On the lower limit of gesture

Where, if, and how, should researchers draw the limit between gesture proper and semiotically less complex forms of bodily conduct that do not quite qualify as gesture? This is the question of a lower limit of gesture (Andrén 2010). In accord with a comparative semiotic approach (Kendon 2008) I suggest that the question is best understood, not as a binary distinction between gesture and non-gesture, but as a matter of several different semiotic properties that can vary independently of each other. This involves, in particular, different levels of representational complexity and communicative explicitness. These semiotic properties are both conceptually explicated and applied to empirical examples in this paper, eventually leading me to propose a family resemblance conception of gesture.