By naming “mouths and hands,” Mead highlights two primary channels through which culture travels: speech and action. Mouths carry stories, jokes, admonitions, and myths; hands carry skills, rituals, and the material traces of how life is organized. Together, they capture how values move through both talk and practice.
Building on that, the phrase also suggests that culture is embodied. Norms aren’t merely believed; they are performed—spoken into existence and enacted in repeated motions, from how we queue in public to how we care for elders, making culture something people do, not just something people have. [...]
