The Basic Middle Finger Gesture (Eitan Vilker)

Title: The Basic Middle Finger Gesture

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Daniel was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 2004. His father is an attorney for the state of Rhode Island, and his mother is a psychologist who operates a private practice. Daniel and his family are Jewish. He has lived in the small town of East Greenwich for most of his life. Daniel attends Cole Middle School. His family hails from both Western and Eastern Europe.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: Children sometimes want to communicate a message to someone in as rude and unpleasant a manner as possible, in order to show just how much disrespect they hold toward a person or something they believe.
Social Context: This hand gesture was brought up as a result of the interviewer asking what insulting gestures Daniel knew. He learned it from friends of his who go to school with him. Most insulting gestures children make are used in school settings, physical activities and games, casual conversations, and at home- in short, the situations in which children spend the majority of their time.

Item:

To use this gesture, one simply raises the middle finger of one or both hands while leaving all other fingers down, usually pointing straight up but sometimes right at a person. It is used to directly insult someone in as offensive a fashion as possible. Flipping the bird, as the gesture is also termed, can be used in a wide array of situations, though it always has the same meaning. Having a way to tell someone off as succinctly as possible is very useful to children.

Associated File:

Transcript:

“If I want to tell someone I’m really mad or that they suck, I lift up just my middle finger.”

Collector’s Comments:

This gesture can be used in many different social contexts, but it has a very unsubtle meaning, which is an interesting contradiction.

Collector’s Name: Eitan Vilker

Tags/Keywords:

Dartmouth Folklore Archive