Developing intercultural communicative skills

The British fist shuffling gesture
This is an insulting gesture produced by making a hollow tube shape out of your hand by making a circle between your thumb and first two fingers and also curling the other two fingers in the same way, then moving the hand up and down. This is a fairly direct gestural translation of the British insult “wanker”. The literal translation of “wanker” is “masturbator”, hence the pretty graphic gesture, but as an insult both the word and gesture mean someone who is acting without thinking about other people, e.g. by cutting up someone in your car or by feigning an injury on the football pitch in order to get an unfair penalty. The word and gesture are generally understood in the USA, but they are rarely used and Americans may underestimate how offensive it is in the UK, being, for instance, rarely used in broadcast programmes.
British and American handshakes
American handshakes tend to be longer and firmer than British ones. This is especially true in business, where a strong and/ or long handshake can show that someone is a dynamic go-getter, a property that is still more highly prized in the US than in the UK. Americans are also much more likely to grab the other person’s forearm, elbow or shoulder with the other hand when shaking hands, something that in the UK can seem insincere and over the top unless the person who you are doing it to is a long-lost friend and/ or has just saved your life. Having said all that, by international standards both British and American handshakes are in the mid-range between the softest/ shortest and hardest/ longest, and a handshake accompanied by a kiss or bear hug is very rare in both the UK and USA.


Handout 4


British and American eye contact
Both British and American eye contact is more often and longer than many Asian countries such as Japan. However, it is shorter and less often than in countries such as Italy. Within that range, Americans eye contact tends to be longer and more often than it is in the UK, particularly when trying to “make friends and influence people”, sometimes to a level that can seem off-putting, insincere or even aggressive to British people.