Language Experiment
Part 1
Going in to this experiment, I had high hopes of this being easy and straight forward. However, a few seconds in to what was practically a one ended conversation, I had difficulty trying to communicate with my partner without speaking. I came in to this thinking it would be similar to a game of charades and my partner would easily be able to understand me. This was not the case. I started to think my partner was just not good at charades because he couldn't make out anything I was doing. I found that without using language, it was hard for me to form sentences. I also used my hands and head more in an attempt to describe what I was trying to say. My partner found this experiment very difficult when we started and couldn't understand anything I was attempting to communicate. There wasn't much room for my partner to make alterations to how they were communicating because we felt there needed to be someone leading the conversation and figured it would be the person capable of speaking. As the conversation went on, it did get easier to communicate as we found a better structure that worked for us.
Initially, I tried to start the conversation with trying to communicate a simple "How are you?". But my partner was clueless, unable to decipher my expressions. We spent a few more minutes trying to communicate but a lot of it was me trying to figure out how to ask a question or make a comment without language or writing. We then switched from me leading the conversation to my partner leading. We found with my partner leading, the communication became a bit easier. My partner asked majority of questions and was the topic changer. I was able to answer my partner's question with a simple yes or no, head nod or head shake. I do think a conversation between two people should be a balance of power, in this conversation I felt powerless. I felt as if I couldn't think and express my mind like I usually do. My partner was able to bring up questions and topics that he wanted to discuss even though they were not exactly what I wanted to talk about but I didn't have the power or proper communication to change the topic.
The culture with the advantages in communication complex ideas would be the speaking culture. Speaking culture may have an attitude that comes off as being the better than the non speaking culture. Speaking culture may see themselves as the dominant population because communication is easier which is a benefit for many different things. I think these two cultures would have limited interactions because the speaking culture wouldn't know how to understand the non speaking. They may also have the attitude that the non speaking is not progressing and see them as less. This can be identified with modern situations like the hearing community and the deaf community. It often happens that these two communities are separated because of communication. Often time hearing people don't know ASL and afraid to try and communicate with non hearing people because they cant hear.
Part 2
This part of the experiment was extremely difficult. This experiment made me feel as if I was a robot because of zero expression. I had a hard time not using facial expressions and didn't realize how much I actually used my eyebrows when communicating. My partner found this difficult as well but was able to understand me better than our non speaking experiment. My partner felt I was just unhappy and thought I just wanted to sleep.
I think our use of signs are very important. It helps us express feelings by showing the motions with or faces and tones. Typically a person with a resting mean face comes off as someone who is less approachable than someone who is smiling from to ear. This is also related to a person saying they are happy to be here and has a huge smile on there face so this is believable to many people. However, if you're telling someone how happy you are yet you are and have a resting mean face, its likely to be less believable.
The adaptive benefit to possessing the ability to read body language is being able to pick up on an unspoken feelings or problems. Being able to read body language allows you to see someones true feelings and emotions like may be excited, hurt, uncomfortable, or in danger. It gives you an additional step that will help communicate better.
I think there are people who have a hard time reading body language and most time I am capable of identifying. I think a situation where there wasn't a benefit to body language, is one many of us are living in now, this has to do with wearing mask. Since the pandemic opened a new door for many us by having to wear a mask when communicating with others, it has led to the misjudgment of peoples response. Some people may come off more mean or angry because their tone didn't change and your not able to see the facial expression and with that they can't tell what they mean with their body language.
Part 1: Great opening description and good discussion on the issue of power and control.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your conclusion regarding communicating complex ideas, but this needed to be expanded beyond a single sentence. Can you give an example that explains your reasoning?
Very good real-life example.
Part 2: Good description here. Why did your partner think you were unhappy? What clues were they looking for that mislead them on this? Think about about how people use body language when in conversations.
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 adaptive 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).
The mask situation isn't one where reading body language isn't beneficial. First of all, you communicate body language with your whole body, not just your face, correct? But this is a situation where you CAN'T read the facial cues, not that you *shouldn't*. Is there any situation you can think of where body language might actually mislead you (and should therefore be avoided), 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?