How do we use our hands in communication?

This is a guest post by Alice Faux-Nightingale. Alice studied Biology and Psychology at Keele, and she is the youngest member of our team!

Conversation is more than just speech; conversation is an interactive dialogue which uses the whole body to communicate information from one person to another. This includes not only the vocal aspects but also non-verbal (or paralinguistic) features including facial manipulation, body language, and hand gestures.

Hand gestures (the movement of hands and/or arms which are clearly intended to convey meaning or accompany speech) occur in sync with speech and act as a secondary language alongside verbal conversation, visually supporting what is being said. The connection between the two, however, is more than just timing: speech and hand gestures are produced by the same part of the brain, develop at similar points during human development, and are intertwined in human interaction — 75% of discourse is accompanied by a hand gesture of some sorts and most hand gestures tend to only occur during speech. The links between the two are so integral (even people who are blind will display hand gestures) that they emphasise just how important hand gestures are in helping us communicate amongst ourselves.

Hand gestures play a number of roles in conversation. The most notable use is communication, where they can be used to pass messages over long distances or relay extra information within the discussion. The movements often visually describe the subject matter, with sweeping movements made to sketch the outline of a feature, represent an emotion, or are actions which carry a specific meaning e.g. waving or a thumbs up/down. Varied size and velocity of gestures can emphasise a particular point or signal that it is unimportant, while repetitive strokes or beats can be used to coordinate the pace of delivery — actions which are often seen carried out by teachers or lecturers during long speeches.

One particularly interesting use of hand gestures is their use in language repair or recovery. Many individuals will increase hand movements when they can’t quite remember the word or phrase they are thinking about and are trying to retrieve it (known as a “tip of the tongue moment”) and studies have suggested that this can actually help when trying to recover missing words — if you are interested, look up the paper written by Rauscher, Krauss & Chen in 1996 which looked at the ability of participants to recall the events of a TV show with or without gestures.

Gestures are an integral part of communication which emphasise the acoustic aspects of speech and include the whole body in the transmission of thoughts. The strong links between speech and hand gestures is something that we utilise constantly in communication and any slight incongruities are often subconsciously picked up on and used as a way of identifying the integrity of a speaker (Carol Kinsey Goman has written an interesting blog post on what hand gestures say about political leaders).

Hand movements are not just random actions that people make while they talk, they are a necessary complementary mode of communication which provide a second layer to language.