Chapter 11: What can Gestures Tell us about Vygotsky’s Findings?

This chapter revisits Vygotsky’s results on the topic of higher psychological functions. In order to deliver new theoretical elaborations, it deepens into phenomena such as inner speech and its relationship with the formation of concepts, imagination as a process of symbolization, and the generative role of emotions in the construction of meaning. Through an original point of view on Vygotsky’s approaches, the chapter presents empirical methodological strategies to address phenomena in which the observation of gestures and nonverbal behavior is central. Finally, these empirical methodologies are discussed towards the purpose of exploring some of the most intimate phenomena of human experience, which transcend the limits of the skin and manifest throughout corporeality. This chapter shows how recent research has managed to integrate the analysis of gestures into the study of Vygotsky’s main findings.