International Society for Gesture Studies (in the process of founding)

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Founding Session on April 26 1998, 5 – 6:30 pm
Founding members a) Present at the founding session:

b) Coopted participants in the Berlin Symposium on ”The Semantics and Pragmatics of Everyday Gestures”:

Session protocol The agenda contained the following topics: 

1. research network in gesture studies
2. International Society for Gesture Studies
3. possible future meeting places
4. Journal of Gesture Studies

Decisions taken Ad 1: a.) We, the persons present at the session plus coopted persons, request that every gesture researcher send his/her adress list of gesture researchers to Cornelia Müller

b.) Cornelia Müller is requested to compose a worldwide list of gesture researchers on this basis and make it available to all persons and institutions listed.

Ad 2: a.) We, the persons present at the session plus coopted persons, hereby declare our intention to create an International Society for Gesture Studies (name to be determined).  b.) We request that Sotaro Kita (Nijmegen / Tokyo), Grigori E. Kreidlin (Moscow), David McNeill (Chicago), Isabella Poggi (Rome), Roland Posner (Berlin), and Monica Rector (Rio de Janeiro / Chapel Hill, NC) discuss and formulate the statutes of the society, which will then be formally implemented at the society’s next meeting.

Ad 3: We, the persons present at the session plus co-opted persons, request that Monica Rector

organize the society’s next meeting in Porto (Portugal) in  2000.

Ad 4: We, the persons present at the session plus coopted persons, request that Cornelia Müller (Berlin) present a plan for an International Journal of Gestures Studies (name to be determined) and report about its possible realization at the society’s next meeting so that the society can decide whether to make this its official journal.   All decisions were made unanimously by the persons present.  After the founding session, the Statutes Committee held its first meeting. In it Monica Rector asked the Committee Members also to advise her in all questions concerning the general topic, the individual sessions and the addressees of the Porto meeting. The Porto meeting was conceived to be an International Congress with a restricted number of papers (up to 100) and an open number of participants.  As a congress topic, the Committee discussed the preliminary formulation ”Gestures, Meaning and Use”. The academic fields which are to be encouraged to contribute to the congress were put together in a preliminary list which may be supplemented by the founding members. The list contains all those disciplines in the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences which have made gestures one of their research subjects.

List of academic fields
(Proposals for supplementation welcome.) 

• sign language research (e. g., David Armstrong, Ursula Bellugi, Penny Boyes Braem, Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen),
• linguistics (e. g., Geneviève Calbris, Grigori E. Kreidlin, Isabella Poggi),
• lexicography (e. g., Desmond Morris, Sabina Pavlova),
• sociolinguistics (e. g. Lluís Payrató),
• discourse analysis (e. g., Janet B. Bavelas, Michel de Fornel, Lotte Weinrich),
• psycholinguistics (e. g., Brian Butterworth, Robert Krauss, David McNeill),
• general psychology (e. g., Peter Collett, Pio Enrico Ricci Bitti),
• psychology of emotions (e. g., Paul Ekman, Klaus R. Scherer, Harald Wallbott),
• cognitive psychology (e. g., Sotaro Kita, Asli Özyürek),
• developmental psychology (e. g., Elena Pizzuto),
• social psychology (e. g., Jacques Cosnier),
• neuropsychology (e. g., Pierre Feyereisen),
• medicine (e. g., Rainer Krause),
• psychoanalysis (e. g., Klaus-Jürgen Bruder, Norbert Friedman, Stanley Grand),
• ethology (e. g., Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Karl Grammer, Robert A. Hinde),
• sociology (e. g., Klaus Frerichs, Emanuel Schegloff),
• ethnography of communications (e. g., Fred Erikson, John Gumperz, Adam Kendon, Michael Moerman, Edgard Siennaert),
• intercultural communication (e. g., Juergen Streeck),
• anthropology (e. g., Charles Goodwin, John Haviland),
• archeology (e. g., Ivan Marazov),
• history (e. g., Volker Kapp, Jan Rodeburg, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Bernhard Scholz),
• art history (e. g., Moshe Barrasch, Martin Warnke),
• literary studies (e. g., Reinhard Krüger, Monica Rector, Caroline Schmauser),
• theater studies (e. g., Eli Rozik),
• musical performance research (e. g., Thuering Braem, Thomas Noll),
• informatics (e. g, Frank Hofmann, Günter Hommel),
• engineering (e. g., Annelies Draffort, James Richardson),
• semiotics (e. g., Roland Posner, Fernando Poyatos),
• analytic ´philosophy (e. g., Marcelo Dascal),
• theology (e. g., Ronald Sequeira).

Berlin, May 7, 1998 
Roland Posner