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 nearest approach to a general rule which
it is now proposed to hazard is that where people speaking
precisely the same dialect are not numerous, and are thrown
into constant contact on equal terms with others of
differing dialects and languages, gesture is necessarily
resorted to for converse with the latter, and remains for an
indefinite time as a habit or accomplishment among
themselves, while large bodies enjoying common speech, and
either isolated from foreigners, or, when in contact with
them, so dominant as to compel the learning and adoption of
their own tongue, become impassive in its delivery. The
ungesturing English, long insular, and now rulers when
spread over continents, may be compared with the profusely
gesticulating Italians dwelling in a maze of dialects and
subject for centuries either to foreign rule or to the
influx of strangers on whom they depended. So common is the
use of gestures in Italy, especially among the lower and
uneducated classes, that utterance without them seems to be
nearly impossible. The driver or boatman will often, on
being addressed, involuntarily drop the reins or oars, at
the risk of a serious accident, to respond with his arms and
fingers in accompaniment of his tongue. Nor is the habit
confined to the uneducated. King Ferdinand returning to
Naples after the revolt of 1821, and finding that the
boisterous multitude would not allow his voice to be heard,
resorted successfully to a royal address in signs, giving
reproaches, threats, admonitions, pardon, and dismissal, to
the entire satisfaction of the assembled lazzaroni. The
medium, though probably not the precise manner of its
employment, recalls Lucan's account of the quieting of an
older tumult—
tumultum
Composuit vultu, dextraque silentia fecit.
This rivalry of Punch would, in London, have occasioned
measureless ridicule and disgust. The difference in what is
vaguely styled temperament does not wholly explain the
contrast between the two peoples, for the performance was
creditable both to the readiness of the King in an emergency
and to the aptness of his people, the main distinction being
that in Italy there was in 1821, and still is, a recognized
and cultivated language of signs long disused in Great
Britain. In seeking to account for this it will be
remembered that the Italians have a more direct descent from
the people who, as has been above shown, in classic times so
long and lovingly cultivated gesture as a system. They have
also had more generally before their eyes the artistic
relics in which gestures have been preserved.
It is a curious fact that some English writers, notably
Addison (Spectator, 407), have contended that it does
not suit the genius of that nation to use gestures even in
public speaking, against which doctrine Austin vigorously
remonstrates. He says: "There may possibly be nations whose
livelier feelings incline them more to gesticulation than is
common among us, as there are also countries in which plants
of excellent use to man grow spontaneously; these, by care
and culture, are found to thrive also in colder countries."
It is in general to be remarked that as the number of
dialects in any district decreases so will the gestures,
though doubtless there is also weight in the fact not merely
that a language has been reduced to and modified by writing,
but that people who are accustomed generally to read and
write, as are the English and Germans, will after a time
think and talk as they write, and without the accompaniments
still persistent among Hindus, Arabs, and the less literate
of European nations.
The fact that in the comparatively small island of Sicily
gesture language has been maintained until the present time
in a perfection not observed elsewhere in Europe must be
considered in connection with the above remark on England's
insularity, and it must also be admitted that several
languages have prevailed in the latter, still leaving
dialects. This apparent similarity of conditions renders the
contrast as regards use of gestures more remarkable, yet
there are some reasons for their persistence in Sicily which
apply with greater force than to Great Britain. The
explanation, through mere tradition, is that the common
usage of signs dates from the time of Dionysius, the tyrant
of Syracuse, who prohibited meetings and conversation among
his subjects, under the direst penalties, so that they
adopted that expedient to hold communication. It would be
more useful to consider the peculiar history of the island.
The Sicanians being its aborigines it was colonized by
Greeks, who, as the Romans asserted, were still more apt at
gesture than themselves. This colonization was also by
separate bands of adventurers from several different states
of Greece, so that they started with dialects and did not
unite in a common or national organization, the separate
cities and their territories being governed by oligarchies
or tyrants frequently at war with each other, until, in the
fifth century B.C., the Carthaginians began to contribute a
new admixture of language and blood, followed by Roman,
Vandal, Gothic, Herulian, Arab, and Norman subjugation. Thus
some of the conditions above suggested have existed in this
case, but, whatever the explanation, the accounts given by
travelers of the extent to which the language of signs has
been used even during the present generation are so
marvelous as to deserve quotation. The one selected is from
the pen of Alexandre Dumas, who, it is to be hoped, did not
carry his genius for romance into a professedly sober
account of travel:
"In the intervals of the acts of the opera I saw lively
conversations carried on between the orchestra and the
boxes. Arami, in particular, recognized a friend whom he had
not seen for three years, and who related to him, by means
of his eyes and his hands, what, to judge by the eager
gestures of my companion, must have been matters of great
interest. The conversation ended, I asked him if I might
know without impropriety what was the intelligence which had
seemed to interest him so deeply. 'O, yes,' he replied,
'that person is one of my good friends, who has been away
from Palermo for three years, and he has been telling me
that he was married at Naples; then traveled with his wife
in Austria and in France; there his wife gave birth to a
daughter, whom he had the misfortune to lose; he arrived by
steamboat yesterday, but his wife had suffered so much from
sea-sickness that she kept her bed, and he came alone to the
play.' 'My dear friend,' said I to Arami, 'if you would have
me believe you, you must grant me a favor.' 'What is it?'
said he. 'It is, that you do not leave me during the
evening, so that I may be sure you give no instructions to
your friend, and when we join him, that you ask him to
repeat aloud what he said to you by signs.' 'That I will,'
said Arami. The curtain then rose; the second act of Norma
was played; the curtain falling, and the actors being
recalled, as usual, we went to the side-room, where we met
the traveler. 'My dear friend,' said Arami, 'I did not
perfectly comprehend what you wanted to tell me; be so good
as to repeat it.' The traveler repeated the story word for
word, and without varying a syllable from the translation,
which Arami had made of his signs; it was marvelous indeed.
"Six weeks after this, I saw a second example of this
faculty of mute communication. This was at Naples. I was
walking with a young man of Syracuse. We passed by a
sentinel. The soldier and my companion exchanged two or
three grimaces, which at another time I should not even have
noticed, but the instances I had before seen led me to give
attention. 'Poor fellow,' sighed my companion. 'What did he
say to you?' I asked. 'Well,' said he, 'I thought that I
recognized him as a Sicilian, and I learned from him, as we
passed, from what place he came; he said he was from
Syracuse, and that he knew me well. Then I asked him how he
liked the Neapolitan service; he said he did not like it at
all, and if his officers did not treat him better he should
certainly finish by deserting. I then signified to him that
if he ever should be reduced to that extremity, he might
rely upon me, and that I would aid him all in my power. The
poor fellow thanked me with all his heart, and I have no
doubt that one day or other I shall see him come.' Three
days after, I was at the quarters of my Syracusan friend,
when he was told that a man asked to see him who would not
give his name; he went out and left me nearly ten minutes.
'Well,' said he, on returning, 'just as I said.' 'What?'
said I. 'That the poor fellow would desert.'"
After this there is an excuse for believing the tradition
that the revolt called "the Sicilian Vespers," in 1282, was
arranged throughout the island without the use of a
syllable, and even the day and hour for the massacre of the
obnoxious foreigners fixed upon by signs only. Indeed, the
popular story goes so far as to assert that all this was
done by facial expression, without even manual signs.
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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
