Pointing left in Ghana

Abstract

In Ghana, many peolple consider pointing by the left hand to be a taboo. We investigated consequences of this taboo on the Ghanaian gestural practice by observing gestures produced during naturalistic situations of giving route directions. First, there is a politeness convention to place the left hand on the lower back, as if to hide it from the interlocutor. Second, as a consequence of left-hand suppression, right-handed pointing may involve an anatomically staining position when indicating a leftward direction across the body. Third, pointing is sometimes performed with both hands together, which does not violate the taboo. Despite the taboo, left-handed pointing is not suppressed fully. Left-handed pointing gestures occur in association with the verbalization of the concept LEFT, suggesting the embodied nature of the concept. In addition, it is noteworthy that there is a class of left-handed gestures, which are so reduced in form that Ghanaians do not consider them as pointing for the purpose of the taboo.

With the Future Behind Them: Convergent Evidence From Aymara Language and Gesture in the Crosslinguistic Comparison of Spatial Construals of Time

“…Universality: Speech-accompanying gesture is a cross-cultural universal (Iverson & Thelen, 1999;Kita & Essegbey, 2001;McNeill, 1992;Núñez & Sweetser, 2001). 2.…”

Cross-cultural variation of speech-accompanying gesture: A review

“…Furthermore, a majority of the people in Ghana (about 60% of the participants interviewed in Kita and Essegbey, 2001) consider pointing gesture with the left hand to be rude and disrespectful towards the addressee. It was investigated how this gesture taboo influenced the use of gestures in naturalistic route descriptions elicited on the street of a southern Ghanaian town.…”

“…Such gestures were inconspicuous due to the size and location, and more importantly, were not considered to be a gesture by Ghanaians for the purpose of the taboo. Because such gestures were often not visible to the addressee, and they tended to appear immediately before or with the description of a left-turn, Kita and Essegbey (2001) suggested that such left-hand gestures may be triggered by cognitive needs to facilitate the speech production when verbally expressing the concept "left" (see, e.g., Kita, 2000;Krauss, Chen, & Gottesman, 2000 for further discussions of self-oriented functions of gesture).…”

Embodiment of abstract concepts: Good and bad in right- and left-handers.

“…The words for right in French (droite) and in German (Recht) are closely related to the words meaning "a 'right' or privilege accorded by the law," whereas the words for left in French (gauche) and German (Links) are related to words meaning "distasteful" or "clumsy." Such idioms are evident in nonlinguistic conventions in some cultures, such as Ghanaian society, where pointing and gesturing with one's left hand is prohibited (Kita & Essegbey, 2001). According to Islamic doctrine, the left hand should be used for dirty jobs, whereas the right hand is used for eating.…”