V sign

An investigator flashes V-for-victory signs upon the 2006 arrival of material gathered by the Stardust spacecraft at the Johnson Space Center in Texas.

The V sign (U+270C ✌ victory hand in Unicode) is a hand gesture in which the index and middle fingers are raised and parted, while the other fingers are clenched. It has various meanings, depending on the cultural context and how it is presented. It is most commonly^{[citation needed]} used to represent the letter "V" as in "victory," especially by Allied troops during World War II. It is also used by people of the United Kingdom and related cultures as an offensive gesture (when displayed with the palm inward); and by many others simply to signal the number 2. Since the 1960s, when the "V sign" was widely adopted by the counterculture movement, it has come to be used as a symbol of peace (usually with palm outward).

Usage

Singer Robbie Williams using a V sign with palm facing signer as an insult.

American actor Steve McQueen flashing the V sign for a mugshot, after being arrested for drunk driving.

Singer Rihanna using the V sign as a peace and friend sign, 2011.

2009 Iranian election protests

The meaning of the V sign is partially dependent on the manner in which the hand is positioned:

• If the palm of the hand faces the signer (i.e., the back of the hand faces the observer), the sign signifies:
  • An insult. This usage is restricted largely to Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.^[1][2]
  • The number '2' in American Sign Language.

• With the back of the hand facing the signer (palm of the hand facing the observer), it can mean:
  • two (the number) – a non-verbal communication of quantity.
  • Victory – in a setting of wartime or competition. It was first popularised in January 1941 by Victor de Laveleye, a Belgian politician, who asked the Belgians to choose the sign as a symbol of unity. First, it was mostly used in Belgium, but soon other allies copied the symbol.^[3] It is sometimes made using both hands with upraised arms as US President Eisenhower, and in imitation of him, Richard Nixon, used to do.
  • Peace, or friend – used around the world by peace and counter-culture groups; popularized in the American peace movement of the 1960s.
  • V (the letter) – used when spelling in American Sign Language.^[4]

• When used with movement, it can mean:
  • Air quotes – flexing fingers, palm out, both hands.^[5]
  • This hand shape is also used in a number of signs in many sign languages, including (in American Sign Language) "to look" (with the palm down) or "to see" (palm up). When the pointer and middle fingers are pointed at the signer's eyes then turned and the pointer finger is pointed at someone it means "I am watching you." ^[6]
  • The ordinal "second" in American Sign Language has the V-sign palm forward, then the hand turns (yaws) until the palm faces backward.^[7]

V sign as an insult

The insulting version of the gesture (with the palm inwards) is often compared to the offensive gesture known as "the finger". The "two-fingered salute", also known as "The Longbowman Salute", "the two", "The Rods", "The Agincourt Salute", and as "The Tongs" in the West of Scotland and "the forks" in Australia,^[8] is commonly performed by flicking the V upwards from wrist or elbow. The V sign, when the palm is facing toward the person giving the sign, has long been an insulting gesture in England,^[9] and later in the rest of the United Kingdom; though the use of the V sign as an insulting gesture is largely restricted to the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia.^[1] It is frequently used to signify defiance (especially to authority), contempt, or derision.^[10] The gesture is not used in the United States, and archaic in Australia and New Zealand, where the finger tends to be used in such situations instead.

As an example of the V sign (palm inward) as an insult, on November 1, 1990, The Sun, a British tabloid, ran an article on its front page with the headline "Up Yours, Delors" next to a large hand making a V sign protruding from a Union flag cuff. The Sun urged its readers to stick two fingers up at then President of the European Commission Jacques Delors, who had advocated an EU central government. The article attracted a number of complaints about its alleged racism, but the now defunct Press Council rejected the complaints after the editor of The Sun stated that the paper reserved the right to use vulgar abuse in the interests of Britain.^[11][12]

For a time in the UK, "a Harvey (Smith)" became a way of describing the insulting version of the V sign, much as "the word of Cambronne" is used in France, or "the Trudeau salute" is used to describe the one-fingered salute in Canada. This happened because, in 1971, show-jumper Harvey Smith was disqualified for making a televised V sign to the judges after winning the British Show Jumping Derby at Hickstead. (His win was reinstated two days later.)^[13]

Harvey Smith pleaded that he was using a Victory sign, a defence also used by other figures in the public eye.^[14] Sometimes foreigners visiting the countries mentioned above use the "two-fingered salute" without knowing it is offensive to the natives, for example when ordering two beers in a noisy pub, or in the case of the United States president George H. W. Bush, who, while touring Australia in 1992, attempted to give a "peace sign" to a group of farmers in Canberra—who were protesting about U.S. farm subsidies—and instead gave the insulting V sign.^[15]

Steve McQueen gives a British (knuckles outward) V sign in the closing scene of the 1970s motorsport movie, Le Mans. A still picture of the gesture^[16] was recorded by photographer Nigel Snowdon and has become an iconic image of both McQueen and the film. The gesture was also flashed by Spike (played by James Marsters) in "Hush", a Season 4 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The scene was also featured in the series' opening credits for all of Season 5. It was only censored by BBC Two in its early-evening showings of the program.^[17][18]

Origins

A commonly repeated legend claims that the two-fingered salute or V sign derives from a gesture made by longbowmen fighting in the English and Welsh^[19] army at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War. According to the story, the French were in the habit of cutting off the arrow-shooting fingers of captured English and Welsh longbowmen, and the gesture was a sign of defiance on the part of the bowmen, showing the enemy that they still had their fingers,^[9][20] or, as a widespread pun puts it, that they could still "pluck yew". The longbow story is of unknown origin, but the "pluck yew" pun is thought to be a definitively false etymology that seems to originate from a 1996 email that circulated the story.^[21]

The bowman etymology is unlikely, since no evidence exists of French forces (or any other continental European power) cutting off the fingers of captive bowmen; the standard procedure at the time was to summarily execute all enemy commoners captured on the battlefield (regardless of whether they were bowmen, foot soldiers or merely unarmed auxiliaries) since they had no ransom value, unlike the nobles whose lives could be worth thousands of florins apiece.

The first unambiguous evidence of the use of the insulting V sign in England dates to 1901, when a worker outside Parkgate ironworks in Rotherham used the gesture (captured on the film) to indicate that he did not like being filmed.^[22] Peter Opie interviewed children in the 1950s and observed in The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren that the much older thumbing of the nose (cock-a-snook) had been replaced by the V sign as the most common insulting gesture used in the playground.^[14]

Desmond Morris discussed various possible origins of the V sign in Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution (published 1979), and came to no definite conclusion:

because of the strong taboo associated with the gesture (its public use has often been heavily penalised). As a result, there is a tendency to shy away from discussing it in detail. It is "known to be dirty" and is passed on from generation to generation by people who simply accept it as a recognised obscenity without bothering to analyse it... Several of the rival claims are equally appealing. The truth is that we will probably never know...

—Desmond Morris.^[14]

Swede Mason did a comparison between the use of the middle finger versus the use of the V sign in his video Schofield on Crack using footage of Schofield making the comparison, remixing it and setting it to music.

The V for Victory campaign and the victory-freedom sign

On January 14, 1941, Victor de Laveleye, former Belgian Minister of Justice and director of the Belgian French-speaking broadcasts on the BBC (1940–1944), suggested in a broadcast that Belgians use a V for victoire (French: “victory”) and vrijheid (Dutch: "freedom") as a rallying emblem during World War II. In the BBC broadcast, de Laveleye said that "the occupier, by seeing this sign, always the same, infinitely repeated, [would] understand that he is surrounded, encircled by an immense crowd of citizens eagerly awaiting his first moment of weakness, watching for his first failure." Within weeks chalked up Vs began appearing on walls throughout Belgium, the Netherlands, and northern France.^[23]

Buoyed by this success, the BBC started the "V for Victory" campaign, for which they put in charge the assistant news editor Douglas Ritchie posing as “Colonel Britton”. Ritchie suggested an audible V using its Morse code rhythm (three dots and a dash). As the rousing opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony had the same rhythm, the BBC used this as its call-sign in its foreign language programmes to occupied Europe for the rest of the war. The more musically educated also understood that it was the Fate motif "knocking on the door" of the Third Reich. ( Listen to this call-sign. (help·info)).^[23][24] The BBC also encouraged the use of the V gesture introduced by de Laveleye.^[25]

Winston Churchill giving his famous V sign in 1943

By July 1941, the emblematic use of the letter V had spread through occupied Europe. On July 19, Prime Minister Winston Churchill referred approvingly to the V for Victory campaign in a speech,^[26] from which point he started using the V hand sign. Early on he sometimes gestured palm in (sometimes with a cigar between the fingers).^[27] Later in the war, he used palm out.^[28] After aides explained to Churchill what the palm in gesture meant to other classes, he made sure to use the appropriate sign.^[14][29] Other allied leaders used the sign as well; since 1942, Charles de Gaulle used the V sign in every speech until 1969.^[30]

In 1942, Aleister Crowley, a British occultist, claimed to have invented the usage of a V-sign in February 1941 as a magical foil to the Nazis' use of the Swastika. He maintained that he passed this to friends at the BBC, and to the British Naval Intelligence Division through his connections in MI5, eventually gaining the approval of Winston Churchill. Crowley noted that his 1913 publication Magick featured a V-sign and a swastika on the same plate.^[31]

Vietnam War, victory and peace

Nixon departing the White House on 9 August 1974

U.S. President Richard Nixon used the gesture to signal victory in the Vietnam War, an act which became one of his best-known trademarks. He also used it on his departure from public office following his resignation in 1974.

Protesters against the Vietnam War (and subsequent anti-war protests) and counterculture activists adopted the gesture as a sign of peace. Because the hippies of the day often flashed this sign (palm out) while saying "Peace", it became popularly known (through association) as the peace sign.^[32]

V sign in Japan

Young Japanese women giving V gesture in Tokyo (2006)

The palm-outwards V sign is very commonly made by Japanese people, especially younger people, when posing for informal photographs. One account of this practice claims it was influenced by the American figure skater Janet Lynn during the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Hokkaidō. She fell during a free-skate period, but continued to smile even as she sat on the ice. Though she placed third in the competition, her cheerful diligence and persistence resonated with many Japanese viewers. Lynn became an overnight foreign celebrity in Japan. A peace activist, Lynn frequently flashed the V sign when she was covered in Japanese media. Though the Japanese knew the sign from the post-World War II Allied occupation of Japan, she is credited by some Japanese for having popularized its use since the 1970s in amateur photographs.^[32]

V sign in Mainland China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan

In Mainland China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, the V sign is the most popular pose in photographs. It is used in both casual and formal settings.^[33][34] It is not widely known to Hong Kongers, Koreans or Taiwanese that the V sign can mean "peace" or be used as an insult; some may believe that the meaning of the sign is "victory" or "yeah" (implies the feeling of being happy). They use it both ways (palm facing the signer and palm facing forward).

• 

  V for victory on a Norwegian stamp of August 1941.

• 

  During the German occupation of Jersey, a stonemason repairing the paving of the Royal Square incorporated a V for victory under the noses of the occupiers. This was later amended to refer to the Red Cross ship Vega. The addition of the date 1945 and a more recent frame has transformed it into a monument.

Other uses

Lech Wałęsa and George H. W. Bush, July 1989

• In Argentina, the V sign, besides "victory", is linked to a political movement, the Peronismo.
• University of Southern California and Villanova University students, alumni, and fans "throw their Vs up" in tradition and as a sign of pride of their university and athletic teams.
• V sign, especially when printed in green, is a sign of the Iranian Green Movement.
• After the first elections in Iraq after the U.S. Invasion, a well known photo was circulated of a woman showing the V sign with one of her fingers dipped in purple ink. The ink is used to identify individuals who have already voted.
• In Poland during the Solidarity movement, protesters showed the V sign meaning they would defeat Communism.^[35] After partially free elections, when Tadeusz Mazowiecki was chosen as prime minister (August 24, 1989), he went to the MPs with the V sign, which was transmitted on TV.^[36] It is sometimes shown during debates about the fall of Communism.
• In Romania the sign represents victory and has been used as an extension of the roman salute to announce that victory has been achieved. It was used heavily during the Romanian revolution after the ousting of Nicolae Ceausescu. Mircea Dinescu is appearing in the first transmission of the Romanian Television after the revolutionaries occupied it shouting "We won!" and flashing the victory sign.
• During the Yugoslav Wars, Croatian and Bosnian troops and paramilitary militia used the sign as a greeting or an informal salute. U.S. and NATO peacekeepers stationed in Bosnia were forbidden to use the V-sign (peace symbol) to avoid upsetting or offending Serbs they might encounter.^[37]
• In Vietnam, the V sign means "hello" since the Vietnamese word for the number "2" sounds like the English pronunciation of the greeting "hi".
• Ringo Starr of the Beatles uses the 'V' sign extensively while quoting the phrase "Peace and Love" as a sort of trademark.
• A variation is to put the V sign with the fingers on either side of the mouth (usually knuckle facing the observer, but with no reason to this) and to stick the tongue out. Most of the time the tongue is wriggled around. This is used to signify cunnilingus and the gesture is often off-colour.
• A partially obscured V sign can be added to someone else's head to produce devil's horns or 'bunny ears' for an amusing photo. In September 2013, Manu Tuilagi appologised to Prime Minister David Cameron after making a “bunny ears” sign behind his head in a photo taken during a visit by the British and Irish Lions squad to Downing Street.^[38]

Footnotes

References

• Desmond Morris with Peter Collett, Peter Marsh and Marie O'Shaughnessy. Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution. London: Jonathan Cape, 1979. ISBN 0-224-01570-2; NY: Stein and Day, ISBN 0-8128-2607-8
• Armstrong, Nancy; Wagner, Melissa (2003). "The 'V'". Field Guide to Gestures: How to Identify and Interpret Virtually Every Gesture Known to Man. Philadelphia: Quirk Books. pp. 227–30. ISBN 978-1-931686-20-4. 
• Lefevre, Romana (2011). "V". Rude Hand Gestures of the World: A Guide to Offending Without Words. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. pp. 122–3. ISBN 978-0-8118-7807-4. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to V-sign.

• Photos of the V sign:
  • Churchill Outside no. 10
  • Churchill Victory Sign
  • Nixon departing office
  • Paavo Väyrynen after Finnish Centre party named him foreign trade and development minister
  • Need4Peace

• The V sign in the news:
  • Guardian 6 June 2002: In pictures the V sign
  • Sky News 18 June 2004: OAP fined £100 for V sign
  • BBC 3 April 2009: Scottish footballers dropped for V sign
• Urban Legends Reference Pages: pluck yew