The Nonverbal Language of Hands

While hands are obviously a permanent fixture on almost all people’s bodies, and while they move when we are both awake and asleep, the important role they play in how we communicate, learn and engage with the world around us is often undervalued. This chapter examines the important role our hands play as we touch, move and interact with our immediate environments. The chapter initially considers the influence of evolution on the contemporary operations and functions of our hands. Many people don’t realise that human beings’ use of their hands to send nonverbal messages is rooted in incredibly ancient neurocircuits of the posterior hindbrain and anterior spinal cord! The chapter then moves to consider how hand usage develops as the human grows from foetus to adulthood. For example, by the time infants reach one year of age, they can grasp objects between the tactile pads of thumb and index fingers, in a mature, distinctively human precision grip—quite a remarkable achievement. With a sense of the developmental and evolutionary backdrop to how our hands have developed, the chapter proceeds to consider how we use our hands. We set this against the backdrop of hand usage by orators, and then we outline the typical types of gesture. This brings us to a consideration of the value of gesture and hand usage for human cognition. We examine embodied cognition and the value of hand usage to assist memory and conversation. In this regard, gestures, the interplay of language and hand-usage, culture, history, touch and human learning are discussed. For example, as we know, touch is one of the earliest forms of stimulation the human experiences, beginning in the womb. It has significant value in terms of infant well-being and adult relationships. This brings us to a consideration of the common human usages of hands and the possible messages, which such usage telegraphs. In a post-covid era, we begin with handshakes and then move to discuss a wide range of hand ‘movements’ such as clapping, handedness (are you right or left handed?), deceptive hand behaviour, clapping, ‘hands-on-hips’, ‘hand-behind-head movements’ and the use of hand signals. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the ‘narrative’ about hands to date, setting out their value for the human across all cultures.