Italians really talk with their hands: scientists compared the gestural features of European countries

Hand actions are most often used as a comment

Portraying Italians using colorful hand gestures seems to have become a habit all over the world. Italian heroes are also portrayed in cult films. From a scientific point of view, this did not arise out of nowhere. Swedish scientists have deeply studied this feature.

You can’t just ignore how actively Italians use their hands when talking. Scientists from Lund University studied the gestures of people from Italy and Sweden during a conversation. They found that Italians use more than 40 hand gestures per minute when speaking – twice as many as the average Swede.

While other cultures use gestures to illustrate parts of a story, Italians use them as a kind of commentary on what they are saying.

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden asked 12 Italians and 12 Swedes to retell the contents of a 90-second video to a friend who had not seen it. It was found that Italians used 22 hand gestures per 100 words, compared to 11 gestures made by Swedes.

Previous studies have shown that Italians speak about 188 words per minute, which includes 41 gestures.

Dr. Maria Graziano states: “Italians gesticulate more than Swedes, which is expected. What’s even more interesting is that we demonstrated that people from different cultures use gestures differently because of different rhetorical styles and different ways of constructing a story.”

In addition to the frequency of gestures, the researchers examined why gestures were used during storytelling.

Dr. Graziano noted, “When we tell stories, we combine several types of information: introducing characters and events, describing actions, and explaining why they happened. We check if our listener understands what we are saying. And if we’re telling a story based on footage, we’re also talking about the viewing experience itself.”

The study found that Italians tend to use more pragmatic gestures—those that comment on the story and introduce new parts to the listener.

Meanwhile, Swedes tended to use more representational gestures, which mainly demonstrate the events and actions of the story.