Gesture and Environment
by David Efron
First published 1941
David Efron’s tentative study of some of the spatio-temporal
and linguistic aspects of the gestural behaviour of Eastern Jews and Southern
Italians in New York City, living under similar as well as different environmental
conditions. Efron was a pioneer in the study of gestures, studying the
behaviour of groups of individuals, and of their descendants, in markedly
different environments. He analysed everyday social behaviour using film
recordings and a gesture coding system. A student of Franz Boas he conducted
his gesture study to examine differences in the gestural repertoire of
different neighbouring immigrant communities demonstrating the cultural basis
of gestural style and challenging Nazi claims that gestural style was racially
inherited. Efron grew up in an orthodox Jewish home and adopted “tense, jerky,
and confined” gestures, but, when he spoke Spanish, he gestured with “the
effervescence and fluidity of those of a good many Argentinians.” He coined the term 'emblem' for movements
that have a precise meaning known by all members of an ethnic group,
sub-culture, or culture.