Research shows that we all engage in such “gestural foreshadowing,” in whichour hands anticipate what we’re about to say.
Research by Christian Heath indicates that in interpersonal communication that speakers gesture meaning before they form the related words and listeners begin nodding at the gestures before they hear the spoken words.
"No culture has ever tried, self-consciously and scientifically, to design a symbol that would last 10,000 years and still be intelligible," said David B. Givens, an anthropologist who helps plan nuclear-site warnings (LATimes). "And even if we succeed, would the message be believed?"
Conca brings in different media information. He brings in a second medium into the mix to try to reach the audience from a different point of view. It does use several modes like linguistic and gestural. He uses words that can be quite subjective like "believed" or "intelligible". And does leave a link to the other media, to connect issue of similar subject to another point of view.
Dr. James Conca is an expert on energy, nuclear and dirty bombs, a planetary geologist, and a professional speaker. Follow him on Twitter @jimconca and see his book at Amazon.com
This is a more gestural mode of communication, it provides a more interactive form of communication. It provides the authors social media and a link to his published book. It provides a bio and a more detailed insight to who Dr.Conca is and what his mindset towards the subject is. It helps the reader better understand the authors point of view and purpose.
Gestural Mode
The gestural mode, along with the visual mode, is another mode of communication that is deeply engraved in humans instincts. Scientific evidence even proves that the recognition of basic human expressions is universal regardless of cultural background. Scientific research has proven that there generally are seven emotions that all humans recognize through facial expressions: "anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise" (Matsumoto, 2008).
The image above shows sample images of emotions in a study done by Dr. Matsumoto which proved the universality of their recognition.
Sources: David Matsumoto and Paul Ekman (2008) Facial expression analysis. Scholarpedia, 3(5):4237.