Hans Lipps e l’ermeneutica della gestualità sonora

The contribution aims to reflect on the question of social acts starting from the hermeneutics of Hans Lipps. Social acts, which are such in that they must be communicated by the subject to the interlocutor, can find communicative expression not only in words, but also in gestures. Lipps proposes an original interpretation of the relationship between words and gestures, distinguishing the nature of the latter into two species. The first is that which refers as a symbol to the word, voluntarily expressing something, accompanying the word. The second type concerns more the gestural bearing, the gesture to- wards something that finds the way of ex-pression, of externalisation, almost involuntary, but which shows what the soul bears imprinted. If the gesture refers to a “neutralization” of the speaker, the gestural bearing manifests the existential disposition through that which finds a way to express itself outside of the interiority.