3 ms·

I'm italian and I really think we don't use gesture more than other nationalities... truth is there is fascination about this, and americans in particular love

• redwood 13y ago
  Well compared to the British, for example, it's hard to deny an average difference, at least in hand gestures, specifically.
• adestefan 13y ago
  I come from a very large Italian American family (3 of my 4 grandparents were immigrants, I have cousins that spent significant time in Italy, etc.) and one of the first things my now wife noticed the first time we around a large family gathering (it just happened to be Easter dinner which is another story) was that everyone talked with their hands. She asked me if they always did that, but I had no idea what she was talking about until she pointed it out.
• toyg 13y ago
  It's not just about over-use, it's about codes: us Italians have a wide range of very well-defined nonverbal codes, which is why "others" notice them. Brits, for example, might be gesticulating wildly in some situations, but their hand-waving will be very generic (open-hand, numbers and little else). I personally put it down to the historical problem of Italians not having an official language until late XIX-century, while being a melting pot of people coming and going from/to the whole of Europe/Africa/Asia for thousands of years. Nonverbal codes were clearly essential, it's not a surprise they're still around.