Folklore Form/Genre: French gesture                                Informant: Cristoforo Coppola

Name: Raising your index finger below your eye and pulling slightly to say “you’re lying”

Place of Discovery: Hanover, NH

Informant Data: Cris was born and raised in Italy but attended a boarding school in Switzerland with students from all over Europe. Cris is a Government major senior at Dartmouth College.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural context: French gestures tend to be fairly expressive in nature.
• Social context: French individuals will use this hand gesture to say they are done with a conversation.

Item: The item presented here is a picture of Cris demonstrating the French gesture. I talked to Cris about the gesture as well as snapped a photo of her executing it. All of the information provided in this write-up is an accurate depiction of the knowledge I obtained while speaking with Cris.

Transcript: Cris was at school with his buddies during a break between classes. Cris and one of his French friends were having some banter with each other, and Cris seemed to have gotten on his friend’s nerves. He threw his hands up like in the gesture above, told Cris he was done with him, and walked away.

Informant’s Comments: This gesture is meant to exclaim that the words coming out of someone’s mouth are egregious or appalling. It is meant to show that they are displeased with that the other person is saying and they don’t want the conversation to continue.

Collector’s Comments: It is an interesting gesture because there is no immediate similar one in the U.S. that comes to mind, except for perhaps a facial expression that indicated discontent. It is also interesting because I would have had no idea what the gesture meant if it hadn’t been explained to me. I most likely would have thought it was symbolizing someone with a beard.

Collector’s Name:

Carson Spahr

HB 4105 Dartmouth College

Hanover, NH 03755

Dartmouth College

Tags/Keywords:

• Gestures
• France
• Insulting
• Hand
• Throat