I was pondering this morning, as I often do, the moment in the Led Zeppelin film “The Song Remains The Same” where they’re doing Stairway To Heaven and Robert Plant sings “Cos you know sometimes words have two meanings” and he makes a gesture with his hand. He makes a peace sign,

and then he reverses it so he's giving the audience the V sign. It always bothered me for two reasons: one, it's not the same gesture, because it's reversed. (Fair enough, probably, but pernickety I admit). But also because, as I thought then, a gesture isn't a word.

Now I'm an older, wiser person and I've thought more about this. Gestures ARE sometimes words. If you use or witness someone using sign language, they are using words, except the medium is gestures rather than sound waves. It would be, I think, wrong to say these are not words.

So I think it's fair to say that gestures can often act like words. Words, after all, tend to stand in for the thing they represent, so we can hold the idea in the head, and gestures often do the same job. I suppose I'm saying I've finally made peace with Robert Plant over this.

And I've also realised that gestures are a powerful part of our language. We deal in symbol and metaphor all the time, that's how we see the world, how we explain it to ourselves. They should not be lightly dismissed as inferior in some way to words.

I should make it clear that these are the mere musings of someone who is interested in language and thinks about it a lot, but you would be well advised to follow the professionals like @StanCarey. Also @superlingo and @GretchenAMcC's @lingthusiasm is a fascinating podcast.

I have a list of wordy people I enjoy if you want more recommendations - happy to have suggestions to add! https://twitter.com/i/lists/222493037