Language Blog

Part 1: You were asked to engage in a conversation for 15 minutes where you were not allowed to use any version of a symbolic language (no speaking, writing, or ASL).

   Trying to communicate with my sister without using symbolic language was very difficult until I started using body language. Because my sister knows me well, we were able to communicate with ease by only using body language. Most of our conversation would be like me posing/gesturing and then my sister asking me if what she thinks is right. Most of the times she was right, and we were able to act out what I wanted to do.
   Because I know the experience might be different with other individuals, I decided to go talk to one of my neighbors. In this case, my neighbor was confused because I was just using body languages and decided to give up talking to me and ask me what is wrong. My neighbor has a different perspective on many things because we come from different cultures and environment.
   With my first conversation, I had the control of the conversation because she would analyze my body language easily and reply to them. By knowing me and having the same cultural experience, I was able to control the flow of the conversation and change topics whenever I wanted to. However, with my neighbor, because he had trouble understanding my body language, he started asking me yes or no questions. From then on, he had the control of the conversation and decided to stop after thinking the conversation was pointless.
   If I imagine that me and my partner in the conversation represent two different cultures, one that uses spoken language and one that does not, I believe the one who uses spoken language will have the advantage in communicating complex ideas within their population. This is because in body language (Not ASL), pointing to my face could mean many different things such as "me," "face," "I," etc. By speaking, we have words that symbolizes certain object/idea/events. Spoken language is more precise and efficient than body language in talking about discussing food plans for winter/causation for illness, weather and other ideas that cannot be shown in pictures.
   I believe that people from the speaking culture will think that they are far more superior than the other culture that does not speak. Because people from the speaking culture still uses body language and is sometimes more effective and important than spoken language, people who speak will be able to somewhat understand the body languages while those who do not speak will not be able to comprehend spoken language.
   An example of modern day situation of this conflict can be found among the deaf/mute. Because they cannot use the spoken language, they often have to write their thoughts out to continue a conversation. This can be quite annoying as writing is a much slower process than speaking.

Part 2: You were asked to spend 15 minutes communicating without any physical embellishments, i.e., no hand signals, not vocal intonation, not head, facial, or body movements.

   In this part of the experiment, I totally failed in holding up any type of conversations. I tried communicating with my parents and my friends, but the whole time I was talking, no one was interested in the topic after a while. I was told that I sound like a machine trying to talk because I talked in monotone and did not make any movements. My parents were patient enough to listen to 7 minutes of me talking and after that, just went into their rooms. My friends, on the other hand, told me to be quiet and left me out of the conversation after 3 minutes. With the lack of tone/body language, nothing was interesting and I failed to hold up a good conversation.
   As explained in part 1, I believe that people from speaking culture utilizes body language in their everyday conversation. Dr. Albert Mehrabian conducted several studies on nonverbal communication and concluded that only 7% of and message is conveyed through words, 38% by vocal elements, and 55% through body language (nonverbal elements). This means that although we use words everyday to hold up a conversation, must of our conversations are done by body language. For example, in America, we keep our distances of about 3 to 5 feet away from talking to strangers. By someone talking to you in that distance range, you already know that the person is not quite comfortable talking to you yet. Another example might be something like crossing your arms and leaning back while talking to somebody. This posture could mean that you are mad/frustrated with the target audience. By reading a person's body language, we are sometimes able to analyze and understand the mood/thoughts of the person.
   Being able to read body languages is an adaptive behavior and can have multiple benefits for the person. For example, when you see someone constantly looking around and being anxious at the bank, you might believe something is wrong with that person. If the security notices this behavior, they are able to keep an eye on that persons behavior and act as fast possible if the person shows any signs of committing criminal activity. The security's attention to these body languages could possibly save everyone in the bank from imminent danger.
   Although I cannot think about anyone who have difficulties reading body language, I know that cultures differ in the symbols of the body language. For example, in some Mediterranean countries such as Brazil and Turkey, an O,K, hand sign is an insult. If you are raised in Brazil and some tourists give you an O.K. sign for approval, you can be very offended by misjudging their body language because of cultural perspectives. In this case, reading body language is actually a negative trait and is unreliable.