Gestures are a subtle and vital form of communication

“TIE an Italian’s hands behind his back,” runs an old joke, “and he’ll be speechless.” The gag rests on a national stereotype: Italians are voluble and emotional, and all that arm-waggling supposedly goes to prove it.

Professor Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago has a rather different view. Emotions come out in lots of ways – facial expressions, posture, tone of voice and so on. But people are doing something different when they use gestures with speech, which she sums up in the title of her new book, Thinking With Your Hands. It is a masterly tour through a lifetime’s research.

Virtually everyone gestures, not just Italians. Experimental subjects, told after a research session that they were being watched for gestures, apologise for not having made any – but were doing so the entire time. Conference interpreters gesture in their little booths, though no one is looking. People born blind gesture when they speak, including to each other.