the language of gesture

[Jonathan Lighter]

Since there's so little time left, the title of this thread gives me the
opportunity to warn as follows:

Somewhere in Desmond Morris's _Gestures_ (1979) is the claim that the
British two-finfer "up yours" gesture (incomprehensible to formerly naive
Yanks like me) is exemplified in a scene in Rabelais 's tales of Gargantua
and Pantagruel.

I looked into this fifteen years ago and discovered that it ain't so.

I can't give the ref. (which is OK since few care), but the scene involves a
dumb show of derisive mummery involving many unexplained gestures (possibly
merely intended to suggest the twitching of a madman, as when Bugs Bunny
gets turned into Mr. Hyde). At one point Pantagruel (I believe) pokes a hand
towards his interlocutor, with two fingers extended.

Big deal. Since they're poking toward the recipient instead of into the air,
it isn't even the same gesture.

How far back have we actually traced the British gesture?  My impression is,
not much before the 1930s.

JL
On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: the language of gesture
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I think that's an antedating of "DIO," George, but I'm too lazy to check.
>
> In any case, it's an early humorous acronym of the  - dare I say it? - "OK"
> kind.
>
> Tea thieves: SOTAs of the 1830's.
>
> Speaking of SOTAs: tomorrow, 6 pm Eastern. Lots of CNN coverage so far.
> Pencil it in!:
>
>
>
> http://sanfrancisco.ibtimes.com/articles/149113/20110520/doomsday-may-21-2011-harold-camping-rapture-end-of-the-world-end-of-days-judgment-day-end-time.htm
>
>
> JL
>
> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:35 PM, George Thompson
> <george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:
>
>  > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> > Subject:      the language of gesture
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >        A black Rogue who says his name is John, and nothing else, was
> > yesterday afternoon observed with a box of Tea under his arm; being in
> the
> > neighborhood of the Five Points he excited the suspicion of an officer,
> but
> > the fellow knowing the person of the Law's attache, and seeing that he
> was
> > coming towards him, placed his finger to his nose in the style of that
> > neighborhood and started off on a run, saying -- "Mr. Officer you can't
> come
> > to Tea.  He scaled six or seven fences in his flight, and arriving at the
> > corner of Chatham and Pearl sts., thought himself safe, when to his
> > amazement he found himself and Tea in the clutch of McGrath, the 6th ward
> > officer.
> >        Evening Star, January 28, 1837, p. 2, col. 2
> >
> > My impression had been, that in the 19th C the gesture of touching the
> side
> > of one's nose with an index finger signified "I'm thinking" or, better,
> > maybe, "I'm know more than you think I do".  In typing out this item,
> > though, I recalled that this alleged perp was using the gesture in the
> same
> > sense as St Nicholas, who, you will recall, laid his finger beside his
> nose
> > just before up the chimney he rose.
> > So it also meant "Dio." (1)
> >
> > (1) As in a joke in the New-York Evening Post, August 22, 1812, p. 3,
> col.
> > 2: "the wag who stole away from the company he was in, leaving a paper
> > marked Dio, that is, "Damme, I am off.""
> >
> > GAT
> >
> >
> > George A. Thompson
> > Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> > Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
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> >
>
>
>
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