The impact of gestures in different cultures

Gesture is seen accompanying speech. Man makes gestures without speech also. Gesture is symbolic action by which a thought, a feeling or intention is voluntarily expressed in a conventionalized (established by general agreement/acceptance, or accepted usage) form. Gesture is different from the real act. For example, the real act of drinking when performed for a drinking purpose is action per se, whereas when the act of drinking is mimicked. or performed symbolically as in the case of Holy Communion in the Christian church, it becomes a gesture. The real act of smoking is action, whereas the movements that one makes as if one is smoking is gesture. In the examples given, there is some similarity between real acts and the " gestures" that indicate these real acts.. There are very many instances in which gestures do not have any similarity between themselves and the acts or objects they stand for. For instance, in the sign language used by the Red Indians (American Indians), the sign for a laddle, which is made keeping the palm curved like a laddle, comes to denote drinking and from this meaning it ultimately stands for 'water'. There is no similarity between 'water' and this gesture. Thus, the gestures become not only conventionalized but could also be holding a relationship of arbitrariness between themselves and the acts and objects they refer to.

Gestures ore formed by movement of the facial muscles, head, limbs or body. These movements may express or emphasize a thought, feeling or mood. They may accompany speech or may be used in the place of speech as found among deaf-mutes, among people who do not know each other's language or among those who have taken a vow of silence and so on. In addition to their use as an accompaniment to speech and their use as an independent means of communication (in place of language) between individuals and groups, gestures are also frequently used in the aesthetic acts, in the theatre and dance, and in religious and/or secular ceremonies.

There are at least three major divisions - use of gesture by itself as the language, as in the case of deaf-mutes; use of gesture as an independent means of communication, an additions to the use of oral language, as in the case of sign language used by American Indians. There is also yet another category in which use of gesture either as an accompaniment to oral speech or as an independent system of expression is elevated to the aesthetic level and is exploited in aesthetic arts. Finally, use of gesture in all the above is resorted to for both social purposes and purely individual goals. Under social purposes, use of gesture for expression relates to establishment of interpersonal ranking, good manners, communication/communion with gods, maintenance of social identity, etc. The purely individual goals include maintenance and exhibition of the level of intimacy between individuals, secret communication, etc. While these are exploited at the aesthetic levels, use of gesture itself in the aesthetic arts not only accentuates the effects but also creates and maintains the effects; in other words, it conducts the episodes in several cases.

Gesture is, indeed, present and exploited in every walk of human life. Poyotos' definitions of gesture (Poyotos, 1975) brings out the salient features of gestures clearly: 'By gesture, one understands a conscious or unconscious body movement made mainly with the head, the face alone, or the limbs, learned or somatogenic, and serving as a primary communicative tool, dependent or independent from verbal language; either simultaneous or alternating with it, and modified by the conditioning background (smiles, eye movements, a gesture of beckoning, a tic, etc.)'.

Gesture is characterized in literature in very many different ways. Each one of these characterization focuses one or the other aspect of gesture. Gesture is described as follows:

1) It is a silent language.

2) It is talk without talk.

3) It is mother utterance of nature.

4) It is natural.

5) It is universal

6) It is figurative

7) It is picturesque.

8) It has clarity.

9) It has picturesque novelty.

10) It is metaphorical.

11) It is poetic nature

12) It is iconic.

13) It is pantomimic.

14) It is cheiromimic.

15) It is affective.

16) It is a surrogate for spoken language.

17) It is a substitute for spoken language.

18) It is a lexical ideograph.

19) It is speech by gesture (gesture speech of mankind).

20) It is visual language.

21) It consists of the visual attitudes of the soul.

22) It is innate language.

23) it is an air picture.

24) It is an essential adjunct to human language.

25) It is a great human accomplishment.

26) It is hand talk.

27) It is syntalk.

The body parts and other items of processes that are generally involved in the production and communication of gestures are as follows:

1) Face, 15) Moustache,

2) Head, 16) Chest,

3) Eyes, 17) Breast,

4) Ears, 18) Place of heart,

5) Skin, 19) Arms,

6) Breath, 20) Elbows,

7) Mouth, 21)Hair,

8) Lips, 22) Fore head,

9) Palm, 23) Throat,

10) Hands, 24) Nose,

11) Fingers, 25) Legs,

12) Tongue, 26) Shoulder,

13) Chin, 27) Back, and

14)Cheeks, 28) Torso.

 

 

Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to believe that one's ethnic or cultural group is centrally important, and that all other groups are measured in relation to one's own. The ethnocentric individual will judge other groups relative to his or her own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern tolanguage, behavior, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and sub-divisions serve to define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity.^[1]

The term ethnocentrism was coined by William G. Sumner, upon observing the tendency for people to differentiate between the ingroup and others. He described it as often leading to pride, vanity, beliefs of one's own group's superiority, and contempt of outsiders.^[2]

Anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski argued that any human science had to transcend the ethnocentrism of the scientist. Both urged anthropologists to conduct ethnographicfieldwork in order to overcome their ethnocentrism. Boas developed the principle of cultural relativismand Malinowski developed the theory offunctionalism as guides for producing non-ethnocentric studies of different cultures. The booksThe Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia, by Malinowski, Patterns of Culture byRuth Benedict and Coming of Age in Samoa byMargaret Mead (two of Boas's students) are classic examples of anti-ethnocentric anthropology.