Why Italians speak with gestures

Put me on a terrace in any Italian city and I can watch Italians talking all day. They don't do this in a hushed tone like we do, no, in Italy people talk grandly, with many gestures and facial expressions. As if everything they say is more important, needs to make a bigger impression, and is especially full of emotion. I find it delightful, unlike our neutral chatter. I see it all wrong, says communication and cognition researcher David Peeters to Quest. Italians don't use more gestures than we do, they are simply more noticeable.

In the Netherlands, we at most give a thumbs up as a substitute gesture for a word. We all know the shh gesture and a few occasionally use a cutting gesture along the throat, but that is quite intense to throw in on a daily basis. Not so with the Italians, they actually have hand gestures that replace words. A sign for perfect, a sign for ‘what are you saying or doing for heaven's sake’, a sign for ‘I don’t care’. All clear hand gestures for people who understand it. I even understood the middle one without explanation when we had to turn around on an Italian winding road and were blocked by about four Italians. They also understood my friend who got out of the car cursing (in Dutch) with hand gestures; in that respect, something like that suddenly becomes very universal.

Back to those Italians, who actually don't use that many more gestures than we do. Peeters explains that they mainly make the gestures bigger, they take up space to express it, while we in the Netherlands keep gestures smaller. You see the gestures of Italians better, which makes you think they talk much more with their hands. What is also funny: Italians apparently find it incredibly annoying when we imitate those gestures. So there is some copyright on the grand gestures.

Finally: why do we actually use those gestures? Your words have more impact when you support them with a hand gesture. It seems to work when you make a knotty (a word you don't hear often) hand gesture with a word you want someone to remember. Politicians here would eagerly make use of this. I should pay extra attention during the next press conference. There's a good chance Rutte will do something knotty when he says we need to stay home.

Source: Quest