16 - Gesture, culture and the communication economy

Summary

As we saw in Chapter 3, the idea that gesture could serve as a universal language was widely entertained in the seventeenth century. Both Bonifacio and Bulwer believed that it was a natural form of expression that could be understood universally and Bonifacio, explicitly, hoped that his book L'Arte dei Cenn might contribute to the re-establishment of gesture as a common mode of communication and thus return mankind to the state it was in before it strayed from its God-given existence, when communication was unimpeded by the difficulties created by different spoken languages. The idea that gesture could form the basis of a universal language continued during the eighteenth century. However, despite the efforts of Abbé de l'Epée, his pupil Sicard, and others, it was soon realized that a gesture language, like any other, would diversify with use and was not inherently superior as a basis for a universal language.

Nevertheless, the idea that gesture is a universal form of expression that does not need to be learned to be understood has remained a very persistent one. At the same time, it has also always been recognized that there are differences from one nation to the next, from one culture to the next or from one stratum of society to the next, in how gesture is used and differences in the specific gestures employed in different cultures has long been noted.