Treasures New & Old; Gestures

Several years ago, the Blaine County Library withdrew from circulation a thick book titled Gestures. I found this book on the cart in the library entryway.

Never before having seen anything on this topic, I gave the librarian my 25 cents and took the book home.

How could I guess what to expect? The book was a surprise in more ways than one.

Four scholars from Oxford University in England had made a detailed, in fact, minute, scholarly study in a branch of anthropology seldom explored.

Let me quote the first sentences of the Preface: “The importance of human gestures has been greatly underestimated. Students of linguistics are everywhere, and the analysis of human languages is a widely accepted scientific subject, but the gesture specialist is a rare bird indeed—not so much a vanishing species, as one that has hardly yet begun to evolve.”

No, I didn’t know what I was getting into. Certainly I did not expect a scholarly treatise on an obscure sub- or sub-sub-branch of anthropology.

This -ology­ may be defined, as the authors do, as “the science of observing the behavior—and misbehavior—of [human beings].”

My second surprise with Gestures was that only European gestures had been observed. There is nothing there about North or South American, Central American, African, or Asian gestures.

The authors didn’t say so, but after dipping into the 296 pages of scientific reporting of the human use of gestures, I could see that they had their hands full with even a once-over-lightly treatment.

Did you know that the “fingertip kiss” which we have seen in movies set around the 1600s was part of court etiquette, probably from Spain?

In a modified form, this kiss is pretty much the same as what we in the USA call “throwing a kiss.”

It came into Spanish usage as a “flowery and falsely exaggerated way of saying to an overlord: ‘You are god-like, and I am your humble slave.’”

An Italian bishop wrote a book in the mid-1500s all about good manners, scorning this use of the gesture “towards other men, because it treats them ‘as if they were holy things.’”

This manner book was still current in 1774, when the fingertips kiss was called “a ridiculous custom…a practice wretched in itself.”

Fawning, flowery gestures were out of favor by then, “reflecting the changing attitude toward exaggerated displays of subordination,... and influencing the whole range of bowings and scrapings that had once been part and parcel of social etiquette.”

English Quakerism was part of this trend toward egalitarian speech, and isn’t it interesting that the French Revolution began only 15 years after the judgment, “ridiculous custom,” was levied against the fingertip kiss?

The leaven of democracy was working.

Many gestures common all over Europe are extremely ancient, all the way back to Roman times and earlier.

In parts of Europe, to this day, the so-called evil eye is feared. Thus protection against it is needed.

Crossing the fingers, as in, “Keep your fingers crossed,” derives from the Christian cross and simultaneously from the need for protection from bad luck, the evil eye, and from the possibly well-deserved consequences of lying.

That sign and many others have a range of meanings.

Perhaps a majority of gestures in widespread use throughout Europe have a sexual meaning. The text doesn’t say, but I wonder which gestures children are scolded for using. Surely some of them!

The “cheek screw” means good, delicious (food), and sometimes crazy or effeminate.

The theory is that it is a form of an outdated gesture, twirling the end of a long, waxed mustache.

It seems that in Italy, even women use the gesture, with no implication that they ever had a real mustache.

With all these variations in possible meanings for various gestures, context is all.

Charles Darwin formed a theory about the origin of our side-to-side head-shake meaning no, and the up and down nod, meaning yes.

He saw his own children turn their heads either sideways or upwards when they were about to reject food, and move their heads forwards and downwards when they were about to accept it.

“From these observations he

concluded that the adult head nod for yes and the adult head shake and head toss for no, had their beginnings in these very early actions.”

I wonder how Darwin might explain a head movement meaning yes in a few places in Asia.

The gesture is a quick tilt of the head first toward one shoulder, then the other, actually a quick rocking motion. Is this recognized as a real yes anywhere else in the world?

The realm of gestures is more complicated than one might think. This book is illustrated with maps, charts, quotations from experts, photographs, and drawings, like virtually all other scientific reports.

Like them, there has to be a debunking section.

It seems that the thumbs-up gesture meaning “yes, good, okay,” did not originate in the Coliseum of ancient Rome and has nothing to do with killing or not killing the gladiator on the spot.

In Greece and Italy, the gesture is an obscene insult.

“It would seem that the O. K. gesture is likely to have enjoyed its major growth in the north of Europe and then to have rapidly invaded the south. Many Italians were surprised to learn that northerners thought of the gesture as having sprung originally from Rome. To them it was a ‘new thing ’ imported by the American G. I.s during the war.”

They called it “The American O. K.”

Another day shall we explore the teeth flick and the ear touch?