Language is one of the most critical parts of civilizations, the average person says 16,000 words a day. We communicate and express ourselves, who we are and what we want through words and speech. What if this was taken away from us? What if we had no words, no way of writing, not even hand motions? I tried this for fifteen minutes and utterly failed. The normal patterns of conversation, questions and answers, stories and laughter were lost and I discovered nearly nothing new about the person I was speaking to. My impressions of the person I was speaking to, my younger (but not little) brother was that he was even more hilarious than I though, his ridiculous pointing and blinking and facial expressions succumbed us to laughter in minutes, he is always funny but he altered his personality from outgoing to outrageous to fit the conversation. If I was not related to him and knew his though processes, say if he was from a different culture entirely, instead of from my family, I imagine that the conversation would go entirely different we probably still would of brought each other to laughter with the way we were acting. We have one of the most complex languages yet so I imagine that someone from a different culture would have a hard time keeping up. Also those who have a disability that inhibits them from understanding language would have a hard time realizing what was trying to be said.
Next I was asked to spend 15 minutes conversing without physical embellishments, this was hard, but not as hard for me. I was able to do it, but I am extremely flamboyant with my facial expressions and hands when I talk, especially when I get excited, so is my brother. We were affected by these limitations by how hard it was to express what you were feeling or how it made us feel. It is hard to tell whether you are happy or sad about a sentence if there is no expression behind it. This shows how critical signs are in our language, we need expression to show what we mean with our words. Many people with autism or other social impairments have a hard time with social cues and would probably have a hard time picking up on these things. Language is a critical part of our culture, beyond the speaking and writing the social cues behind them are also critical. These experiments really expressed this to me.
You make a good point that people with autism or other social impairments have a hard time with social cues. I had not thought about that. This makes it difficult for them to communicate with others. From what I have heard about autism eye contact is difficult. This can make communication difficult because we express a lot of our meaning through our eyes.
ReplyDeleteBarbara
I agree with both you and Barbara about people with mental disabilities not being able to communicate as well through non-speech communication and techniques. I really enjoyed your post, you seemed to have a lot of fun with the experiment! I tried conducting the experiment on my friends and the all just basically made fun of me, go figure! I think non-verbal techniques are extremely important when it comes to communicating and can be just as important as verbally communicating itself.
ReplyDeleteAfter completing both of these language experiments, it became very clear to me how important each of the aspects of communicating are to each other. Without one of the other, each on its own, is just not as effective. I, myself, found the experience using only language much more difficult than I had initially anticipated. It just goes to show how much we depend on physical movements to compliment our verbal communication when trying to express our thoughts and ideas fully.
ReplyDeleteVery well done. I loved your description of the way your brother changed the way he communicated with you in this experiment.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I'm missing is the last part: Can you think of any circumstances where there might be an advantage to not being sensitive to body language?