用手思考 | 经济学人文化

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Culture | Johnson

文化｜约翰逊专栏

英文部分选自经济学人20230610期科技板块

Culture | Johnson

文化｜约翰逊专栏

Gestures are a subtle and vital form of communication

手势是一门微妙且重要的交流方式

Susan Goldin-Meadow explains why and how in “Thinking With Your Hands”

苏珊·戈尔丁-梅多（Susan Goldin-Meadow）在《用手思考》一书中，解释了手势何以及怎样影响交际

“Tie an Italian’s hands behind his back,” runs an old joke, “and he’ll be speechless.” The gag rests on a national stereotype: Italians are voluble and emotional, and all that arm-waggling supposedly goes to prove it.

经典笑话永流传，“把一名意大利人的双手反绑，那么他就说不出话了。”该笑话源于对于该民族的刻板印象：意大利人总是滔滔不绝、慷慨激昂，说话时不停地手舞足蹈便是最好的证据。

Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago has a rather different view. Emotions come out in lots of ways: facial expressions, posture, tone of voice and so on. But people are doing something different when they use gestures with speech, which she sums up in the title of her new book, “Thinking With Your Hands”. It is a masterly tour through a lifetime’s research.

芝加哥大学的苏珊·戈尔丁-梅多（Susan Goldin-Meadow）对上述看法却截然不同。情绪能通过多种途径表达，如面部表情、姿势和语调等。然而，带着手势讲话时，人们表现则会不大一样。她新书《用手思考》的标题便总结到这一点。历经一生研究，戈尔丁-梅多在该书中为我们呈现了一段精美绝伦的旅程。

Virtually everyone gestures, not just Italians. Experimental subjects, told after a research session that they were being watched for gestures, apologise for not having made any—but were doing so the entire time. Conference interpreters gesture in their little booths, though no one is looking. People born blind gesture when they speak, including to each other. A woman born without arms but with “phantom limb syndrome” describes how she uses her phantom arms when she talks—but not when she walks. All this suggests that cognition is, to some extent, “embodied”; thinking is not all done in your head.

事实上，不仅仅是意大利人，我们每个人都在运用肢体语言。一个阶段的研究结束后，实验对象被告知工作人员一直在观察他们的肢体语言，所有实验对象都以为自己毫无肢体表达并为此感到抱歉，然而实际上这些实验对象在整个研究过程中都在使用肢体语言。即便身边没有观众，会议口译员在自己小小的同传箱里也会有肢体动作；即便天生失明，盲人与其他人（也包含盲人）沟通时，也会在讲话的时候打手势。一位天生没有双臂的女士却有着“幻肢综合征”，她表示自己讲话时会挥动自己的幻肢，而走路时却不会如此。综上所述，认知过程从某种程度上是“具象”的，思考的过程不完全在脑中完成。

注释：

幻肢：幻肢临床也称体象障碍，是对身体各个部位存在、空间位置和相互关系的认识，发生了障碍。

The gesture under discussion here is mostly the “co-speech” kind. It is much more abstract than mime (in which exaggerated acting tells a story). Nor are these “emblematic” gestures like a thumbs-up or a finger over the lips for “Silence!” Like words, those are fixed within cultures (but vary between them). Instead, gestures that accompany speech are a second channel of information. Subjects watch a film in which a cat runs but are told to lie and say it jumped. They do so in words—while their hands make a running motion. People who say they believe in sexual equality but gesture with their hands lower when talking about women are not indicating women’s shorter stature; they can be shown to have biases of which they may be unaware.

文中讨论的肢体表达通常指的是“语言表达的辅助行为”，它比默剧（默剧以夸张的表演讲述一个故事）更为抽象；它也不同于竖起大拇指或者食指置于唇前表示“安静！”这类“标志性”动作。这种标志性动作和语言一样，都和各地文化息息相关，却又各不相同。但语言表达的辅助肢体动作则不同，它是第二条信息沟通的渠道。实验对象会在观看了一段猫咪奔跑的影像后被要求撒谎，说是猫咪在蹦跳。他们言语这样描述，但他们的手却做出一个奔跑的动作；有些人嘴上说着他们坚信性别平等，但在他们谈及女性时手的位置会放低，这并不是在表达女性身材矮小，而是他们心中可能潜藏着自己都未曾察觉的性别偏见。

Gesture is also not sign language. Sign languages have clearly defined words and grammar, and differ from place to place just as spoken ones do. Professor Goldin-Meadow spends a lot of time on homesign—systems of signs typically developed by deaf children in hearing families who are not exposed to (and so never learn) a conventional sign language. Such children are essentially inventing rough but rich languages out of nothing, with features such as fixed word order and hierarchical grammatical structures much like those in fully fledged languages. Such homesign systems far outstrip their parents’ gestures; a parent’s raised finger meaning “Wait” may be adopted by a child to connote events in the future.

肢体语言和手语也不一样。手语有明文规定的单词和语法，而且和语言一样，各地手语的用法也各不相同。戈尔丁-梅多教授花了大量时间研究家庭手语系统。之所以会出现这种手语系统，是因为失聪儿童诞生于听力正常的家庭，因此儿童无法也从未学习过传统手语。这样的儿童大多会凭空创造出朴实而丰富的手语，他们的手语往往语序固定，结构层次分明，就像发展成熟的语言一样。这类家庭手语系统会远远超越他们父母的肢体表达能力。例如，父母抬起手指表示“等待”，而孩子未来会采用这一手势来暗指某些重要事件。

Returning to conventional gesture, the author keeps her focus on child development. Some students who fail at a tricky mathematics problem may gesture in a way that indicates they are on the verge of getting it; they should be taught differently from the ones whose gestures suggest that they are entirely at sea. Children who still use only one word at a time may combine a word and a gesture; this successfully predicts that two-word phrases (“Give ball”) are just around the corner. And those taught to move their hands about when discussing a moral quandary with several perspectives soon start to see the problem from different points of view.

回到传统手势上，作者主要关注的是儿童发展。被数学题难倒时，从手势就能看出有些学生和正确答案近在咫尺，而有些则毫无头绪，对这两种学生就应当因材施教。一次只能说出一个字的孩子可能会把某个字和手势结合起来，这暗示着他们很快就能够说出两个字（比如说“给球”）。那些被教导在从不同角度讨论道德困境时不停摆手的人，很快就能从其它角度思考问题了。

All this is rounded out in a final section offering practical advice. Teachers are encouraged both to use gestures themselves and to observe those their students make. Parents are taught to fill in the word a child is most likely to be missing when they gesture (“That’s a dog”) rather than adding information (“That’s a fluffy one”). Children with language delays caused by brain injuries at or around birth, but who nonetheless gesture as much as their peers, are likely to catch up verbally by the age of about 30 months. Those who gesture less are more likely to need intensive early intervention. Children with Down’s syndrome may express themselves better when taught to use a mix of gesture and speech rather than speech alone. Psychotherapists can be trained to look out for gestures hinting that patients are thinking something they are not yet ready to say.

书中最后一节提出了实际建议。鼓励老师自己用手势，同时观察学生的手势。该书还建议父母在孩子做手势时替他们说出很可能漏掉的那些词（“那是只狗”），而不是添加新信息（“它毛茸茸的”）。有些孩子在出生时或出生前后因大脑损伤导致语言发育迟缓，但如果他们用手势和同龄人一样多，语言能力有可能在30个月大时追赶上来。而使用手势较少的孩子就更可能需要加强早期干预。如果教患有唐氏综合征的儿童用手势配合语言（不仅仅靠语言本身），他们就能更好地表达自己。心理治疗师也可以通过训练，留意那些暗示患者难以启齿的手势。

In “The Crown”, Lady Diana is warned that her hands may betray her real emotions, which could be dangerous; they are tied together so she can learn to speak without gesticulating. No one who reads this book could ever again think that gesturing shows only a lack of control. It is about thinking and communication, and is a sophisticated aid to both.

在电视剧《王冠》中，有人警告戴安娜王妃，她的手会暴露她的真实情绪，这可能很危险。于是，她的双手被绑在一起，如此一来她可以学着说话时不打手势。读过《用手思考》后，没有人会继续认为手势仅仅是双手失控了。手势有关思考和交流，而且是二者的有力辅助。

zy，没啥新鲜的，想做一个好译员

琚儿，女，QE在职，梦想能仗翻译/音乐/健康走天涯

Lavender，MTI在读，不会做模特的追星女孩不是好的话剧爱好者

Lucian，灵魂在杰作中冒险

Very，男，电气民工，经济学人资浅爱好者

Anne，女，爱读书爱Borges的小翻译，热爱文艺，经济学人爱好者

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观点|评论|思考

本周感想

Alfredo，清纯男高体验卡仅剩几个月到期

说实话，我对手势这个主题其实没啥特别深刻的感想，所以就在评论里分享点有趣的冷知识啦！

①竖大拇指。在中国，竖大拇指往往表示称赞，而在美国和欧洲部分地区，它还能用来表示搭车。不过在其他一些国家，这个看似是在表达友好的手势却包含侮辱性的意思，比如尼日利亚、澳大利亚、希腊和意大利。在伊朗和伊拉克等中东国家，竖大拇指更是一个挑衅的行为，类似于竖中指。

②OK。在巴西、希腊、土耳其以及某些中东国家，做这个手势同样与竖中指无异。一个很搞笑的例子是，尼克松在上个世纪五十年代访问巴西，一边走下飞机，一边用双手比OK，并很热切地向人群挥舞双臂，当地人一片哗然。第二天，巴西所有媒体头条都是尼克松做这一手势的照片。

③比耶。在英国、澳大利亚和新西兰，比耶时掌心记得不要向内，因为这被认为是一种挑衅和侮辱。掌心向内比耶起源于英法百年战争，当时法国扬言要砍掉所有英国弓箭手的手指，结果最后英国大胜，因此比出这个手势来炫耀自己的手指完好。

④左手递东西。在很多国家，用左手递东西非常不礼貌，几乎可以看做是在讽刺或故意羞辱对方。原因是在当地，左手通常被认为是如厕后的清洁工具，所以印度人买东西只用右手递钱，对方找零也只用右手。送礼同上。

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