The conversation that I had with no speaking, writing, or ASL was quite the predicament. I found it slightly easier as the conversation continued and a few more of my friends joined the conversation. The main topic started with the podcast that my friends and I were thinking about starting (a conversation that had come up a lot) and I gave them a heads up that I had an assignment to be involved in a conversation without using words, writing or a form of ASL for 15 minutes. This caught them off guard but agreed and thought it would be a fun experiment. Blake, the one who bought the microphone for the podcast, was primarily in charge of the conversation at first and Kevin also discussed ideas. I felt like I was playing charades at first whenever trying to “voice” my opinions of ideas because I couldn’t speak or write anything.
I would cough if I thought there was potential in the ideas presented and had the gladiatorial “thumbs up and thumbs down” for ideas that I enjoyed or not. As Kevin’s sister swung by to listen in she thought I was acting really weird until Blake explained the experiment I was doing for a class. She commented that Kevin needed to try this experiment more often and we all, including Kevin, laughed really hard.
It seemed as we moved on through topics of ideas for the podcast that we wanted to do Blake and Kevin started to take longer time to say things looking over at me to see what expressions I had to comment on in the ways that I was allowed to. Overall I felt that in the conversation I was an overseer or an approver or disapprover of ideas and felt, with these ideas, somewhat excluded. Most of the time the main speakers were Kevin and Blake as we all communicated about the topics our podcast would have. There were a few times where I shook my head in extreme disagreement or agreement. One of my friends lived in Bulgaria for a few years and told the group that I was really disagreeing with the statement being said by nodding my head because “a head nod was showing you didn’t like the idea”. This had me flustered for a minute or two and so I stopped participating in the conversation for a bit as they talked about topics for the podcast.
The culture with advanced verbal communication with others of their culture has an extreme advantage. As what happened to me in the conversation with a “different culture” card being pulled in the conversation itself, there can be many miscommunications and false information that is either knowingly said to others or unknowingly to another. The culture that has a speaking culture can think less or ignore the other culture.
A huge relationship that can happen with speaking cultures and non-verbal cultures are the differences of culture of adults and babies. The Adult may see the baby crying and think “this baby is hungry” when really the baby might have need of a diaper change.
The second experiment was interesting, I could not use tonal inflection or motions of any kind. This included Eyebrow raises, hand gestures, or other such movements.
The experiment was with my mom about my ideas about what I should do for the rest of my life. I told her about 2 minutes in that this conversation from me would not have any inflections in my voice or motions from my body besides the sitting down at the table that I had done in the beginning. At first my mother was flustered and thought that I was not going to do much with my life and that I needed to figure something out before I was trapped in minimum wage jobs for the rest of my life. Surprisingly, I saw a range of emotions and also felt a similar range of emotions in myself but used all the energy I could not to show any sign of emotion whatsoever.
After a few minutes, it became a very precise discussion of life and things in life. The 15+ minute monotone conversation fit in most likely a good solid hour or more of ideas and things of discussion. The topic went from my life and how or where it was going, to her life and how she got to where she was and then other people and things to do for looking into job opportunities and places to live and trades to potentially look into to have as a skill backup.
“Signs” and non-speech language is extremely important to show interest and the lack of interest within the ideas presented. After a while the communication needed for certain conversations requires body language and expression, but not necessarily all conversations it is needed. I have seen that monotone can cut through the “fluff” of conversation, and also make the conversation so uninteresting that other things must be either discussed or done. When someone reads body language, the more movement there seems to be, the more interested that person or the group is interested in the topic.
Being able to read body language is important, especially for social cues when someone is interested or uninterested in the topic being presented. If one that sees body language in a motion of quick movement, especially away from a certain location, it is more likely that they will follow and it will save them from a predator that they could not see but someone else did. This can also work for finding resources. If something is mentioned to someone and their eyes shift and head moves energetically toward a certain spot of that resource, it can be in abundance and there be no need to hunt longer for the source.
A common individual that can have a tough time reading body language is someone who likes someone else. When this happens, logical social cues and body language can be thrown out the window to be ignored by the person trying to have the person they are interested in like them back. Body language that can be contradictory to the person not giving reliable information is when someone does something and says that they enjoy it but their body language says otherwise. A prime example of this is Surfing in the Pacific or swimming in the ocean in general. The ocean is cold, and people can be shivering when coming out of the ocean and have the time of their lives. The people looking at them shivering may see that the shivering is bad and not as enjoyable as it sounds.
Hi Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that you focused on how much quicker the conversation with your mom was without the use of facial gestures and body language. I didn't really consider that in a serious conversation the lack of body language could actually be very beneficial and make the conversation more serious and efficient. Though I do agree with you that it does make a conversation more interesting and can show a persons true emotions or feelings about a topic. For example, in a conversation like the one I had with my friend the lack of body language made the conversation boring and a drag. However, serious conversations can benefit from this limit, such as the conversation with your mom. It is a really interesting aspect to consider when thinking about the effect body language and hand/face gestures have on the efficiency and interest of our conversations. Great post!
Very good description of part (A). Well-written and entertaining.
ReplyDeleteYou just briefly touch on the issue of power and control. I would have liked more coverage of this.
"Overall I felt that in the conversation I was an overseer or an approver or disapprover of ideas and felt"
Okay... but you were an established member of the "team" on this project, so that might have been a result of that pre-established relationship. Consider whether you were actually in control or had power in the conversation. Could you change topics at will? Ask questions? Steer the conversation where you wanted it to go? And if you did feel this way, could it be because your friends let you do this? If you had engaged in this discussion with a stranger on the street, just how much control would you have had? Would they have patiently tolerated your limited communication or might they have just walked away? Did you really have control? Or did your friends give you the control? In which case, was it really yours to begin with?
I agree with your conclusions regarding communicating complex ideas and the attitude between cultures.
Remember that we are talking about a situation in this experiment with a power imbalance, with the non-speaking culture has less power and control than those who are speaking (which was why this was an important question to address). Is that the situation with a baby and a parent? Babies may not be able to speak, but they are actually quite powerful in their relationship with parents because parents have a big investment in that baby and have a lot of incentive to make sure that baby not only survives but also thrives. They will spend a lot of time trying to figure out what that baby needs.
To find a real life example of this experiment, we need to find a situation where you have a speaking population and another group that doesn't speak that language, and this results in a power differential, with the speaking culture having power over the non-speaking. We see that in the interaction between English speakers and non-English speaking immigrant populations. Think about how non-English speaking immigrants are treated in Southern California? Are they treated as equals?
(Google limited my comment. Breaking it into two parts.)
DeletePart (B):
Interesting description here, but I'm not sure I understand how your mom actually responded to your lack of body language? Often that is the most interesting part of this experiment with some even getting angry or upset and walking out.
I don't disagree with your conclusions regarding the information we receive from body language, but you are only considering the situation where body language matches and supports the information you receive from spoken language. What does it tell you when the body language doesn't match the spoken language? Humans tend to use body language as a type of lie detector. If spoken words don't match with the body language, we are more inclined to believe the body language and doubt the words. Think about how being able to detect liars might help an individual's ability to survive and reproduce (which applies to the next section).
Okay on the benefits of body language, but what type of benefits do you get by being able to detect liars?
Like all human traits, there is normal variation in expression, and the ability to read body language is no different. But beyond that, there are groups of people who have great difficulty or an outright inability to read body language due to physical or mental disability, such as those who are in the autism spectrum or those who are blind (though they can read vocal intonation).
Shivering is just covering up the body language and won't last forever. The body language is still accurate! But is there any situation you can think of where body language might actually mislead you, not because the person is lying but because you don't know how to read the body language? Do all cultures use the same system of body language? They all use different systems of spoken/written language, so why would we assume their body language isn't different? If you travel to another country, can you trust the information you get from their body language?