General Information about Item

• Gesture
• Genre: Insulting American Children’s Gesture
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Alejandro Cuan-Martinez
• Date Collected: October 28, 2018

Informant Data

Alejandro is a ’20 that attends Dartmouth College. He is from Los Angelas, California where he grew up for most of his childhood. He is of Chinese-Mexican decent and has an older brother. In high school he was on the swim team. He is interested in studio arts and is a member of the Alpha Theta gender-inclusive greek house.

Contextual Data

Social Context – I collected this folklore from Alejandro in Alpha Theta’s library. I recorded our conversation on an iPhone and asked him to tell me about insulting gestures he may remember from childhood. It was humorous the wide array of gestures he recalled from childhood that he would use to insult his friends in primary school. Many of the gestures were subtle variations of the middle finger, used in a manner to get away with giving someone the bird without actually doing the gesture but fully implying it with a similar one. Most of the gestures he showed me were ones targeted towards a specific person with the intention of being seen and received, with the ability to be quickly concealed if an adult was to look. 

Cultural Context – Alejandro learned flipping someone off with his pinky in middle school. He said he learned it before learning to flip someone off with his ring finger. He caught on from his friends when they would do it to each other.

Item

“Basically, I was told that in other cultures that if you make your hand into a fist and raise your pinky, that’s another way of flipping someone off and insulting them.”

Associated Image

Informant’s Comments

Alejandro mentioned that it was like the first tier of flipping someone off and was a gradual increase of how far you would go to give someone the bird.

Collector’s Comments

This reminds me of when children would try to “be fancy” when I was little, as they would raise their pinky. It’s quite interesting how in one context, it can be a civil thing to do to try to express elegance, whereas in another it can be inappropriate and provocative.

Collector’s Name: Cherie-Noelle Kaanana

Tags/Keywords

• Gestures
• American Children
• Insults