49 EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF GESTURE Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1: 49–67, 2002. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Gesture following deafferentation: A phenomenologically informed experimental study 1 JONATHAN COLE 1 , SHAUN GALLAGHER 2 and DAVID MCNEILL 3 1 Clinical Neurological Sciences, University of Southampton, UK; 2 Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Canisius College, Buffallo, NY14208, USA (E-mail: gallaghr@canisius.edu) 3 Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, USA Received 15 April 2001; received in revised version 15 August 2001 Abstract. Empirical studies of gesture in a subject who has lost proprioception and the sense of touch from the neck down show that specific aspects of gesture remain normal despite abnormal motor processes for instrumental movement. The experiments suggest that gesture, as a linguistic phenomenon, is not reducible to instrumental movement. They also support and extend claims made by Merleau-Ponty concerning the relationship between language and cognition. Gesture, as language, contributes to the accomplishment of thought. Introduction In thinking of the relationship between embodied movement and language Merleau-Ponty suggested that the body converts a certain motor essence into vocal form (1962, p. 181). This conversion does not depend on conscious control or explicit monitoring. In this regard the shaping of linguistic form in gesture or in voice is very like movement itself. Thus, Merleau-Ponty re- marks: What we have said earlier about the ‘representation of movement’ must be repeated con- cerning the verbal image: I do not need to visualize external space and my own body in order to move one within the other. It is enough that they exist for me, and that they form a certain field of action spread around me. In the same way I do not need to visualize the word in order to know and pronounce it. It is enough that I possess its articulatory and acoustic style as one of the modulations, one of the possible uses of my body (1962, p. 180). In this paper we explore the relationship between movement and a related linguistic modulation of the body, gesture, by examining the unusual case of