Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction: Examining signed language and gesture research within the domain of cognitive linguistics -- I Guiding principles for signed and spoken language research -- Through the signed language glass: Changing and converging views in spoken and signed language research -- Coming back to the issue of the graphic representation of signed language discourse in signed language linguistics -- What is a language? A socio-semiotic approach to signed and spoken languages -- II Iconicity in spoken and signed language -- Structure, iconicity, and access -- When hands are things and movements are processes: Cognitive iconicity, embodied cognition, and signed language structure -- III Multimodality -- Gestural meaning is in the body(-space) as much as in the hands -- A Place for joint action in multimodal constructions -- What I know is here; what I don't know is somewhere else: Deixis and gesture spaces in American Sign Language and Irish Sign Language -- Insights on the use of narrative perspectives in signed and spoken discourse in Quebec Sign Language, American Sign Language, and Quebec French -- IV Blending and metaphor -- Exploring Real Space blends as indicators of discourse complexity in Swedish Sign Language -- Metaphors and blending in Italian Sign Language discourse: A window on the interaction of language and thought -- V Grammatical constructions -- The mouth shrug and facial consent in Danish Sign Language -- Usage-based grammar: Multi-word expressions in American Sign Language -- Possibility modals in Brazilian Sign Language and Argentine Sign Language: A contrastive study -- The semantics of relative clause constructions in Iranian Sign Language -- VI Concluding commentary -- Language in the light of sign and gesture -- Index