ABSTRACT
Jean-Luc Nespoulous can be regarded as one of the first linguists to take an interest in nonverbal behaviour. In the doctoral thesis he defended in 1986, Contributions à l’étude des perturbations de la production orale et/ou écrite dans l’aphasie: Comportements non verbaux, vieillissement et aphasie, le geste au secours (?) du langage, he asked whether gestures could come to the aid of failing language abilities in the case of aphasia and ageing. In the same year, he co-edited a book titled The Biological Foundations of Gestures: Motor and Semiotic Aspects, containing contributions from leading academics, among them Adam Kendon, in the field of what later came to be known as gesture studies. Nespoulous himself co-wrote one of the chapters with André Roch Lecours, recounting the work done in France by Jacques Cosnier. He was particularly concerned here with the functions of gestures, using the framework established by Roman Jakobson for language to distinguish between referential and phatic gestures (Nespoulous & Roch Lecours, 1986, p. 49).
