01: Speaking a single language won’t bring about world peace
Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics
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The Importance of Hand Shapes in Emoji
There's a limit to how much meaning can be obvious. A lot of what we presume s universal about gesture is partly based on this iconicity. In the way a smily moji resembles the way your lips curl up when you're happy. This kind of visuality of it makes people think, well, i can understand it, so it must be universal. But more and more we look at the way different cultures gesture - even something as simple as pointing. We for a long time thought that index finger pointing was the default, universal way to point. And in fact, we now know cultures point with their lips. Even an english pointing with your middle finger can sometimes loid.
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