The performance of a calculated, perhaps even complicated gesture suggests that a gesturor genuinely wishes to accomplish a conveyance, a sale, etc. The gesture simultaneously supports and confirms words spoken. Legal gesture can also evidence or express emotions which accompany or are occasioned by a legal change or relation. Such events are frequently occasions for the experience of strong feelings. Performing a gesture may provide a legal actor with a critical catharsis, an opportunity to release and display emotions attendent upon change in a structured way that consolidates that change and supports its long-term success.
Legal gesture can be demonstrative in two ways.
First, it can symbolically demonstrate the nature of a legal agreement or relation so as to make it more comprehensible. Passing a clod of earth from one person to another demonstrates, for instance, a transfer of land that is simultaneously being described verbally. Second, legal gesture can demonstrate the sanction supporting a legal transaction or relation so as to make the transaction or relation more compelling. Knifing an animal, for instance, can effectively dramatize what will happen to one of the parties to a transaction or promise if that transaction or promise is not honored. Most obviously, it promotes community by physically creating community in space.