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It's clear that gestures are particularly rich in Italian's way of communication, and this is often observed by foreigners. But some of them are shared with other countries, while others seem to be more peculiar.

Is there an "official vocabulary" of Italian gestures? Can they be regarded as an addition to the spoken language?

I.M.
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clabacchio
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  • I couldn't find a proper way to tag this question, but I hope it's on-topic. – clabacchio Dec 19 '13 at 09:06
  • Do you mean the “lingua dei segni” for deaf people? If so, there certainly is a vocabulary of its gestures (see https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_dei_segni_italiana). If you refer to informal gestures accompanying speech, which vary from region to region, town to town, person to person, obviously there is no possible “official vocabulary”. Even (verbal) words have no a definite, complete, official list, as they are in continuous variation! – DaG Dec 19 '13 at 09:18
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    In general, for linguistic phenomena, there cannot be anything “official”. They are part of human behaviour. Is there an official list of feelings or mood? – DaG Dec 19 '13 at 09:18
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    @DaG I'm referring to gestures that accompany the spoken language: and I think that, although it changes over time, there are "official" codes: you couldn't have a common language otherwise. I'm not meaning that it should be an "exclusive" code, but a list of generally recognized signs. I'm not a linguist, but I don't agree that there are no formal definitions. – clabacchio Dec 19 '13 at 09:20
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    I think he refers to the common and informal gestures regarded as typical of Italians, not to the language for deaf people. I'm not so sure that this isn't a cliché anyway (are really Italians using hand gestures more that others?) – martina.physics Dec 19 '13 at 09:39
  • @martina to be fair, I'm not sure that we use them more than anyone else (for esperience, more than in northern Europe) but since most often they have a precise meaning the question came to my mind – clabacchio Dec 19 '13 at 11:01
  • I believe it's depends a lot on the which part of Italy. I'm pretty sure in the South they use gestures much more than in the North (at least, this is something I noticed when travelling there). – Bakuriu Dec 22 '13 at 13:28
  • There is a nice book by Bruno Munari, "Supplemento al dizionario italiano", which describes Italian gestures. http://www.corraini.com/it/catalogo/scheda_libro/23/Supplemento-al-dizionario-italiano – blah Aug 24 '14 at 20:15

3 Answers3

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Lots of people share an interest, at different levels, on this topic. Some (mostly random) info from the internet:

  1. L'italiano "dei gesti", lingua conosciuta in tutto il mondo
  2. L'importanza dei gesti nella lingua italiana
  3. Cultura italiana – Gesti italiani: Parlare senza parole
  4. Gli italiani parlano con le mani
  5. DUE PAROLE SUL LINGUAGGIO DEI GESTI
  6. Perché amiamo i gesti caldi e spontanei della lingua italiana
  7. I gesti degli italiani: parlare … con le mani
  8. I Gesti delle Mani: al confine di universi linguistici e limiti nella comunicazione
  9. Linguaggio italiano delle mani
  10. Quando un gesto vale più di mille parole
  11. Italiani, l'arte del linguaggio dei gesti. Il Nyt: "Parlate con le mani come con la voce"
  12. LA MULTIMODALITÀ DELLA COMUNICAZIONE IN LINGUE E CULTURE DIVERSE
  13. LA COMUNICAZIONE NON VERBALE ED I GESTI ITALIANI
  14. La competenza passiva di gesti simbolici italiani tra studenti d’italiano presso l’Università di Lund
  15. La gestualità, forme alternative di comunicazione

Some of the links above present a list of gestures that are considered "typically Italian". Whether or not this is a cliché I can't say.

By googling on Scholar more elaborated ideas can be obtained, I don't think it would be on topic to discuss them here as the possible answers are very many and mostly subjective - and this is not a forum.

  • So you'd say that Italians use hand gestures more than others? – martina.physics Dec 19 '13 at 09:44
  • @martina, not necessarily, Chinese for example might have similar traditions, as well as Arabians or Indians. But I do not have any source for that, just a vague idea. –  Dec 19 '13 at 11:03
  • And to hide ideas and intentions they express them gestually, in such a way that they can seen from afar? – DaG Dec 19 '13 at 15:24
  • @DaG: not if others do not know your "code" (i.e. what your gesture means). Similarly, that's how Cockney rhyming slang was born: if others are not able to understand what your saying then it does not matter if they hear you say it. – nico Dec 19 '13 at 17:32
  • @nico: yes, but if the idea is a “code”, why ever should a gestual one – that attracts more attention – be better than a verbal one (which can be whispered etc.)? – DaG Dec 19 '13 at 17:44
  • @DaG, and where exactly in Italy can you whisper and be heard? Also: don't you think you'd attract more attention by whispering? By whispering you make it evident that you have something to hide. Anyway, my answer to clabacchio's question is simply that on the internet there are lots of people who are talking about Italian gestures - my extremely simplified hypothesis is not necessarily relevant. –  Dec 19 '13 at 18:39
  • @randomatlabuser: “where exactly in Italy can you whisper and be heard”? Sorry? Where in Italy do you live? And, whispering attracts attention, while making gestures nobody understands (and, according to your hypothesis, nobody was used to before) doesn't. I appreciate wild hypotheses, but one must be ready to test and discuss them. – DaG Dec 19 '13 at 19:11
  • @randomatlabuser: I appreciate many of your other contributions, but here you have just given a list of random links without even a comment on them, a wild guess, and an invitation to Google the topic: not exactly a very constructive answer. – DaG Dec 19 '13 at 19:13
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    @DaG, I have removed my unnecessary hypothesis. The point is that the question probably asks too much and this is not a forum - we could stay here debating for ever on this topic. What matters here is that this is an interesting question and lots of people, from blogs to newspapers to academic papers, are currently discussing about it. Some of the links I suggested present a list of gestures that are considered "typically Italian". –  Dec 19 '13 at 19:35
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    It's definitely not a cliché. Few Italians don't complement their spoken language with gestures, often even when they are not visible by the people they're talking to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z8CBO-KnjM (this video will look hilarious to foreigners but it's not weird for us).

    Many simple concepts can be - and sometimes are - expressed by gestures alone, but it's not like the Sign Language used by deaf people, it's much more informal and fuzzy.

     – Mauro Vanetti Jan 15 '14 at 15:12
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    I also want to add that a lot of gestures do not have a "meaning", they are like the bullets, arrows, boxes etc. used in PowerPoint presentations. It's a way to organise a speech. When something must be stressed, you may move your hand up and down with thumb and finger united, when you are just making a secondary point you may move your hands on a side ("on a side note"...), when you say "on one hand... but on the other hand" you may show one hand and then the other... I hope it's clear. – Mauro Vanetti Jan 15 '14 at 15:17
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Searching for "dizionario dei gesti" or similar I obtained some results (for example a book by "Caon Fabio"), but I never heard of an 'official' dictionary.

Here is the reference to this book:

Fabio Caon: Dizionario dei gesti degli italiani. Una prospettiva interculturale (Guerra Edizioni, 2010).

For every gesture, there is a photograph, its physical description, its meaning, the contexts in which it can be used and some verbal expressions that can accompany it.

Charo
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user310
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I find most of these to be an accurate description of my hand gestures:

Part 1: http://wannareadyou.com/assets/images/italiangestures1.jpg Part 2: http://laughterizer.weebly.com/uploads/5/0/9/8/5098219/9964033.jpg?644

Enucatl
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