This book is a result of my research interest in Hausa gestures that started back in 2007 when I was a lecturer at Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. I came across a postgraduate diploma in Hausa studies devoted to the description of conventionalized gestures. The topic had not attracted my attention until I saw the gestures mentioned in the work being extensively used by Hausa speakers. Moreover, I noticed that the standard phrases and “names” of these gestures occurred frequently in Hausa novels. My first publications concerning gestures were focused on conventionalized gestures and based on data from Hausa novels and feature films. The turnaround of my interest from fully conventionalized gestures to co-speech gestures came along with watching sermons of Hausa sheikhs—one of the first pieces of natural speech accessible online. The transcriptions of the speeches combined with notes on gestures performed by the speakers gave rise to a small corpus that gradually expanded becoming the main data for the analysis of recurrent gestures—the topic of this book.
The research on Hausa gestures would not have been possible without the help of many people and institutions. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my colleagues from Bayero University Kano: Aliyu Mu’azu, Hafizu Miƙo Yakasai, Isa Yusuf Chamo, Ahmad Shehu, Jibril Adamu and Yakubu Magaji who patiently answered my questions and were always ready to help me out to resolve any problems with comprehending the Hausa data. I am obliged to those who allowed me to record their utterances and provided many valuable comments concerning the use of Hausa gestures: Kamilu Dahiru Gwammaja, Ibrahim Garba, Taufiq Abubakar Hussain, Ibrahim Ahmad, Bashir Ibrahim, Naziru Mukhtar and Mustapha Ahmad. My deepest gratitude goes to the head and workers of Bayero University Library who facilitated my library research and helped me to find people with whom I could conduct interviews. I am also indebted to the group of students from Bayero University Kano and Federal College of Education in Kano who devoted their free time to answer my questions. Finally, as far as my stay in Kano is concerned, I would like to express my thanks to Muhammad Yahuza Bello, the Chancellor of Bayero University Kano, who made my research trip to Nigeria possible. Na gode!
Special thanks to the colleagues from my home Department of African Languages and Cultures: Nina Pawlak, Iwona Kraska-Szlenk, Beata Wójtowicz, Hanna Rubinkowska-Anioł and Sabina Brakoniecka for their constant encouragement and support. I am greatly indebted to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable and in-depth comments on the manuscript of the book. I also acknowledge the financial support of the University of Warsaw that funded my research. Finally, many thanks to my family for their support while I was writing this book.
Some fragments of chapters 3 and 6 appeared in my earlier publications (Will 2018; Will 2019). However, the main part of the book, i.e., the presentation of five recurrent gestures used by Hausa speakers has not been published elsewhere.