Hey! I'm not sure you still do those, but I saw you giving advice to people in your inbox before and I'm kinda in the need of some. Do you have any tips on describing gesticulation/hand movement? Thank you in advance!
Writing Notes: Hand Movements
Kinesics - refers to body movements and posture
Includes the following components: gestures, head movements and posture, eye contact, and facial expressions.
Comes from the root word kinesis, which means “movement,” and refers to the study of hand, arm, body, and face movements.
Gestures - arm and hand movements; include adaptors like clicking a pen or scratching your face, emblems like a thumbs-up to say “OK,” and illustrators like bouncing your hand along with the rhythm of your speaking.
There are 3 main types of gestures: adaptors, emblems, and illustrators (Andersen, 1999).
Adaptors - touching behaviors and movements that indicate internal states typically related to arousal or anxiety. Adaptors can be targeted toward the self, objects, or others. In regular social situations, adaptors result from uneasiness, anxiety, or a general sense that we are not in control of our surroundings. Many of us subconsciously click pens, shake our legs, or engage in other adaptors during classes, meetings, or while waiting as a way to do something with our excess energy. Public speaking students who watch video recordings of their speeches notice nonverbal adaptors that they didn’t know they used. In public speaking situations, people most commonly use self- or object-focused adaptors. Common self-touching behaviors like scratching, twirling hair, or fidgeting with fingers or hands are considered self-adaptors. Some self-adaptors manifest internally, as coughs or throat-clearing sounds. My personal weakness is object adaptors. Specifically, I subconsciously gravitate toward metallic objects like paper clips or staples holding my notes together and catch myself bending them or fidgeting with them while I’m speaking. Other people play with dry-erase markers, their note cards, the change in their pockets, or the lectern while speaking. Use of object adaptors can also signal boredom as people play with the straw in their drink or peel the label off a bottle of beer. Smartphones have become common object adaptors, as people can fiddle with their phones to help ease anxiety. Finally, as noted, other adaptors are more common in social situations than in public speaking situations given the speaker’s distance from audience members. Other adaptors involve adjusting or grooming others, similar to how primates like chimpanzees pick things off each other. It would definitely be strange for a speaker to approach an audience member and pick lint off his or her sweater, fix a crooked tie, tuck a tag in, or pat down a flyaway hair in the middle of a speech.
Emblems - are gestures that have a specific agreed-on meaning. These are still different from the signs used by hearing-impaired people or others who communicate using American Sign Language (ASL). Even though they have a generally agreed-on meaning, they are not part of a formal sign system like ASL that is explicitly taught to a group of people. A hitchhiker’s raised thumb, the “OK” sign with thumb and index finger connected in a circle with the other three fingers sticking up, and the raised middle finger are all examples of emblems that have an agreed-on meaning or meanings with a culture. Emblems can be still or in motion; for example, circling the index finger around at the side of your head says “He or she is crazy,” or rolling your hands over and over in front of you says “Move on.” Just as we can trace the history of a word, or its etymology, we can also trace some nonverbal signals, especially emblems, to their origins. Holding up the index and middle fingers in a “V” shape with the palm facing in is an insult gesture in Britain that basically means “up yours.” This gesture dates back centuries to the period in which the primary weapon of war was the bow and arrow. When archers were captured, their enemies would often cut off these two fingers, which was seen as the ultimate insult and worse than being executed since the archer could no longer shoot his bow and arrow. So holding up the two fingers was a provoking gesture used by archers to show their enemies that they still had their shooting fingers (Pease & Pease, 2004).
Illustrators - are the most common type of gesture and are used to illustrate the verbal message they accompany. For example, you might use hand gestures to indicate the size or shape of an object. Unlike emblems, illustrators do not typically have meaning on their own and are used more subconsciously than emblems. These largely involuntary and seemingly natural gestures flow from us as we speak but vary in terms of intensity and frequency based on context. Although we are never explicitly taught how to use illustrative gestures, we do it automatically. Think about how you still gesture when having an animated conversation on the phone even though the other person can’t see you.
Haptics - refers to touch behaviors that convey meaning during interactions. Touch operates at many levels, including functional-professional, social-polite, friendship-warmth, and love-intimacy.
We all make spontaneous hand movements, called gestures, when we talk. There are several different types of gestures that serve different purposes:
Co-Speech Gestures - Gestures that we produce spontaneously while talking.
Iconic Gestures - Hand movements that create pictures to describe objects or actions.
Beat Gestures - Repeated hand movements that follow the rhythm of speech.
Deictic Gestures - Gestures that direct the listener’s attention, such as pointing.
Examples of Gestures around the World
Argentina: “Be careful” - If you want to tell someone to be careful or watch out for their surroundings, just put your index finger below your eye and gently pull down.
Brazil: “It’s just gossip” - If you hear someone spreading stories that aren’t true, you can tap the underside of your jaw with the back of your hand. This signifies that what they’re saying is just gossip.
China: “Thank you” - Rest the palm of one hand on the fist of your other hand and give a slight bow.
France: “It’s easy” - You’re talking to someone from France, complaining about a difficult task. If they disagree with you, they might hold up two fingers toward their nostrils, meaning “It’s as easy as this!”
Germany: “Good luck” - If you’d like to wish someone luck in Germany, don’t cross your fingers. Instead, you need to press your thumbs (enclose them in your fists).
India: “Warm regards” - In India, you might see someone pressing their palms together as they greet you. It’s a sign of acceptance, warm regards and respect.
Korea: “I love/appreciate you” - A popular hand gesture in Korea to express love or appreciation is the finger heart, made by putting your thumb and index finger together in a kind of “x” that looks like a heart.
Mexico: “A lot” - To convey that there’s a lot of something, join all five fingers together and then shake your hand. You can use one hand or both hands for this one.
Poland: “That will never happen” - If someone tells you something you don’t believe, try pointing to your palm with your index finger. This means “A cactus would sooner grow on my hand”—in other words, “That will never happen.”
Spain: “Do you get it?” - If a Spanish person wants to check that you understand something they said (a joke, for instance), they might hold out their finger and thumb, as though they’re holding a very small item, and make a gentle twisting motion.
Sources: 1 2 3 ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs
Hope this helps with your writing! (Yup, still do these. Usually in one sitting whenever I find free time, then they all get queued.)
