双语：“竖中指”的由来与含义详解（图）

英语自学网

　　“竖中指”是近些年的产物吗？“竖中指”代表的是什么？然而“竖中指”到底是怎么来的？英国人为什么觉得“反V”也是有侮辱性的？“反V”到底代表的是什么？一切都会在这篇文章中揭晓。
        　　“竖中指”可以说是全世界通用的侮辱性手语，上到99，下到刚会走，基本上所有人都知道用这个手势表示自己的不满。（我们第一张图片里的小男孩Mikey Wilson就因为他五岁时在2002年的一场比赛里用“竖中指”的方法来宣泄自己的不满情绪而红透了全世界）
        中指从什么时候开始竖起——“竖中指”详解 + 年表
        　　“竖中指”其实由来已久，经历史学家考证，这一手势实际上已经有超过两千年的历史！
        ——“竖中指”很形象的代表了男性的生殖器，中间竖起的中指代表了阴茎，而其他四个手指则代表了睾丸。
        　　世界上有明确记载的“竖中指”名人可以追溯到公元前419年，古希腊著名剧作家、诗人阿里斯多芬尼斯。
        　　1886年意大利新移民把“竖中指”这一手势带到了美国。
        　　在英国人们把“反V”这一手势当作侮辱性手势要追溯到公元1415年。著名的阿金库尔战役（又译：阿让库尔战役）开始前，法国人曾经扬言要砍掉所有俘虏的英格兰弓箭手的食指和中指，让他们以后再也不能拉弓。可是没想英军在亨利五世的率领下，以少胜多战胜了法国人。战后，英格兰是弓箭手自豪的向着落败的法国人反向挥舞着“V”型的手指，意思是说：“嘿！Loser，当初不是你们说要砍了我们的这两个手指吗？”
        　　现在无论是“竖中指”还是“反V”作为发泄不满情绪的手势，被全世界广泛应用。使用它们的既有政客，也有超级明星。
       

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        　　An American television network has apologised after pop star M.I.A. extended her middle finger during Sunday night's Super Bowl halftime show. What does the gesture mean, and when did it become offensive?
        　　A public intellectual, expressing his contempt for a gas-bag politician, reaches for a familiar gesture. He extends his middle finger and declares: "This is the great demagogue".
        　　The episode occurred not on a chat show nor in the salons of New York or London, but in Fourth Century BC Athens, when the philosopher Diogenes told a group of visitors exactly what he thought about the orator Demosthenes, according to a later Greek historian.
        　　The middle finger, extended with the other fingers held beneath the thumb, is thus documented to have expressed insult and belittlement for more than two millennia.
        　　'Phallic gesture'
        　　Ancient Greek philosophers, Latin poets hoping to sell copies of their works, soldiers, athletes and pop stars, school children, peevish policemen and skittish network executives have all been aware of the gesture's particular power to insult and enflame.
        　　"It's one of the most ancient insult gestures known," says anthropologist Desmond Morris.
        　　"The middle finger is the penis and the curled fingers on either side are the testicles. By doing it, you are offering someone a phallic gesture. It is saying, 'this is a phallus' that you're offering to people, which is a very primeval display."
        　　During Sunday night's broadcast of the Super Bowl, America's most-watched television programme of the year, British singer M.I.A. extended the finger during a performance of Madonna's Give Me All Your Luvin'.
        　　The NFL and NBC television, which broadcast the game and the halftime show, apologised.
        　　"The obscene gesture in the performance was completely inappropriate," said Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the NFL.
        　　The gesture is widely known to Americans as flipping the bird, or just giving someone the finger.
        　　The Romans had their own name for it: digitus impudicus - the shameless, indecent or offensive finger.
        　　In the Epigrammata of First Century AD by the Latin poet Martial, a character who has always enjoyed good health extends a finger, "the indecent one", at three doctors.
       
            
            

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        　　Monkeys' obscene gesture
        　　The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that German tribesmen gave the middle finger to advancing Roman soldiers, says Thomas Conley, a professor emeritus of communication and classics at the University of Illinois, who has written about the rhetoric of insults.
        　　Earlier, the Greeks used the middle finger as an explicit reference to the male genitalia.
        　　In 419BC, the playwright Aristophanes puns in his comedy The Clouds about dactylic (finger) rhythm, with a character gesturing first with his middle finger and subsequently with his crotch.
        　　The gesture's origins may extend even further back: male squirrel monkeys of South America are known to gesture with the erect penis, says Mr Morris.
       

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        　　The middle finger, which Mr Morris says probably arrived in the US with Italian immigrants, is documented in the US as early as 1886, when a pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters gave it in a joint team photograph with the rival New York Giants.
       
            
            

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        　　Expression of 'displeasure'
        　　The French have their own phallic salute, says Mr Morris.
        　　In performing the "bras d'honneur" (arm of honour), one raises the forearm with the back of the hand facing outward, while slapping or gripping the inside of the elbow with the other hand.
       

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        　　The British gesture - the two-fingered 'v' with the palm facing inward - is a "double phallus", Mr Morris quips.
        　　Although scholars and historians continue to debate its origins, according to legend it was first displayed at the battle of Agincourt in 1415.
        　　There, English soldiers waved their fingers at French soldiers who had threatened to cut off captured archers' first two fingers to prevent them shooting arrows. The English were thus boasting they were still capable of doing so.
        　　The middle finger's offensive meaning seems to have overtaken cultural, linguistic and national boundaries and can now be seen at protests, on football pitches, and at rock concerts across the world.
        　　In December, Liverpool striker Luis Suarez was photographed giving an American-style middle finger to Fulham fans after his club's 1-0 loss there.
        　　The FA cited him for improper conduct and suspended him for one game.
        　Protest, rage, excitement
        　　In 2004, a Canadian MP from Calgary was accused of pointing his middle finger at a member from another party who he said had been heckling him in the House of Commons.
        　　"I expressed my displeasure to him, let's put it this way," Deepak Obhrai told a Canadian newspaper.
        　　Two years earlier, pop star Britney Spears gave the finger to a group of photographers who she complained had been chasing her. Some of her fans thought the gesture was aimed at them, and Spears later apologised.
        　　While the middle finger may historically have symbolised a phallus, it has lost that distinctive meaning and is no longer even obscene, says Ira Robbins, a law professor at American University in Washington DC, who has studied the gesture's place in criminal jurisprudence.
        　　"It does not appeal to the prurient interests," he says.
        　　"This gesture is so well engrained in everyday life in this country and others. It means so many other things, like protest or rage or excitement, it's not just a phallus."
        　　And he rejects an Associated Press journalist's characterisation of the gesture as "risque".
        　　"What is risque about it? Maybe the dancing was risque, but the finger? I just don't see it."