Le grammatiche non verbali nell’educazione linguistica
Abstract
Language education has two main objectives: developing and consolidating communicative competence, on the one hand, and inducing metalinguistic reflection and cognitive growth, on the other. The former aspect has received sustained attention in recent decades, while the latter is little discussed. This is the third in a series of essays (EL.LE no. 2 and 3 in 2025, no. 1 in 2026) that will continue in upcoming issues, in which we reflect on how to integrate communicative and cognitive growth, considering reflection on language as a “cognitive lifesaver for liquid students”.
In this essay, we focus on nonverbal grammars, with two research questions:
a. How many and which mental grammars are there of nonverbal codes? How are they structured? How do they connect with the grammars of the language, on the one hand, and with those relating to social, cultural, and pragmatic use, on the other?
b. What place should they have in the communicative and cognitive syllabi of language education? What teaching tools can be used to develop mastery of nonverbal codes and lead to reflection on them?
Submitted: April 19, 2026 | Published July 14, 2026 | Language: it
Keywords Communicative competence • Teaching nonverbal grammars • Gestures in Language Teaching • Language Education • Nonverbal codes
Copyright © 2026 Paolo E. Balboni. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.