Living gestures

The hunter's gesture to his follower is a very simple form of

sign language. Human social life is full of such signs. We use
them all the time, usually to emphasize our words, sometimes to
replace them entirely. Gestures emphasize words by conveying
the same information in an extra way. By adding a sight to a
sound, we make an impact on the brain of the person who
receives the message through two of his senses at once.
From one point of view, gestures are a poor substitute for
words. Suppose that someone is talking to you during a meal,
and that you disagree with what he is saying. If your mouth is
full, you can only shake your head. But the odds are that, when
you have swallowed, you will back up your gesture with words.
The visual communication —the gesture—states a fact ("I
disagree") though it cannot give details. But because gestures
are so short and simple, they are often extremely vivid. Pictures
on these pages illustrate some marvelously expressive gestures
that people use in different countries.
A gesture may begin by being one thing and end up as
something different. The handshake began as a gesture of peace:
"See, I have no weapon in my hand; I invite you, also without a.
weapon, to take hold of it." Since most people are right-handed,
to disarm the right hand proclaimed friendliness. Nowadays no
one thinks of the handshake's origin. But though its meaning has
changed, its value as a signal has not diminished. Gestures vary
widely from one part of the world tb another—a-fact that,
forgotten, can lead to embarrassing situations. Take the
"thumbs-up" gesture. In ancient Rome this sign was used by
emperors at gladiatorial contests; it signaled to a victorious
gladiator that he was to spare a plucky loser ("thumbs down"
meant "kill him"). In America, this gesture has no meaning;
Britons use it as a sign of encouragement or of success; in parts
of India, however, the same gesture is so offensive that to make
it could actually cause a fight.
Gestures of respect range from the extreme of crawling on all
fours to the everyday raising of the hat. Sometimes such
gestures become abbreviated or stylized. In a military salute,
for instance, the hand is raised to the hat but does not remove it.
Bowing is a mark of submission because it reduces a person's
physical stature. By contrast, a person of power and authority
makes a visual sign of his superiority by raising himself above
other people— occupying a high throne, or a seat on a platform,
or a pulpit.
In modern life visual signals of command are confined to
situations where there is little chance of their being
misunderstood. Examples are: traffic control signals,
signals made to crane operators, and those made to airplane
pilots at airports or on the flight decks of aircraft carriers.
In all forms of visual communication (as in longdistance
signaling, p. 210), the sender and the receiver must use the same
code if confusion is to be. avoided. This is especially true of
deaf-and-dumb people, who, if a gesture gives a misleading
impression, cannot correct that impression by speaking. Such
people make full use of visual communication; they have
developed a complete code of manual gestures, some of which
represent letters of the alphabet, while others stand for whole
words and even phrases.
People in the West use gestures far less than do those in the
Orient. This is particularly noticeable in dance and drama,
which, in many Far Eastern countries arc highly complex, with
hundreds of formal gestures of both hand and body (p. 172).
Most such gestures are like a foreign language to the
uninformed Westerner. Much oriental dance and drama has a
religious background, with the result that the gestures of the
performers are "charged" both with information and with an
emotional power that is communicated to the audience. Of
course the spectators have seen this kind of drama since
childhood, and the brain of each one of them is already stocked
with memory patterns and associations that are called up by the
stage performance.
Compared with Eastern practice, the use of religious
gestures in the West is extremely limited. Even so, gestures
play an important part as a reinforcement to prayer. The act of
crossing oneself, for instance, is a gesture directed toward God,
and may be part of a request for a blessing or for help in a
particular situation. Very often the gesture can serve as an
abbreviation of, or even a substitute for, a spoken prayer. In
Malta, for example, when a bus moves off from a stop, its
passengers cross themselves without interrupting their
conversation. They are, in effect, praying for a safe journey.
To sum up, then, all gestures have this in common: They
express economically and often vividly what would usually
take longer to put into words. We shall see in this chapter that
many other visual signs and symbols also condense
information into an extremely compact form.
Identity and status

One distinguishing feature of a complex society like ours is that

we subdivide our activities. All the jobs that a man in a simple
society would expect to do for himself—housebuilding, making
household goods, judging disputes, etc. —are done by different
people, most of whom are strangers to one another. In our kind
of society, therefore, it is often more impoitant to knn»v' what a
person does than who he is. Who a person is we call his identity;
what he does determines his status.
There are three visual clues to a person's identity. The first is
his fingerprint, which is unique and does not change throughout
his life. No two people in the world have the same arrangement
of lines on their fingertips— a fact that, since its discovery
about 75 years ago, has helped to identify and arrest countless
criminals as surely as if each had left a letter for the police with
his name and address on it. The second clue is a person's
signature. Again, no two signatures are alike. And though
signatures are sometimes forged, the forger has to be very adept
to get away with it. The third visual clue to identity is facial
appearance. Here, too, apart from some identical twins, no two
people have quite the same features and expressions. These
three clues throw an interesting light on the uniqueness of each
person in a world population that has now topped three
thousand million.
Throughout history men have used visual symbols that
indicate their status. Coats of arms are such symbols. In the
Middle Ages noble families used such devices to proclaim their
identity and their prestige (which they measured in terms of
their ancestral connections). In an age when even the nobility
were mostly illiterate, heraldry was an important form of visual
communication. Without using any words it was possible to
display on a single coat of arms a person's identity, rank, and
ancestry. With the growth of literacy on the one hand and a
leveling out of class distinctions on the other, heraldry ceased to
be important among individuals. But states and cities still
display coats of arms and symbolize their identity with flags.
This type of visual message is, in some respects, similar to early
forms of writing such as pictography and ideography (p. 110).
In modern society there is still an enormous variety of ways
in which a person can proclaim his status to anyone who knows
the code. Take, for instance, the way he dresses. Sometimes, of
course, the way that a man dresses is directly concerned with his
job. Sometimes clothing is suited to needs that are long past. For
example, Anglican bishops in Britain wear gaiters and an apron.
Nowadays such clothing simply distinguishes them from lower
ranks of the Church. In times past, however, this was a
practical way to dress. A bishop's main duty was to supervise the
clergy in his diocese. This involved a great deal of
horseback-riding, for which gaiters were more suitable than
trousers. The apron, a shortened version of the priest's cassock,
was also convenient on horseback. When society contained
more obvious class distinctions than it does now, richness of
dress served to distinguish an aristocrat from a laborer. Some
features of aristocratic dress have been retained to add dignity
to, for example, judges in Britain, whose wigs and robes set
them apart from their fellow men and symbolize their role as
interpreters of the law.
But even in the most egalitarian of modern societies there is a
tendency for people to draw attention to their success and
wealth by buying and displaying to their neighbors something
that is exceptionally expensive (and preferably not really
necessary). Appropriately enough, we call such purchases
"status symbols" and wc recognize that their owners are trying
to win our admiration.
Other kinds of symbols play a large part in the smooth
running of military organizations, in which every man has a
rank that carries duties toward those above and below him. The
emblems on a soldier's sleeve or shoulder convey a great deal of
condensed information. His rank is only part of that
information. A soldier's emblems express (or at least imply) a
mass of background information about his years of service,
good conduct, reliability, and special abilities or qualifications.
Here is the informative symbol at its best—as a conveyor of
terse and precise information that can be taken in at a glance.
Symbols of belief

So far we have looked mainly at symbols that merely convey

information. But there is another class of symbols that both
carry information and also stand for a body of thought or belief
that is not easily expressed in any other way. Just as a simple
word can in the course of time gather around it a mass of
associations and a variety of meanings that are not easily
explained by using other words, so, too, a symbol can stand for
much more than its basic meaning in the original code. In other
words, symbols can become "charged" with meaning and with
the power to evoke emotions.
We compare everything we see, usually unconsciously, with
what is already stored in the memory centers of the brain (p.
83). This comparison can recall to mind everything that has
been associated with an image in the past. A symbol can thus
become impressive because it reminds the viewer of a complex
of thoughts and emotions without the need to go into details.
Such a symbol goes much further than a purely informative
emblem, such as the stripes on a sergeant's arm; and, curiously
enough, mankind seems unable to do without them.
Among the most important of such symbols are symbols of
belief. In Christian countries the major symbol of belief is the
cross. To early Christians it was a reminder of Jesus's
execution; it carried the same grim overtones as a symbol of the
gallows, garrote, or guillotine would carry today. If, after nearly
2000 years, the cross still served merely to remind us of a brutal
and lingering death, its meaning would be extremely limited. In
fact, the cross symbol has come to stand for all aspects of
Christianity. It stands not only for the historical parts of the
Christian story but also for the Christian message, including its
moral code and its promise of immortality.
As a constant reminder of all these things, the symbol of the
cross appears as a solid object on church altars, walls, and
spires, as an imprint on Bibles, prayer books.
priestly vestments, and even in the ground plans of many
church buildings (where the nave and choir form the upright,
crossed by the "arms" of the transepts). Historically the shape
of the cross has varied at different times and places. There was,
for instance, the eight-pointed Maltese cross of the crusading
Order of St. John (founded about 1070). But none of these
variations has such widespread authority as the familiar simple
cross.
Early Christians used many other symbols of their faith that
have become less common. There was, for instance, the symbol
of the fish, derived from the initial letters of the Greek
description of Christ. Then there was the monogram based, on
the first two letters of Christos in Greek (see illustrations
opposite).
The triumph of the simple cross over these more complex
symbols points to something that is fundamental in constructing
a symbol: To be acceptable and enduring it must be simple and
easily recognized. For example, the Fascist parties that came to
power in Italy and Germany between the world wars had as
their symbols the fasces and the swastika, respectively. The
fasces -a complex emblem- has disappeared; the swastika,
because of its simplicity and geometrical form, is still a
universal symbol of Fascist ideology. Similarly, the original
Communist emblem of the hammer and sickle, symbolizing the
triumph of the manual worker, is beginning to look dated in a
mechanical and automated age; and the simple, brightly
colored, geometrical pattern of the red star is taking its place.
Thus even symbols of great antiquity can survive almost any
social change, provided that they gain new meanings to fit new
circumstances. And the simpler the symbol --like the cross, the
star, and the swastika- the easier it is for new meanings to
become attached to it. Complex symbols—-like the fasces and
the hammer and sickle - are less adaptable, and so less likely to
survive.