The six-month-old baby that Mrs. Homie babysits has learned to clap her hands together, doubtless imitating her parents and siblings who taught it to her. It’s been a part of Western culture to applaud by clapping hands together for… centuries, I’m guessing?
Is there any culture that doesn’t manually express praise by clapping hands together? Is there any culture in which clapping one’s hands together indicates something other than praise?
Some people snap their fingers for applause instead of clapping.
And sometimes clapping is used to get people to pay attention rather than as applause.
Depends on what you mean by “culture”–some uber-woke think that clapping is too triggering and traumatic so they snap their fingers or do jazz hands.
I believe that “jazz hands” are also used to indicate applause withing the hearing disabled community.
I’ve never heard that reason given; always instead that to clap while the speaker is still speaking is disruptive but if there’s other ways of indicating agreement & approval that don’t create a sonic interruption the speaker can keep going.
Nope. You hold your hands at ear level, palms facing inward, and wiggle them on their vertical axis.
When I lived in China, people clapped. I was told the person being applauded should also clap back at the audience to show appreciation. Not sure if I ever saw that happening, though.
Thanks for the correction and I offer a sincere apology to those I may have offended with my rampant schmuckery.
It’s hard to know for certain exactly when the practice started in different cultures: certainly it’s now universal among everyone exposed to western entertainment-media culture. This article sez:
However, this article discusses evidence for hand-clapping as both a gesture of applause and an expression of anguish or anger (sort of like our modern smacking-palm-with-fist) in the ancient Near East, both in the Bible and in Akkadian texts.
The Sanskrit Natyasastra on theater/dance/performance, from probably a century or two before the start of the Common Era, describes the variety of audience reactions as smiling and laughing, various exclamations and shouting, and getting goosebumps, rising to their feet, lifting up their hands, etc. AFAICT striking the palms of the hands together is not mentioned in the context of audience appreciation, though it is important in marking time in musical performance. The 11th-century Muslim scientist and ethnographer al-Biruni in his treatise on India mentions (p. 186) that pre-Islamic Arab communities used whistling on their fingers and clapping their hands as part of religious observance, but they’re not used in Muslim observance.
Here you have a 17th-century report from a Jesuit mission to SE Asia, in which local musicians combine hand-clapping with vocal and instrumental performance, but no indication that hand-clapping is used as audience appreciation.
In short: beats the hell out of me when and how different cultures began to use hand-clapping as a group gesture of applause, particularly in the context of entertainment performance. That custom seems to be very well established in ancient Rome, but I’d be very skeptical of automatic assumptions (or fictional portrayals) of its universality in the pre-modern world.
I don’t know about clapping, but I do know that whistling at the wrong time at a soccer game in Latin America might get you killed (whistling=booing).
Trump supporters seem to prefer chants to clapping.
In Spain it is common to do it as part of the public’s participation in a concert, and not just for the Radetzky March. It is also one of the basic percussion instruments of flamenco.
When I was a kid (in Arizona), school teachers would clab their hands to get the attention of the class or of a misbehaving child.
In Aus, clapping is applause, but I would say that it didn’t use to be respectful applause. I mean you wouldn’t clap at church – and probably not at some other occasions where you really wanted to show that you didn’t consider the ocassion to be a “performance”.
In Zimbabwe a brief clap is a gesture of thanks. There are two variants, straight handed (fingers on each hand parallel) for men, and cross handed (hands are more cupped, fingers on each hand at around 45 degrees to the other hand)
Claps generally last only a few (5 or so) strikes.
Of course, the western “applause” clap is now also common, but ululation (mostly by women) is a more traditional “applause” and is still popular.
My wife says that in the Philippines clapping is the audience saying “you can go now.”