Emblems in action

See here a nice video on the YouTube featuring a lot of gestures (it is a group of Sicilians at the dinner table). Thanks to Kensy Cooperrider and his embodied talk weblog for digging up some video gems. A Sicilian Argument One of the things I like in this video is that you can see some emblems in action, such as the mano bursa (grip hand). It is made near the end of the video by the man in the blue shirt. Kendon (1995, 2004) wrote extensively on how gestures like the ones you see here can be used with a high degree of conventionality. The ring hand alone is used in a variety of conventional ways. It is not hard to imagine that indeed this group of people knows how to make their gestures count.