Language Blog
Part 1:
From my perspective I was with my brother in the kitchen cooking and eating and from his perspective he was in the kitchen also eating and making food. At first he would talk and ask questions or try to discuss a popular topic but I would give him only body language which was not enough. He changed his way of communicating because he became very quiet and stopped trying to talk to me and instead just focused on what he was doing instead of talking. He possessed the power when he spoke though he would say something and I would have to give very little communication back. If we were cultures he would be the one with the advantage since he speaks and he also has to power so he might use that and have an attitude of thinking maybe that he is better. In our culture people like immigrants may not be able to communicate so their experience is similar since the power would go to the one who is able to speak the language of the country they are in.
Part 2:
No I was not able to last 15 minutes since I have no way of at least giving sign that I am listening. They did not really feel comfortable doing it and they would have rather just done something else since I cannot communicate to him in any way whatsoever. Body language is very important since a lot of communicative symbols can be understood from body language like agreeing to what one is saying and also sign that you are listening and not thinking about something else. When our body language does not match our spoken words then it looks wrong and not as friendly and comfortable to be around. Body language has a big impact on overall communication. There is people who have a difficulty reading body language maybe people with attention problems since it is hard for them to pay attention they might miss body language. Maybe when working it can be beneficial since one does not worry about the language one give and just focuses on doing whatever task they need to do.
Part 3:
Part 1 may have been a little bit easier with I could write but it would still make communicating difficult. It would not be that useful for conversating but it is very useful for recording information and educating others and also helps spread ideas. Now written language is very important since we are constantly reading off of our phone this is all written language from various sources that many people around the world are reading.
Initial comment: When all your points are collapsed into one paragraph, it makes it difficult to parse out your responses to each prompt. It is to your advantage to ensure that your answers are clearly indicated. Separate each set of guideline prompts into separate paragraphs.
ReplyDeletePart 1: Okay on your description here. It sounds like you didn't tell your brother about the experiment? Once he stopped talking to you, what did YOU do to keep the conversation going? Lack of verbal communication doesn't mean you are a passive participant. You needed to keep the experiment going. What steps did you take to do this?
"He possessed the power when he spoke though he would say something and I would have to give very little communication back."
Okay, but expand. Could you ask questions? Change topics? Or were these skills limited to him?
Very good in the last section. Yes, a situation that better mirrors this power differential is seen 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?
Part 2: A little short on description here. Expand for both your own experience and that of your partner's. Usually the most interesting part of this experiment is the response of the partner. Some have actually gotten angry and stormed out. It would have offered more information for both you and your reader if this had been expanded.
"When our body language does not match our spoken words then it looks wrong and not as friendly and comfortable to be around."
You are *almost* onto a really important point here! 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.
Beyond this, think about how reading body language can help with other survival issues, such as figuring out if a person is attracted to you or if you can trust someone.
I'm not clear as to what you mean by "attention problems"? Can you explain further? What about those in the autism spectrum? One of the defining characteristics of autism is the inability to read body cues, which is why they have so much difficult in social situations, particularly with sarcasm and jokes.
Well, if you are working, you may not be communicating. But I suggest reading your boss's body language would be pretty important. :-) 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?
Part 3: Don't we essentially communicate this way when we text, essentially exclusively through written language? Aren't we conversing then?
Can you speak more directly to the advantages this provides cultures who use written language (not all do)? It also has an impact on the education of a population, allowing large groups to receive the identical piece of written information, as opposed to spoken, which can be vary in it's presentation over several deliveries and is subject to misinterpretation more readily. Just think about a game of "telephone".
Can you speak more directly to the impact written language has on a global scale? How has written language positively and negatively impacted the world and human interactions and relations?