Language Blog

Language Blog

Spending at least 15 minutes taking part in a conversation where you are not permitted to speak was very frustrating for my partner and I. Trying to communicate and convey a message to one another was difficult and time consuming. Where a simple question like how was your day took normally about 4 seconds to ask it took about the whole 15 minutes to process and convey that message to each other. My partner did alter the way they communicated because they had no choice. When someone can’t speak to one another the way they receive and process each message can be a little challenging. My partner had to take it very slowly with each sound.

I tried to ask my partner how was your day, but there was no change in topics since we ran out of time trying to communicate. If the balance of power were between two individuals the person starting the conversation would have the power. I feel that the person leading the conversation holds the power because they hold the key in portraying or conveying a message.

If the conversation represented two different cultures, one that uses spoken language and one that did not, the culture that did not speak would have the advantage.  I feel that the culture that already had established a language would be lost trying to figure out what the other culture is trying to convey and would treat them like if they were ignorant. People today are very judgmental towards other cultures. Trying to understand each other’s native language is hard but a culture that does not use symbolic language is even harder.

Communicating for 15 minutes without any physical embellishments was not very difficult. We were able to say what we wanted to communicate but without being able to express feelings through our movements in our hands and face gestures. We would constantly forget that we were not able to communicate without using physical embellishments. It was not difficult to understand but it was a very limited conversation without being able to portray feelings. It was very dry. I feel that this experiment says that the gestures and face expression are a very important part of communicating effectively. The humans portray when someone is sad, angry, passionate, energetic and so many other emotions though a person’s body language tying everything up with the spoken language making the whole conversation more effective.  The benefit to possessing the ability to read body language is that you are able to recognize how someone feels. For example when a person is in love and wants a relationship they are able to express their emotions through body language and that’s how a person finds their mate.

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? There is people that have a difficult time reading body language and usually they are not very effective communicators. They miss a lot of the messages that come from body language. One benefit that body language brings is that you can sense weather or not someone likes you or dislikes you. A disadvantage is that many people misread body language and portrays message completely different from the actual message.