Call for Contributions to an Edited Volume
Overview
Gesture’s links with negation have historically featured in the work of major scholars and landmark texts, arguably playing a role in the development of gesture studies and sign language linguistics. Recent theoretical and methodological innovations in multimodal language and embodied communication research have given rise to a domain of ‘multimodal negation’, which today attracts attention from an expanding international network of scholars working on this and closely-related topics. Shaped by various methods of gesture and sign analysis as well as multimodal research techniques, findings from contemporary video-based studies of negation offer insights on the specifics of multimodal language use, linguistic and grammatical structure, meaning-making processes, comprehension and perception, as well as more broadly on the nature of embodiment, social cognition, and gesture’s links with culture.
This volume will explore multimodal negation from diverse theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives, aiming to convene scholars with various backgrounds and perspectives on language, communication, cognition, and culture. Drawing on empirical studies with robust theoretical grounding, the volume will offer a wide-ranging and up-to-date treatment of multimodal negation in research on spoken and signed languages, while also hoping to expand the topic’s scope into related fields and disciplines. The goal is for extensive geographical, linguistic, and cultural representation, as well as to address the actual and potential future applications of the research domain.
Multimodal negation has proven to hold important implications for our understanding of gesture, language, and communication. This volume should become an indispensable resource for scholars and students of gesture and sign in different branches of linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology, cognitive science and communication studies.
Rational and Themes
Aiming for a methodologically interdisciplinary and empirically diverse volume, we intend to collect together chapters presenting the latest studies of multimodal negation under the following areas, though we are open to others:
Form and typology of multimodal negation
Grammar, prosody, and kinematics
Meaning, movement, and media
Pragmatics, interaction, context, and culture
Cognition, development, and processing
Methods, theory, and applications
Themes to be addressed could include, but are not restricted to:
In-depth studies of particular manual and non-manual gestures / signs of negation. Explorations of apparent form-meaning pairings (‘Head Shake’, the ‘Slicing’ Gesture, the ‘Wigwagging’ gesture, etc.). Research into negation's facial expressions and distortions.
Historical and diachronic perspectives: grammaticalization pathways from gesture to sign to linguistic markers (e.g., Jespersen’s cycle in multimodal perspectives). Questions of conventionalisation and recurrency.
Kinesic and linguistic organisation of multimodal and multichannel negation. Negation and Gesture-Language/Sign integration. Temporal unfolding and integration of negation within and across modalities. Grammatical processes in spoken and signed negation, including node, scope, and focus of negation.
Different types of negation (e.g., standard/non-standard negation; explicit/covert negation; double negation; multiple negation; morphological negation); multimodal grammatical constructions (e.g., ‘negative-assessment’); Typological distinctions (e.g., polarity/truth-based languages).
Language-based and / or culture-based typologies of negation-related gestures / signs; Typologies and repertoires of negation-related gestures and sign, and their cross-linguistic or cross-cultural comparison.
Kinematics of multimodal negation (e.g., measures of duration, amplitude, and velocity); Detection, extraction, and modelling of multimodal negation’s dynamics, including video-based motion tracking, computer vision, and AI/machine learning approaches.
Negation’s multimodal prosody, visual prosody, audiovisual prosody, prosodic gestures, rhythmic gestures, acoustic dynamics, and vocal-entangled gestures.
Pragmatic meanings and functions of negation during face-to-face spoken and signed interaction. Multimodal negation and pragmatic meaning-making processes (such as inference and politeness), operations (e.g., stance-taking, delimitation, reference, deixis, emphasis, and discourse management), as well as culture-specific pragmatics.
Negation in whole-bodily sense-making, ecological interactivity, person-environment relations, material engagement, and interspecies communication.
Contextualisation of multimodal negation in domains and genres of social, professional or academic communication; Examples may include multimodal negation in e.g., political discourse, stand-up comedy, and classroom interaction.
Brain, language, and multimodal negation; Processing, interpretation, and comprehension of multimodal negation in structure, dialogue and discourse.
Developmental trajectories of negation’s multimodality in spoken and signed languages. Multimodal negation in first and second language acquisition.
Conceptualising, theorising, and modelling multimodal negation. Theoretical foundation, expansion, and critique. Raising and resolving conceptual issues.
Chapter types can include empirical studies, theory, conceptual analysis, and review. We welcome submissions that challenge and broaden mainstream perspectives. Work on understudied languages, contributions from early-career researchers, and scholarship from the Global South is particularly encouraged.
Timeline
Stage Date
Abstract Submission July 31, 2026
Notifications August 31, 2026
Full Chapter Submission November 30, 2026
Peer Reviews Due February 28, 2027
Revised Chapters Due May 31, 2027
Expected Publication 2028
Abstract Submission
We invite 150-word chapter abstracts. Word count does not include the reference list, which should be included and follow APA format.
Please submit your abstract no later than July 31, 2026 by email to the editors at sharriso@cityu.edu.hk. Informal enquiries to this address are welcome too.
Accepted abstracts will be invited to submit full chapters, which will then undergo double-blind peer review in line with the book series’ standard procedures.
Editorial and Publication Information
Editors
Simon Harrison, City University of Hong Kong
Silva Ladewig, Georg-August-University of Göttingen
Suwei Wu, China University of Petroleum-Beijing
Publisher
This volume is currently being considered for publication in the Gesture Studies book series (John Benjamins).
Manuscript Preparation
Full chapter length is expected to fall between 6,000–8,000 words. More information will be provided upon acceptance of the abstract.