Hands occupied: Chinese farmers use more non-manual pointing than herders

We examined pointing preferences by administering a referential communication task in two types of communities which share a national identity, geographic environment, ethnicity, cultural background, and language and yet vary in their degree of hand availability: farming and herding communities in southwestern China. Our findings show that farmers, who emphasize the use of manual labour in intensive subsistence farming, were more likely to use non-manual pointing in the task than herders, who demonstrate a higher degree of manual availability in the rearing of animals. This research has implications for how the availability of the hands in economic activities may have lasting consequences on cultural pointing practices.
Source: Lingua - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research