In his classic, The Interpretation of Culture (1973), Clifford Geertz uses Gilbert Ryle’s example of two boys in a classroom to illustrate “thick discription.”
Consider. . . two boys rapidly contracting the eyelids of their right eyes. In one this is an involuntary twitch; in the other, a conspiratorial signal to a friend. The two movements are, as movements, identical; from an “I-am-a-camera”, “phenomenalistic” observation of them alone, one could not tell which was a twitch and which was a wink, or indeed whether both or either was a twitch or wink.
Yet the difference, however unphotographable, between a twitch and a wink is vast; as anyone unfortunate enough to have had the first taken for the second knows. The winker is communicating, and indeed communicating in a quite precise and special way; (1) deliberately, (2) to someone in particular, (3) to impart a message, (4) according to socially established code and (5) without cognizance of the rest of the company. . . The winker has now done two thinks, contracted his eyelids. Contracting your eyelids on purpose, when there exists a public code in which so doing counts as a conspiratorial signal is winking. That’s a there is to it: a speck of behavior, a fleck of culture, and -Voilà! – a gesture. (p.6)
