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"You mean Americans don't gesture? They talk like this?" Pascuale Guarrancino, a Roman taxi driver, asked International Herald Tribune reporter Rachel Donadio. He freezed up and placed his arms flat against his sides in a movement reminiscent of Al Gore in the 1990s.
The ancient city of Rome seems to be one big open-air theater on any day. Everybody is a character on the grand stage, and the gestures are grand too.
Whether you see people talking on their mobiles, or drinking an espresso with one hand and the obligatory cigarette in the other, or downshifting their tiny cars through Rome's over-congested streets, they seem to constantly gesticulate with enviable elegance.
Many gestures are simple. The side of one hand against the belly means "I'm hungry." The index finger twisted into the cheek means "This tastes good." Tapping your wrist means "Hurry up."
The ancient city of Rome seems to be one big open-air theater on any day. Everybody is a character on the grand stage, and the gestures are grand too.
Whether you see people talking on their mobiles, or drinking an espresso with one hand and the obligatory cigarette in the other, or downshifting their tiny cars through Rome's over-congested streets, they seem to constantly gesticulate with enviable elegance.
Many gestures are simple. The side of one hand against the belly means "I'm hungry." The index finger twisted into the cheek means "This tastes good." Tapping your wrist means "Hurry up."
The video gives an excellent primer.
Other gestures are more complex or ambivalent. The gesture at the top of this post is a classic; it could mean "What do you want from me?" or "I wasn't born yesterday."
Sometimes the body language can get out of hand. Last year, Italy's highest court ruled that a man who unwittingly struck an 80-year-old woman while gesticulating in a piazza in the southern region of Puglia (the heel of the Italian boot) was liable for civil damages.
"The public street isn't a living room," the judges noted. "The habit of accompanying a conversation with gestures, while certainly licit, becomes illicit" in some contexts.
But Italians are proud of their sign language tradition. One theory holds that they developed it as a second form of communication during the centuries of being occupied by Austria, France and Spain in 14th through 19th centuries.
The 18th-century philosopher Giambattista Vico, who once taught rhetoric at the University of Naples, argued in "The New Science" that gestures might even have been the earliest form of language.
What do you see? What hand language do you know from your own culture? And do you have any stories of misunderstandings due to body language or gestures? I look forward to reading you on my blog: http://thomaszweifel.blogspot.com/.
Other gestures are more complex or ambivalent. The gesture at the top of this post is a classic; it could mean "What do you want from me?" or "I wasn't born yesterday."
Sometimes the body language can get out of hand. Last year, Italy's highest court ruled that a man who unwittingly struck an 80-year-old woman while gesticulating in a piazza in the southern region of Puglia (the heel of the Italian boot) was liable for civil damages.
"The public street isn't a living room," the judges noted. "The habit of accompanying a conversation with gestures, while certainly licit, becomes illicit" in some contexts.
But Italians are proud of their sign language tradition. One theory holds that they developed it as a second form of communication during the centuries of being occupied by Austria, France and Spain in 14th through 19th centuries.
The 18th-century philosopher Giambattista Vico, who once taught rhetoric at the University of Naples, argued in "The New Science" that gestures might even have been the earliest form of language.
What do you see? What hand language do you know from your own culture? And do you have any stories of misunderstandings due to body language or gestures? I look forward to reading you on my blog: http://thomaszweifel.blogspot.com/.
P.S. To learn more about language in different cultures (including some hilarious Italian and other cross-cultural jokes), check out Culture Clash 2 that came out in May.
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