I find all this VERY intriguing. I’d be interested to hear what specific hand signals you use, to see if they match the ones I’ve traditionally used.
For completeness, here’s my set:
Raised hand—“I would like to ask a question / speak next-in-queue”
Raised fist with index finger pointing upwards—“I have a direct response to what you just said” (some people extend this by raising multiple fingers as they cache more points, and raising the hand higher as the urgency of a point gets promoted)
Raised fist with thumb pointing upwards—“I agree with this”
Hand out, palm forward/down, fingers pointed towards speaker—“please table this for now” / “please give someone else a turn” / “you are violating conversational norms”
Point at someone with both index fingers, alternating (this gesture is a bit hard to describe, it’s like if you were making guns with your hands and shooting at them, with a lot for recoil): ‘direct response’. You can usually tell how urgent they think the point is by how hard they’re moving their hands/how close they are to the edge of their seat, etc.
Triangle with index finger and thumb of both hands: ‘process point / meta-communication’
Twinkles (wiggling fingers of both hands): when unprompted, ‘I agree/like what you just said’, or it can be used to answer questions on a scale based on the position of the hands → high twinkles is positive/I agree/a lot, low twinkles is negative/disagree/a little, middle is ‘meh’
The wiki article on occupy movement hand signals has pictures and good descriptions of these signals, and others.
I didn’t realize these signals were used by Occupy until I looked for good pictures and stumbled on that article while writing my previous post.
The group I was referring to has no ties to Occupy. I’m not sure where we picked up the meme. The wiki article mentions other groups were using some of these signals before Occupy.
I find all this VERY intriguing. I’d be interested to hear what specific hand signals you use, to see if they match the ones I’ve traditionally used.
For completeness, here’s my set:
Raised hand—“I would like to ask a question / speak next-in-queue”
Raised fist with index finger pointing upwards—“I have a direct response to what you just said” (some people extend this by raising multiple fingers as they cache more points, and raising the hand higher as the urgency of a point gets promoted)
Raised fist with thumb pointing upwards—“I agree with this”
Hand out, palm forward/down, fingers pointed towards speaker—“please table this for now” / “please give someone else a turn” / “you are violating conversational norms”
Raised hand: ‘want to talk’
Point at someone with both index fingers, alternating (this gesture is a bit hard to describe, it’s like if you were making guns with your hands and shooting at them, with a lot for recoil): ‘direct response’. You can usually tell how urgent they think the point is by how hard they’re moving their hands/how close they are to the edge of their seat, etc.
Triangle with index finger and thumb of both hands: ‘process point / meta-communication’
Twinkles (wiggling fingers of both hands): when unprompted, ‘I agree/like what you just said’, or it can be used to answer questions on a scale based on the position of the hands → high twinkles is positive/I agree/a lot, low twinkles is negative/disagree/a little, middle is ‘meh’
The wiki article on occupy movement hand signals has pictures and good descriptions of these signals, and others.
Oh, you’re using the Occupy system! (I started to recognize it as I read through.)
Out of curiosity, how many groups have adopted that system post-Occupy, vs. how many Occupy-descended groups have inherited it?
EDIT: Is mentioning Occupy bad around here?
I didn’t realize these signals were used by Occupy until I looked for good pictures and stumbled on that article while writing my previous post.
The group I was referring to has no ties to Occupy. I’m not sure where we picked up the meme. The wiki article mentions other groups were using some of these signals before Occupy.