Conversational guestures and how to use them to your advantage
The importance of guestures
You make use of guestures all the time to make something easier to understand for your conversation partners. Without guestures describing different images or scenarios can quickly become quite difficult. There are different types of guestures I will talk about and how they are usually used as also how you can make conscious use of them.
Drawing Guestures
These guestures focus on drawing an image for your conversation partner. The classical fisher measuring his oh-so-large catch, your friend drawing the shape of his recently crafted tone-figure or anything where you want to tell an image. I list them only because they are to be seperated from the others.
Pointing guestures
Pointing at yourself, your conversation partner or the 'other people' are regular guestures. For example: "Those guys from this political party are dumb" is probably acompanied by a guesture pounting away from the conversation onto the imaginary others. These guestures can easily be used consciously in order to manipulate others. To paraphrase an example from Chase Hughes 'Ellipsis Manual': imagine you enter a store and meet a worker there. You approach him and want to ask for assistance: "Hi, you (guesture towards him) seem to know what you're doing and notice opportunities (guesture towards yourself) to help customers. Can you help me find ... please?" A phrasing and guesturing of this manner will make them connect you with an opportunity and themselves as a good worker. This often makes it easier to receive the seeked assistance. Make sure you use the pointers and guestures on a half-conscious level.
Emphasizing guestures
A lot of times it's easy to convey the importance of a subject by raising your voice of putting verbal emphasis on the words. The same applies to your body language. Whenever you talk about something important you will support it by exaggerating your guestures and moving your arms accross a larger area. When you notice your conversational partners becoming moreintense in their movements, make sure to let them know you fully understand them and repeat one or two of their reasonings before you tell them other ideas. They will be too emotionally inclined to convey their message to listen to reasoning - assuming you got a (seemingly) better idea you want to discuss.
Supporting guestures
These guestures are supporting stylistic devices. For example enumerations. By counting off your fingers you make it easier to keep track of the amount of reasons. Quick hint inbetween: Whenever you list reasons for or against something list the worst ones at the beginning and the best ones at the end; else your conversation partners will often focus on only the last one or two reasons and neglect them in order to “win” the argument - although usually all reasons are to be taken seriously and neglected. Another stylistic device often accompanied by a supporting guesture is a contrast. Or literally the “on one hand... on the other hand...”. You use your hands to keep track of which side you are currently telling a reason for.
Conclusion
Guesturing is an important feature for each conversation and helps both parties a lot at keeping focused. Without guesturing it can quickly become diffucult to understand the speakers emotional connection towards his/her spoken words. If accompanied by a wise choice of words a conscious use of guestures can always make up for a strong manipulative tool. Most importantly do not think you should get rid of all guestures to become un-readable. This way you only show suppressed emotions and even make it easier for a behaviorist to read you. Rather make use of faked guestures to direct your listener(s) towards the lie. (Falsifying facts is stronger than omitting facts)
