Verbo-gestural Effects in U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s 2025 Munich Speech
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28925/2412-2491.2026.2616Keywords:
gesture, effect, verbal means, discourse, cognitive semiotics, brain, image schema, J.D. Vance, 2025 Munich speechAbstract
The paper reveals how US vice president J.D. Vance’s hand gestures accompanying the 2025 Munich speech support the accusation effect created by the verbal means. The applied “transforming idea into effect” procedure takes into account discursive and cognitive semiotic perspectives of speech production. The gestures studied in the paper comprise outstretching the right or the left hand as well as outstretching or clasping both hands. The gestures are interpreted relative to the three parts of accompanied utterances: pre-gestural, expressing the speaker’s intention prior to hand movement; gestural, simultaneous with the hand movement; post-gestural, following the gestural part if it opens the statement. It is found that the outstretching of the right or left hand is associated with the visuospatial and logical functions of the corresponding hemispheres of the brain. Consequently, the pre-gestural parts of the utterances involving the right-hand movement refer to the speaker’s personal experience while the utterances accompanied by the left-hand movement refer to mental operations related to thinking over the past, present or future as well as to the use of negation. Meanwhile, the simultaneous use of both hands combines the visuospatial and logical functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain contributing to the formation of image schemas, i.e. dynamic recurring patterns of organism-environment interactions. The outstretching of both hands evokes the CONTAINER schema, which outlines boundaries, underlying the verbal reference to unity, big quantities or textual cataphoric relations. The clasping hands gesture represents the BLOCKAGE schema symbolizing the speaker’s resentment to particular European policies which is also reflected in a substantial length of the corresponding utterances and in fronting the gestural component to emphasize the accusations made.
Keywords: hand gesture, effect, verbal means, discourse, cognitive semiotics, brain, image schema, J.D. Vance, 2025 Munich speech.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Serhiy Potapenko, Vasyl Andriyko
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