Cognitive linguists are increasingly turning to audio-visual recordings of talk for use as data. This is helping revolutionize the field because of linguists’ newfound attention to the often substantial communicative role played by visually perceptible forms of co-speech gesture. Greater physical effort (Laban & Lawrence 1947) is involved in the production of some of these behaviors more than others, due to opposition to forces of gravity or inertia; we can know this by observing the spatial extent or location in which, or the speed or tension with which, the gestures are produced (Cienki & Mittelberg 2013). Such cues of effort, as well as eye gaze direction of the speaker towards one’s gesturing hands, can be observed empirically and can provide possible indications of speakers’ awareness of their own communicative behaviors (e.g., via proprioception or visual perception) (Müller 2008). Rather than making claims about the deliberateness or not of any language production, problematically tied to questions of knowing language users’ intentions at any given moment, this talk espouses analysis of qualities of bodily behaviors that may serve as cues of the producers’ greater awareness in certain moments. Consideration will also be given to possible uptake of those cues by those attending to the speaker-gesturer.