The Book of Tells (Peter Collett)[unlocked]

FOREIGN TELLS
with a very light grip, and they can extend for several
minutes while the participants exchange niceties and
make enquiries about each other's relatives. West African
handshakes often include embellishments, like a click of
the fingers as the hands are released. 6 It's possible that the
constant elaboration of hand-shaking practices in African-
American communities owes something to the central role
that hand-shaking plays in West African societies.
Although the English have helped to export the handshake
to other parts of the world, during the seventeenth
century the handshake, or handclasp, was used exclusively
for sealing agreements. 7 It was only later that it
became a greeting and started to spread to other countries.
According to Theodore Zeldin, author of The French, the
handshake was exported from England to France, where it
became known as 'Le Handshake'. 8 Today the French have
a very strong attachment to the handshake. While British
colleagues might shake hands when they arrive at work,
their French counterparts are likely to shake each other's
hand several times during the same day. The Russians also
shake hands with the same person several times a day, and
so do the Italians and the Spaniards. The British and the
Germans, on the other hand, tend to confine themselves
to one handshake on meeting and another on parting - if
in fact they ever shake hands at all.
There are also differences in the way that the handshake
is executed. The French, for example, tend to produce a
single, determined pump of the hand, whereas the Italians
are inclined to draw out the handshake by holding on to
the other person's hand. The social rules governing who
should shake hands with whom also differ from one
country to the next. While in France people shake hands
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