GESTURE LANGUAGE. The communica tion of thought by bodily movements, excepting the use of the vocal organs in speech or exclama tions. They are not confined to man alone, but are possessed by many other animals to a greater or less degree, and thus, together with exclama tions which also occur to some degree among animals, gesture language is one of the most primitive modes of transferring ideas. That ges ture is to some extent produced by speech de ficiency is clear from the fact that individuals of mutually unintelligible vernaculars are obliged, in the absence of an interpreter, to communicate at first entirely by gestures, and that as their speech becomes intelligible the necessity for ges tures steadily diminishes to a certain point. A certain amount of gesture language is imperative in connection with spoken language, and its re fined employment is a mark of culture.
The gestures used as a form of language may best he divided into manifestive, demonstrative, and imitative. To this classification symbolic and comitative gestures are added by some schol ars. Comitative gestures arc but a subclass of the imitative, while symbolic gestures seem to be another subdivision of the imitative signs, and it is important to observe that in many in stances the imitative gestures themselves may he derived ultimately from the manifestive group. The simplest class of gesture language is formed by the manifestive class, which is in the main emotive in character. Here belong such gestures as striking the breast. or pressing the head tightly between the hands in grief (apparently a sort of physical counter-irritant to mental pain) ; turn ing up of the nose in contempt (originally an ex pression of disgust at a foul odor) : the backward thrust of the upraised hands with the palms outward, to repel anything disagreeable or dan gerous; the shrug of the shoulders to denote indifference or despair (primarily to express mus cular adjustment to meet something which is inevitable) ; stamping the foot in rage (found also among animals, notably in an enraged bull; perhaps originally, as in the case of an angry lion lashing himself with his tail, an exciting stimulus of fury already aroused) ; and many others. The demonstrative gestures differ from
the manifestive in being altruistic instead of egoistic—that is, they refer to others, and not to self. To this class belong such motions as the simple pointing gesture; the laying of the finger on one's own lips to enjoin silence in others; the light tapping of one's own forehead with the finger-tip to indicate that another per son is deranged; the Neapolitan gesture to mark present time, in which the outstretched finger is pointed downward, or to show past time by di recting the right thumb a little backward over the shoulder. In this class the gestures intended to apply to others are often really indicated on one's self from motives of decorum and the like. Certain demonstrative gestures seem to be modi fied manifestive signs, as the pointing with the finger. This gesture is probably originally of the same manifestive type as the pricking up of the ears of a horse, who sees something which excites his attention, while the transition from the one type to the other may be seen in the pointing of a setter who flushes birds for the hunter, even though this latter gesture is an artificial one. The most important class, al though the last in order of development, is the imitative type. Thus, to express the idea of weariness, the Neapolitan wipes his forehead with his thumb, to indicate the removal of sweat; or to indicate that one is a flatterer, the gesturer kisses his own finger-tips. Again, in America as well as in Italy, the idea of cutting the throat is expressed by drawing the inner edge of the hand across the throat; and the American Indian indi cates that a man is a liar by placing his hand to his lips and distending two fingers, in imita tion of the forked tongue of a snake. To show that one is servile, a cringing attitude may be assumed, while shaking the clenched fist in rage is obviously imitative of the blow given in fight. Certain gestures are involuntary in origin, espe cially the blush.