These gestures are primarily about trying to manipulate the social world, to get people to stop doing what they're doing or to respond to questions." You might imagine that people will have a gesture for water, meat, for running and so on. "If you look across cultures, these emblematic gestures are used for interpersonal control," says Cooperrider. Gestures that communicate a specific meaning, like "I don't know" or "everything is OK", are called emblematic gestures. But Cooperrider has also studied modern cultures, from Arabic to Zulu, in which the gesture seems to translate. Leonardo da Vinci wrote about and painted the gesture in the 15th Century (three of the attendees in The Last Supper appear to be shrugging). For English speakers, time moves from left to right and we tend to gesture about things in the future in front of our bodies and things in the past over our shoulders, he says.īoth Gawne and Cooperrider say that the "palm-up shrug" appears to be very common, though its origins are not certain. "People everywhere seem to like to gesture about time, they like to locate tomorrow in one position and yesterday in another position, where exactly they locate them might vary by culture," says Cooperrider. So, if something as universal as approval, disapproval and pointing can be different across cultures, is there anything that has the same meaning to everyone? And would those gestures stand the test of time? It is important to be able to subtly communicate the direction of a target without raising attention. Cooperrider suggests that those cultures might value discretion when, for example, hunting. In parts of the Americas, Africa, southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania, pointing with the head, nose or lips is common. But pointing is not the same in every culture. Nick Enfield, a professor of linguistic anthropology from the University of Sydney, suggests that pointing was a precursor to language itself, essential to early human communication. But, the fact that its origins are mysterious and its use has changed from being an indication of life or death to "everything is OK" or something obscene, demonstrates that hand gestures might not have the same meaning forever.Īnother example of a meaning that has various gestures is pointing. It shows the power of a gesture to cross cultures and time. That the gesture of showing someone your thumb has survived longer than the spoken Latin language is mightily impressive, says Gawne. Whether a thumbs up or down meant life or death, or whether any thumb at all was a good thing, is disputed. Some attribute it to the climax of gladiatorial battles, in which the fate of the losing fighter was decided. The origins of the thumbs up are contentious. Scuba divers, for example, use thumbs up to mean " I'm going up to the surface". But even in the West, a thumbs up does not universally mean the same thing. More recent diplomatic trips to the Middle East also suggest that the Western use is widespread. Perhaps they weren't being as rude as some thought. Were the locals offering their support to the foreign forces or being rude? According to the US Defense Language Institute, a body that provides foreign language training for US forces, Middle Easterners had adopted the Western use of the thumbs up after the first Gulf War as a symbol of their support. News stories from 2003 reported that US troops travelling through Iraq were greeted by Iraqis with their thumbs up. Just because a gesture is common, it is not necessarily universal, warns Lauren Gawne, a linguist at La Trobe University in Australia.Īnd its meaning can change over time. The "thumbs up" might be a common way to show your appreciation on social media, but in some parts of Europe and the Middle East the gesture can be offensive. They might help us to recall words and shape our thoughts – they can even change the sounds our audience hears.Įven people who have been blind from birth gesture as they speak, so you might be led to believe that there is something universally understood about the gestures we make – but that is not the case. Our hands are a useful tool for adding meaning to our speech.
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