pointing, not with finger

[Tanya Slavin]

I have the same experience growing up in Russia, speaking Russian. Pointing
at people was considered rude, pointing with the chin/gaze was acceptable.
Direct third person deixis was also considered rude.


On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 1:22 PM, Genee, Inge <inge.genee at uleth.ca> wrote:

> I'm not sure if it is relevant and/or has a parallel in Algonquian, but
> when I grew up (in the Netherlands, speaking Dutch) we were emphatically
> and early taught not only not to point at people ("Niet zo wijzen!") but
> also not to refer to a person who is present in the speech situation with a
> third person pronoun. The correct way to do it is to say "Mr. Jones/Daddy
> told me it was allowed" ("Meneer Jansen/Pappa zegt dat het mag."), not "He
> told me it was allowed" ("Hij zegt dat het mag"), in any situation where
> Mr. Jones/Daddy might be able to overhear you. Direct third person deixis
> is rude. No idea why, actually.
> In order to stop young children from pointing (which is hard because it is
> such a natural thing to do in toddlers and needed to establish joint
> attention) my mother would close her hand over the little child's pointing
> hand and gently move the pointing hand/arm down, while establishing joint
> attention with her eye gaze and verbally acknowledging the topic of
> discussion. Very subtle, now that I think on it.
> Inge
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ALGONQUIANA [mailto:ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] On
> Behalf Of Richard Preston
> Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2013 9:24 AM
> To: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Subject: Re: pointing, not with finger
>
> yes, finger pointing is old, but what did it denote and connote? What were
> the appropriate contexts?
> cheers
> Dick
>
> On 2013-03-07, at 9:27 AM, Goddard, Ives wrote:
>
> > No one has pointed out that in many Alg. languages the word for 'seven'
> is derived from 'point at' and related to words for index finger (Rhodes
> and Costa, "Number words," #24-25).  So finger-pointing was old and must
> have had a stable and recognized cultural presence, even though lip-pursing
> is universal in normal use.
> >
> > Ives
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ALGONQUIANA [mailto:ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] On
> Behalf Of Amy Dahlstrom
> > Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2013 8:55 AM
> > To: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> > Subject: pointing, not with finger
> >
> > Hello Algonquianists,
> >
> > I'm a discussant at an upcoming conference on gesture, and one thing I
> thought I would mention to the (extremely diverse) audience is the practice
> among at least some of the Algonquian peoples of pointing with the lips or
> with the chin, rather than pointing with the finger.
> >
> > I would like to ask you all how widespread this practice is.  And for
> native speakers (native pointers? :-) ), do you have any intuitions about
> why pointing with the finger is avoided?  Would it seem rude to point with
> the finger?  Or inappropriate in some other way?
> >
> > thanks in advance for any thoughts you can share!
> >
> > Amy
> >
> > P.S.  if you hit "reply" remember that you are replying to the whole
> list! :-)
>


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