ABSTRACT
American folk speech also refers to the impact of gestural traditions. In America, one might “thumb his or her nose” at someone, referring to an insulting gesture of flicking the thumb across the nose at the person. To make a “tongue in cheek” statement indicates that one is not serious. As these examples indicate, many American gestural traditions are centered on the visible face, rather than the body or “belly language” in Asian cultures. Americans show disapproval, for example, by pinching the nose with the thumb and index figure to show that a performance stinks. Yet most Japanese will refer to themselves by pointing to their nose whereas Americans will point to their chest. Folklorists have observed some ethnic differences in facial gestures in America, such as shifts in the neck among African Americans to emphasize points of a conversation that have been traced to storytelling techniques in west Africa. Italians, often associated with exuberant nonverbal communication, are identified with an insulting gesture of placing the right hand in the elbow crook of the left arm. The left arm is then raised (fist clenched) at the victim in a smooth and continuous motion. In Italian it is known as the gesto dell’ombrello, meaning literally “the umbrella gesture.”
