What they learn through research can make you a more effective communicator on the job. MIT researcher Justine Cassell Ph.D. is an expert on hand language. Cassell and her contemporaries theorize that speakers employ gestures in predictable ways. Metaphorics stand for abstract concepts. These gestures are especially diverse, most likely because metaphors vary widely from one language or culture to another.
Beats are little waves of the hand that underscore the value of the speech.
It is one thing during a sales presentation to grope in the air for the right word or to move your hands out of nervousness. It's another to use intentionally specific gestures to augment the words you are speaking and to lead your listener from one idea to the next. In one of her scholarly papers, Cassell notes that gesture meanings often differ from culture to culture. In Britain a 'V' gesture made with the palm turned toward the listener is considered inappropriate in polite society. Gesture, on the other hand, can play out in space what we imagine in our minds.