Thursday, January 04, 2007

"Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?"

My students and I just started reading Romeo and Juliet. In the first scene of the first act, a servant of Capulet insults a servant of Montague by biting his thumb at him. I explain to my students that biting one's thumb at another person is just as insulting as flipping someone your middle finger. To further explain this concept, I share some hand gestures and their different cultural interpretations from around the world. For example, I tell them that a thumbs up (an American sign meaning "A-OK" or "good job") means "up yours" in some areas of South America. Now whenver they feel frustrated, my students bite their thumbs at one another and give each other the thumbs up. Ain't Shakespeare fun?

15 Comments:

Blogger AST said...

Just found this post Googling "biting one's thumb." I was trying to find where the gesture originated and specifically what it signifies.

Your students' reaction just shows how far I am away from today's society which has become crude, coarse and boorish. I don't know why exactly, but I think feminism had a lot to do with it. Men used to be restrained in the company of women, but now the women are often the one using the foul language, as if to show that they are equal to men or "one of the boys." Men, in turn, become more gross and rude, particularly in ways that offend feminists, which seemed to be the point of the old "The Man Show" on Comedy Central.

I don't think it's a healthy trend, but I'm feeling a lot like like a geezer these days, so what I think is probably irrelevant. It won't be long before using the so called F bomb will be made acceptable on broadcast media the way "screw" has.

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