As an aspect of my deliberations about words and non-verbal communication, I remembered a scene from a film that involved a continentally-dislocated character. He either gives or receives the two-fingered salute, which then provokes another character to ask “What does this [gesture] mean?” I think it was either A Fish Called Wanda, in which case it would have been directed at Otto while he was driving wildly without regard to the correct side of the road, or In the Loop (or it might have been an episode of The Thick Of It), in which case the gesture would have been directed at an American or an especially clueless Briton.
Now, there are worse things in life than re-watching Wanda and Loop, but I wish I could remember where (or whether!) I saw it; I’d like to be able to use the scene as a conversation starter about gestures and meaning.