Brief Reading #4 - Hand Movements

Hand movements and gestures communicate a lot of messages every day. The article referened that hand movements have three components to it: emblems, illustrators, and adaptors, all of which have meaning to the receiver. This article discussed how the intentions of the sender effects the message to the receiver.

Emblems, for example, are intentional hand gestures that are to convey a message, such as using your pointer finger to signal to "come here" or to quiet someone down when they are loud by holding it up to the lips. Classroom teachers, as well, rely on these emblems to maintain classroom management with their students. Raising of hands also conveys emblem hand movements, signalling attention to the student.

Illustrators, simililar to emblems, requires a conversation between a sender and receiver, but only the intentional message is given by the sender. To conceptualize this concept better, I thought of how a director will use hand signals to the actors to prompt them to do something different, but not require the actors to hand signal or respond back. A perfect example is from Charlie Brown's Christmas where Charlie Brown becomes the director of the Christmas show and discusses how he will use his hands to signal how things are going to the actors. Unfortunately, no one listens to him.

I find that the last one discussed, adaptor hand movements, to be a fascinating concept. Since this one focuses on the private life of an individual and the usage of hands to make me question if I use my hands differently in my private life. My curiousity leads me to think of while I am sleeping, what different movements, twitches, or spasams do I have and how does that effect my hand movement. Or what about unintentional sleep walking or "moving locations" while asleep but not realizing how you got their when you wake up. An example of adaptors, to me, would seem to be an example of nervous gestures or bad habits like biting nails, swinging legs while sitting, or scratching.

#CharlieBrown #Emblems #Illustrators #Adaptors