Book review in GESTURE, Vol. 5, Number 1/2, 2005

Mary Copple: Michael C. Corballis (2002). From Hand to Mouth. The Origins of Language. Princetown and Oxford: Princetown University Press.
Michael C. Corballis is a psychologist and an authority on brain lateralization, handedness, and visual perception. He argues in From Hand to Mouth (2002) for the gestural origin of language by adeptly drawing upon a vast amount of research in flourishing disciplines, such as genetics, computer science, primatology and paleoanthropology, as well as in his own specialist field of cognitive neuroscience. This review of his book provides a summary of his assessment of the theories and empirical studies of key authors, past and present, who conjecture about the origin of language and the role that gesture may have played. It also takes a critical look at his own hypothesis whilst discussing some of the core issues that are at stake in the current debate on this topic.