The Ultimate Body Language Book

esearch has shown that some gestures are universal and therefore have ubiquitous meaning across
cultures, while others only have local meaning. Other gestures are context specific so mean one thing in
one place and can mean something entirely different elsewhere. Pointing, made by extending the index
finger and balling up the rest of the hand for example, is one of the gestures that has the same meaning
everywhere, but the okay-sign made by touching the index finger to the thumb and flaring out the
remaining fingers, as we shall see later, does not.
Some cultures also tend to gesture, called “gesticulation” when used in speech, more or less often than
others. For example, Italians are known to use a lot of gestures in speech whereas the English tend to
use gestures infrequently. The English culture, on the other hand, deems high rates of gesticulation as
being impolite. The high gesture cultures include Hebrew, French and Spanish.
The more social way for us to use our hands is to use them in concert with what is being said, although
taken to extremes like the Italians, or lack thereof like the English, can be counterproductive. A balance
between the two, will be the best case. The hands and arms add to the dialogue and liven it. Keeping
your hands to your sides or your arms crossed tightly might be comfortable, but those that use their
hands moderately while speaking appear intelligent and honest when viewed by others. Universally,
closed posture come off as negative and anti-social no matter what kinds of truths spoken or positive
feelings intended by the speaker. This is why it’s so important to be conscious of our gestures because
even if we aren’t, others will be. Whether or not others bring closed body language to consciousness, is
not relevant. Our impressions are created in others passively with no active thinking.
The various gestures have been broken down into five categories: emblems, illustrators, affect displays,
regulators which we cover next.