In Italian, speaking with the hands is called “gesticolare”, from “gesticulate”. At university, Lilia Angela Cavallo met many foreign students, including a Brazilian with whom she began to photograph these gestures. Ten years later, she identified a few hundred specific to this Italian language: “329! It’s a number that I really like because it’s not round, it’s not finished. There could be many more… Just list them! Everyone knows that we’re talking with the hands but, as long as we do not see them black on white, printed, we do not realize that it is also present in our life.”
In 1958, Bruno Munari described only 25 Italian gestures in a book called Supplemento al dizionario italiano (Italian Dictionary Supplement). More than 50 years later, Lilia Angela Cavallo in turn publishes Senza apri bocca. Il dizionario dei gesti (Without opening your mouth. The dictionary of gestures).
Nico is 16 years old, comes from Viterbo, north of Rome, and he totally recognizes himself in these gestures. “It’s so natural for us to speak with our hands. In Italy there isn’t a person who doesn’t speak with their handsassures the young man. This is also how you recognize yourself abroad. It’s like our trademark.” Andrea, 18, tries to describe the most common gestures “The ‘hello mama mia’ is typically Italian. It means: ‘What are you doing!?’ You have to close your fist, fingers up and you swing your hand.”
Where does this ability to express oneself in this way come from? “I don’t know if it’s a temperament, an attempt to make oneself understood better, a desire to speed up communication or to be fasterthinks Lilia Angela Cavallo. It may also be a way of communicating something different from what is said by speaking.”
“In fact, it is the body that wants to express more or less consciously what is not said in a conversation!”
Lilia Angela Cavallo, author of “Without opening your mouth. The dictionary of gestures”at franceinfo
Talking with the hands is also a way of communicating without being understood by some, which can be useful when, like Italy, we have been so invaded in the past.