I found a study that McGilchrist would love. Well, he probably knows about it. Here's "Hand Matters: Left-Hand Gestures Enhance Metaphor Explanation".
Now, this has great implications for teaching phrasal verbs, probably the most diffcult segment of the English language to teach, because they are all metaphors!
There are two ways that gestures enhance understanding. The article says "(a) gestures express information valuable for the listener, and thus play an important role in how people communicate ... and (b) gestures can influence cognitive processing of the speakers themselves and determine the contents of their thoughts and speech...."
There's a big challenge I face in writing a dialog with "stage direction" for the hand gestures. Gestures vary from culture to culture except for pointing and grabbing. And even those do have slilght variations.
Hmmm.
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