People of different nationalities appear to vary in their use of hand gestures, according to a study that seems to reinforce the idea that Italians, in particular, 鈥渢alk with their hands鈥�.
and her colleague , both at Lund University in Sweden, asked 12 people from Sweden and 12 from Italy to describe a clip from the children鈥檚 TV show Pingu to a friend who hadn鈥檛 seen it, while examining their gestures.
鈥淚talians do gesture more,鈥� says Graziano on a video call, gesturing emphatically herself, which she puts down to her upbringing in Naples, Italy. In the study, the Italians made an average of 22 gestures per 100 words, compared with the Swedes鈥� 11.
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But more interesting was the difference in the function of the gestures, says Graziano. The Swedes mostly used 鈥渞epresentational gestures鈥� to illustrate the events and actions of the story, for example mimicking a rolling pin when describing baking.
The Italians made these motions as well, but also had more 鈥減ragmatic gestures鈥� that comment on the story or introduce new information, such as a hand movement to indicate a new character.
This suggests that the two cultures think differently about the way a narrative is produced, says Graziano. Gestures can reflect what cultures deem important about the content and purpose of a story, she says.
at Stanford University in California says that exactly why these results occurred is unclear, but they suggest that 鈥渃ultural conventions of understanding and explaining brief episodes are driving the gestures鈥�. Tversky wants to see further research in larger groups of people with a more diverse mix of nationalities.
Graziano hopes to now study the gestures used in different types of discourse, and with different relationships between the speakers, to shed more light on how various cultures use gestures to communicate and tell a story.
Frontiers in Communication
