japanese people across a range of ages have a strong tendency to nod when listening to a respondent. Perhaps more interestingly, English speakers have a 'future forward' and 'past behind' mental timeline, as expressed in "looking forward to something" and "back to square one", whereas speakers of Mandarin think on a vertical timeline, namely with 'past above' and 'future below'. If, as has been proposed, thought is analogue and the externalised modes of speech and writing are mainly digital in character, does gesture demonstrate "features of thought that are unconstrained by linguistic structuring"? I would like to have read more on the notion of gesture as the sub-conscious embodiment of thought or 'imagistic thinking'. In other words, how thought as the seed of language allows gesture to articulate speech in a visible, parallel, ancillary way. Some questions: Does a stress-timed language, such as English, have hand-beat gestures for emphasis different to those in syllable-timed languages? It recently occurred to me that I had used gestures in a conversation (cutting, directing, measuring). My interlocutor, though, was gesture-less. Why are some people and cultures disposed to use gesture and others not, or less so? Does gesturing have a link with tactility? Signposts offering even simple, cautious hypotheses would be welcome. Those interested in the subject might also like to look into Thinking with Your Hands (Goldin-Meadow), in part about the neurological pathways associated with gesture. Gestures (Morris et al) catalogues the origins and meanings of conventionalised emblems, such as 'the nose tap', as well as their distribution within and across cultural and linguistic boundaries. Graham Elliott MCIL OUP 2025, 208 pp; ISBN 9780192855084 Paperback, £14.99 Routledge 2025, 258 pp; ISBN 9781032799049 Paperback, £39.99 Gesture: A slim guide Lauren Gawne The Strange Tools of Human Communication Ruth Finnegan In The Strange Tools of Human Communication: The Voice, the pen, and the lyre, Ruth Finnegan, Emeritus Professor at the UK's Open University, sets out to examine the instruments that human beings have used to

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