Lawrence,
Modern French has most of the meanings of gesture that we have in English --
for example, a gesture of friendship can translate as "un geste d'amitié".
To emphasise that a gesture is a token, an empty gesture, they can say, "un
geste qui ne signifie rien."
One way to find a use of gesture which does not have the modern meaning is,
of course, to go back to the medieval Latin, the source of the modern Romance
word, where it meant the way you hold your body, your overall demeanour.
Rabelais, for example, who was expert in (and critical of) medieval Latin
coinages, tends to use "signe" in Pantagruel to describe the meaningful,
occult gestures exchanged between Thaumaste and Panurge in a debating
competition. In Book III, chapter 19, he does use "geste" and "signe", but
mostly the latter, to describe how Panurge tried to get an oracular answer
about his marriage question from the gestures of someone who did not speak.
There is an ancient question going back at least to the classical Greeks
about whether gestures used as signs are closer to a universal language than
the conventions of human language, and this lies at the basis of Panurge's
request for an oracle here. However, Desmond Morris used to say that to sign
agreement by nodding the head took one direction in Sicily and the opposite
direction in northern Italy, if I remember correctly. In classical
philosophy, the question of gesture was linked with an inquiry into the
sounds made by animals and whether those, too, are more universal than human
language: does a dog in Germany bark in the same way as a dog in Japan, etc.
This theme was treated by Aristotle and was taken up by his medieval
commentators. (But what of birds like the marsh warbler, which can mimic
the calls of some 70 other species, or other birds which use one call to
recognise a bird from an area far outside its territory and another, more
aggressive call to recognise a bird from a closer, more threatening area?)
No doubt you didn't need to know all this. But try the long Oxford Eng Dict
for a start.
Doug
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