1. I found this portion of the project difficult because I’m a bit of a talker, so staying silent for 15 minutes was a bit of a challenge for me.
2. The initial impression of my lack of any established form of communication, was that I was eavesdropping or perhaps "not all there in the head" but after my initial responses (as dictated by the prompt) and silent participation that changed.
3. I can say that the culture using symbolic communication would definitely have the advantage in communicating more complex ideas. The culture using the Language system would most likely view the non-speaking culture as inferior or less intelligent. There are people who have difficulties communicating, people like the deaf, mutes, and even the lower functioning mentally handicapped individuals, and society, while it is improving, has a tendency to treat individuals like this with some form of innate hostility.
1. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to last the full 15 minutes, as I happen to be a very animated communicator, it was basically impossible for me to be expressionless.
2. The other participants in this portion of the project thought it was amusing to watch me attempt to conceal my expressions.
3. I would say that expression and speech go hand in hand, as expression allows those you are communicating with better understand your perspective.
4. I know of a few people who misread, or misinterpret, body language and respond accordingly. That “handicap,” if you will, can create agitation and sometimes aggression from the one communicating. Reading body language as an adaptive ability can ease tensions in situations of unrest and potential turmoil. But imagine a world without body language, where we are only judged by what we say or what we do, and not by what we do while speaking, that would be a much simpler world, it would either be a “more polite” society, or a society of chaos, people would focus MORE on what comes out of their mouth and how people heard them, and not how people perceived their movements. It’s actually quite frightening to think of a world of expressionless communication as you would never know what someone was trying to convey.
Hello, I really enjoyed reading your post. It's interesting to see how other classmates reacted to this assignment. When talking about the culture differences in part 1 I found it interesting that you said the speaking culture would view the non-speaking culture as inferior and less intelligent. When responding to this question I didn't think of this but now that you bring the point up I can see how this could happen. I also said in my response that the speaking culture could become very irritated and frustrated if the non-speaking culture didn't understand. This statement could go both ways!
ReplyDeleteInteresting that you view the treatment of the non-speaking by the speaking as "hostile". I think you were more on track with this earlier statement:
ReplyDelete"The culture using the Language system would most likely view the non-speaking culture as inferior or less intelligent. "
We seem to associate the ability to speak fluently with a measure of intelligence. Why do we do that? This occurs not only among the deaf, mute and those with disabilities, but also with immigrants who aren't fluent in the language of their new country (and yes, I agree that this can be very hostile). So why do we make this parallel between language and intelligence?
The response of the partners for Part B is usually very interesting. Expanding upon this description would have been appropriate to get a better understanding of the affect body language has on our system of communication.
Body language isn't just about expression. It is a confirmation or validation of the spoken message. We use body language to double-check what we are hearing, to see if the speaker is telling the truth and can be trusted, which is particularly important if you are talking to a stranger. If the words and body language match, great. If not, we know to be careful. Body language is like a lie detector and humans have become quite good at figuring out who they can trust and who they can't, based upon body language.
There are specific groups of people who have difficulty reading body language, including those in the autism spectrum and, to a certain extent, people who are blind, though they can hear vocal intonation.
Interesting final discussion. A world without body language would be a world without the ability to trust anyone outside of our own family circle (if that), or we could just take everyone at face value. But you get one "cheater" in the system, one liar, and they would dominate over everyone else. It would be chaos.
Missing the final question... can you think of a situation where there might be benefit to not reading body language? Is there ever a situation where you might get misleading information from body language? Do all cultures use the same system of body language?
(Late submission.)