While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
The same is true of the most fluent talkers
on occasions when the exact vocal formula desired does not
at once suggest itself, or is unsatisfactory without
assistance from the physical machinery not embraced in the
oral apparatus. The command of a copious vocabulary common
to both speaker and hearer undoubtedly tends to a phlegmatic
delivery and disdain of subsidiary aid. An excited speaker
will, however, generally make a free use of his hands
without regard to any effect of that use upon auditors. Even
among the gesture-hating English, when they are aroused from
torpidity of manner, the hands are involuntarily clapped in
approbation, rubbed with delight, wrung in distress, raised
in astonishment, and waved in triumph. The fingers are
snapped for contempt, the forefinger is vibrated to reprove
or threaten, and the fist shaken in defiance. The brow is
contracted with displeasure, and the eyes winked to show
connivance. The shoulders are shrugged to express disbelief
or repugnance, the eyebrows elevated with surprise, the lips
bitten in vexation and thrust out in sullenness or
displeasure, while a higher degree of anger is shown by a
stamp of the foot. Quintilian, regarding the subject,
however, not as involuntary exhibition of feeling and
intellect, but for illustration and enforcement, becomes
eloquent on the variety of motions of which the hands alone
are capable, as follows:
"The action of the other parts of the body assists the
speaker, but the hands (I could almost say) speak
themselves. By them do we not demand, promise, call,
dismiss, threaten, supplicate, express abhorrence and
terror, question and deny? Do we not by them express joy and
sorrow, doubt, confession, repentance, measure, quantity,
number, and time? Do they not also encourage, supplicate,
restrain, convict, admire, respect? and in pointing out
places and persons do they not discharge the office of
adverbs and of pronouns?"
Voss adopts almost the words of Quintilian, "Manus non
modo loquentem adjuvant, sed ipsę pene loqui videntur,"
while Cresollius calls the hand "the minister of reason and
wisdom ... without it there is no eloquence."
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materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or
language of a particular period or place. These items are presented as
part of the historical record and should not be interpreted to mean that
the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes implied.
Sign Language
Among North American Indians Compared with
that Among Other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes,
1881
