Language Blog

For this week’s assignment, we were given two tasks. The first of the tasks was trying to communicate with others for 15 minutes without being able to use any language at all; this included both written language and sign language. At first when reading the instructions I felt that this would not be that difficult at all. Nodding and shaking of the head, pointing, smiling, these were all ways to communicate without words and a lot of communication is done that way. Well, I was surprised that it was not as simple or easy as I had thought. It made me realize that much of the way individuals communicate is through vocalization.

One thing that I noticed from this was that my wife and her sister, the other two individuals helping me with this experiment began to use their own hands and facial expressions to communicate and less of their words. They would point to something instead of saying it and when they did talk to me they used very short sentences or only said one or two words. Just as not speaking was hard, they had a difficult time trying to understand my needs through my new communication.

In terms of controlling the conversation, by far the other two had all the control. They were able to begin the conversation, determine where it went, change the topic, and ask questions. I was not able to do any of those things and this also made me realize how much of a one-sided conversation we had going on! If is very easy to be left out in this situation from the conversation. Because I could only use my hands really to talk for me, I could not jump in and talk over one of them. I couldn’t interject my real thoughts because I was not able to express them without words. I could not imagine how my life would be different if I was not able to speak. In terms of who had power of the situation, I would have to say hands down my wife and sister-in-law. They controlled where it started and where it ended.

It seems obvious now after conducting the experiment that the culture whose people use spoken language would have a much better way of communicating ideas with their own population. There is just so much more that you can express and communicate with spoken word than you can do with hand signals, facial expressions, and body language. I think the society that uses verbal expressions might look down upon the one who does not. It takes time and attention to understand what the other person is trying to communicate. I don’t know if certain cultures would make that effort. An example of this, which can be seen today, is our “normal” society and the deaf community. There are a lot of individuals who are unable to hear and speak in our society today and they communicate through body language and sign language. But, not everyone in the speaking community understands sign language or tries to understand it. And, because there are fewer members of that community, us “speakers” do not have as many ways to communicate with them as they do with us.

The second part of the assignment was to communicate with words but without the use of hand signals, verbal intonations, and body movements. I must admit that I thought this would be easier than the first part of the assignment, and I was partially right. It was definitely much easier to communicate with the others because I could say what I was thinking or what I wanted however, I really noticed how much individuals rely on intonations and how much individuals use their hands when they talk. These two things were much more difficult to not use than I had originally thought.

When we speak the inflections that we use in our voices help us communicate. They help us express anger, happiness, displeasure and other emotions. I do not think my partners had difficulty understanding what I wanted because I was verbally telling them, but they were not sure if I was upset or not, joking or not, or if something was the matter.

Body language is a large part of our communication, even though we use verbal communication as well. The position someone is sitting in, how they have their hands or what they are doing with their hands, their eyes and facial expressions can tell what the person is really thinking. We hear the words and see the body, giving us a complete understanding by putting together both forms of communication.

Successful reading of body language is an essential skill to have. We use our bodies to show pleasure and displeasure, frustration, and every other emotion. We can say something in one tone but reach out for a comforting hug. Or make a mad face to emphasize what we are saying. Without being able to read someone’s body language we might not really know what they mean or misunderstand what it is they are trying to say. An example of where this comes into effect today is email. It is hard and we cannot always tell the tone of which the words are written. When someone talks we can hear inflections and tone of voice and we can see their body language to tell if they are happy or mad or annoyed. In an email we do not have all these other aspects to assess. All we have is the written words, which can be subject to interpretation. Not every situation do we need these other languages but over all I believe they prove to be more helpful than not.