Starting with three exemplary utterances which include apparent "pointing gestures," I consider the relationship between spatial information encoded in spoken language and that apparently conveyed by conversational gesture. A previous study of a Guugu Yimithirr (Paman) narrative showed how semiotically complex representations of local geography were incorporated into both verbal formulations and gestural performance in recounting events--in this case, a shipwreck in the waters off northern Queensland. Here I explore some indexical properties of referential devices, both spoken and gestured: how they link their referents to context, physical and conceptual, and how in the examples presented this link crucially depends on an insistent orientation by cardinal directions. I extend the empirical reach to Tzotzil (Mayan), spoken in highland Chiapas, Mexico, which unlike Guugu Yimithirr has little explicit linguistic (or at least spoken) support for such directional acuity. Here, too, the indexical spaces or projected contexts of utterances, including gestures, seem to show the same range of semiotic properties as those evident in the Australian case. Finally I consider some apparent conceptual operations--"transpositions" and "laminations"--which interlocutors must necessarily apply to their representations of space if the utterances--and especially the gestures--they produce are to be successfully interpreted.