MULTIMODAL SEMIOTICS OF SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES: REPRESENTING BELIEFS, METAPHORS, AND ACTIONS

13 For Edward, people have to choose to do “the right thing” or “the devil thing”. His co-speech gestures
reveal much more than what he says. I want to show you this clip once more, and this time I also want you
to notice how he embodies the metaphor Good is Up/Bad is Down, especially on the word “right” when his
right hand jerks upward. The “the devil thing” is not the right thing, so it’s excluded and put to the side,
whereas the “right thing” is something he’s including himself in.

The gesture Edward makes when talking about “the right thing” is in a metonymical relationship with
other instances of the same gesture throughout our interview, and it may seem a little idiosyncratic, but
it’s not. His gesture is like he’s holding something, and in fact the first time he performs this gesture was in
reference to the Bible almost three minutes into the interview.

15   I’ve listed here Edward’s metaphoric/metonymic extensions of first “Bible gesture”. Semiotically the sign

is the same but what it represents differs.

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