Language Blog

PART 1

Thoroughly describe your own experiences and the responses of your partners to the experiment. Did you find this assignment easy or difficult and why? Did your partners alter the way they communicated with you because of your absence of communication? Describe. (5 pts)

For the experiment, I choose to communicate with one of my best friends, Bry. Prior to the start of the conversation I explained to her the parameters of the first exchange and noted that once she started speaking that I would not be able to speak. Almost immediately I realized how difficult this portion of the assignment was going to be because I realized my personal reliance on being able to control portion of conversations. I found myself trying to use facial expressions and arm gestures to try and interject my thoughts into the conversation. This often-caused confusion with my partner because they then had to spend the next few moments trying to probe me with questions to try to gain an understanding of what message I was trying to convey. Once this pattern developed our conversation followed this pattern throughout the remainder of the time. I found communicating in this manner to be challenging because as the person not speaking it feels like it is impossible to share a complete thought with your partner, thus it was a very ineffective exchange.

 

Who was in control of the conversation, you or your partner? Who initiated or changed topics? Who asked and who answered questions? If you conducted this experiment with more than one person, were you ever excluded from the conversation? If you think of a conversation as a balance of power between two (or more) individuals, who had the power in this conversation, you or your partner? Explain your answer. (5 pts)

 

My partner was the person in control of the conversation and clearly directed what areas of the topic they started that we would discuss. I did have power to change the conversation by expressing displeasure with the current topic, but then it forced my partner to guess what I wanted to discuss or if I was attempting to respond to their topic. Therefore, in a strange way I felt that I had the power in the conversation because I could clearly understand what my partner was expressing but my expressions and gestures were consistently able to disrupt the entire exchange. So, although my partner controlled the dialogue of the conversation, I learned over the course of the exchange I had the power to influence since my partner had to put forth all of the effort to attempt to keep me engaged with the discussion. It was an interesting dynamic because going into the exercise I would have thought that there was little impact or influence that I could have on the interaction without the ability to speak. Whereas in reality I learned I held a valuable commodity in the exchange since I ultimately controlled our ability to have our interaction result in a shared understanding

 

Imagine that you and your partners in the conversation represent two different cultures, one that uses spoken language and one that doesn’t. Which culture has the advantage in communicating complex ideas within their population? What attitudes might the speaking culture have toward the culture that does not use symbolic language? Can you identify any modern situations that mirror or resemble this relationship between a culture that can speak and culture that can’t? (10 pts)

 

The interaction clearly demonstrates the importance of the ability to use spoken language in expressing complex ideas among members of a population. The exercise showed how spoken language is the foundation for expressing complete thoughts to one another and provides the opportunity to share these messages in a clear and concise manner. The message precision provided through spoken language creates a mechanism that resolve ambiguity around what the deliverer is trying to convey to the receiver during a communication exchange. Thus, this ability to utilize spoken language would provide the culture that possessed this ability with a clear advantage over a culture without this ability because they can share detailed information on various high-level concepts. The culture without spoken language can only share more simplistic general ideas on tasks that require only a very basic level of understanding to complete.

The speaking culture would likely feel a sense of superiority over the culture that solely utilizes symbolic language because the more complex ideas would result in advanced technological improvements.  Additionally, the culture with spoken language would also tend to think they were more intelligent than the culture with symbolic language because of the wealth of expression allowed by spoken word versus communication solely with physical expression. In the modern world, this phenomenon most likely exist with interactions between modern societies and the more primitive cultures that live in remote areas of the world. These primitive cultures have minimal exposure or direct contact with modern culture, so they tend to have much more simplistic lifestyles and technology innovation.

 

PART 2

Thoroughly describe your own experiences and the responses of your partners to the experiment. Did you find this assignment easy or difficult and why? How did your partner(s) respond to your lack of body language? Did they have any difficulty understanding you? Describe. (5 pts) Ø

For this portion of the experiment, it was a relief to be able to speak but it was mentally challenging to try and communicate for a fifteen-minute timeframe without adding any type of voice modulations or body gestures. I often talk with my hands and I find being animated provides me with confidence when I start to get nervous about what I am presenting. So during the exchange I felt that I could not concentrate on interacting with my partner since all of my focus had to be devoted to speaking without conveying any emotion. My partner demonstrated signs of being uncomfortable during our conversation due to my lack of body language. They kept spending time during the discussion looking for me to provide them with some type of acknowledgement of the information that they were trying to share with me. As the conversation persisted my partner grew increasingly frustrated with my failure to connect with the exchange and over time showed less desire in continuing with the discussion.

 

 

What does this experiment say about our use of “signs” in our language, i.e., how important is nonspeech language techniques in our ability to communicate effectively? What type of information do humans receive about the words a person is speaking when they “read” a person’s body language? (5 pts) Ø

This experiment shows how our use of signs complements our spoken language, for they help provide context and depth to our verbal communication. When we speak people are also reading our nonspeech language to see if the message that is being conveyed with our mouth lines up with the non-verbal cues that are being demonstrated by our body movements at the same time. If they do not line up then people do not believe what we are saying and think that we are not being truthful to them. So in the experiment my partner was looking for those non verbal cues so they could see if I had conviction in what I was saying, and they noted that the lack of these signs made my message ineffective from their perspective. Finally, the straight delivery style made it easy for my partner to lose focus on what I was trying to convey and they said they would periodically drift away from the conversation. This demonstrates why the most effective speakers are able to use a combination of spoken and non-verbal communication to convey their message and persuade their audience.

 

 

Describe the adaptive benefit to possessing the ability to read body language. How might the ability to read body language help a person survive, obtain resources, and reproduce successfully? (5 pts) Ø

The ability to read body language provides a direct benefit for people in their likelihood of having positive social interactions with other people. People who have a high aptitude in this area find themselves more effective in communicating with other people. They are able to accomplish this by reading how the receiver is responding to information that is being shared with them and adjusting the message so that they keep the person actively engaged with the conversation. A skilled person in this area is able to look at the body movements and mannerisms of other people and sense what they are about to say or do prior to the person even taking that action. Thus, this skill may help a person perceive danger or potential conflict in a certain situation by detecting that someone appears to be upset prior to the start of an interaction with the individual. On the other hand, a person can also observe a willingness to provide assistance by the temperament another person demonstrates when faced with an obstacle, or realize that a person has a physical attraction to them by their mannerisms when in the presence of the other person.

 

Are there people who have difficulty reading body language and can you identify them? Can you describe a situation where there might be a benefit to not reading someone’s body language, i.e., a situation where perhaps body language does not give you reliable information? (5 pts)

 

People that have difficulty in reading body language can be identified by their inability to be effective communicators with other people. If a person is not skilled in this area then they are unable to read their audience and struggle to provide the appropriate level of information when sharing with others. This failure of perception results in people turning them off during conversations because they cannot tell when they have lost the attention of the recipient of the communication. These people tend to lack self awareness of how they are being perceived by the audience and do not possess the communication skills to tailor their message to the specific party they are engaging with. In addition to people that are not skilled in this area, there are also people with either various physical disabilities or mental conditions that make it difficult for them to successfully assess the meaning of another person’s body language. Naturally, there are examples of situations where reading someone’s body language can provide you with an incorrect assessment of what is taking place. A trial is a perfect example of a situation where it is not a great idea to put full dependence on the body language of any of the participants in the proceedings in the effort to determine truth, for all of the parties involved may be trying to utilize various levels of deception and persuasion to obtain your support of their position.