Abstract

Body language is so intrinsic to human communication that it has been often regarded as its most spontaneous and natural component. However, numerous cross-cultural studies have shown that there is no universal language of the body, thus claiming that it should be treated as “an area where culture governsµ (Archer, 1997). Major differences among world’s populations have been registered in gestures, and especially in those identified as “emblemsµ, for which the association between forms and meanings is considered highly conventionalized (Kendon, 2004). In this paper, we focus on the gestures used to say “yesµ and “noµ. They constitute a noteworthy case of emblems since it is possible to find several cultural variations of their execution along with consistent similitudes, which have encouraged to hypothesize the existence of a common natural origin. In order to disentangle the quasi-universality of these gestures, we adopt an interdisciplinary approach that combines insights from anthropology, biology, and psychology. The aim is to pinpoint the conceptual and methodological tools best suited to understand and explain the intricate relationship between nature and culture, in gestural as well as other human practices. We will first outline the acquisition of the “yesµ and “noµ head gestures by analysing the theories and evidence that trace back their origin in a natural instinctive, biomechanical constrained behaviour of accepting and refusing food in infancy (Darwin, 1872; Bross, 2020; Moretti, Greco, 2020). Starting from that, we will try to address the question of whether and to what extent an early behaviour of this type should be considered as innate or learned. Secondly, we will illustrate the studies showing how cultures of various areas of the globe have incorporated affirmation and negation in distinct body parts, by describing the gestural forms that are present and the ones that predominate (Cooperrider, 2019). Then, we will examine the biological structure and physical features of the motor acts involved in the different forms, with the intent to demonstrate how it is possible, and necessary for research, to go beyond the taken-for-granted cultural discrepancies. Furthermore, we will discuss the results of a questionnaire-based study conducted with a sample of young Bulgarians (Moretti et al., 2019), by reasoning on the westernization of their traditional “yesµ and “noµ gestures, the coexistence of the two (apparently) opposed gesture modalities, and the implicit nature of this acculturation. These data will be commented in light of a recently proposed model of cultural transmission as a complex adaptive biological system (Tamariz, 2019). Finally, implications of this new model, together with the embodied and enactive view of the interrelationship between brain, mind, body, and environment (Fuchs, 2020) will be considered to open up the possibility to break down the universalism-relativism dualism. To this end, we will propose to adopt an integrative perspective that is sensitive, both theoretically and methodologically, to the ecological and historical contextualization of a naturally cultural dynamical stream.