Language Blog Post

This assignment was not easy, and I can’t imagine any person being able to do this without hesitation, frustration, and brief moments of giving up. I had to sit with different people several times, trying to figure out a way to communicate. I was not able to speak, write or use sign language. This made me feel almost naked to have one of my learned behaviors taken away from me. I could feel anxiety whenever I imagined myself not being able to use symbolic language in order to communicate on a regular basis.

My partners had no idea that I was doing an assignment that would not let me use symbolic language in order to communicate with them. Some partners made jokes at how I was acting until what I was doing because the topic of the conversation. One person stopped talking to me completely because they thought I was being rude or making fun of them. However, one of my partners tried communicating at the same level I was and we actually became pretty successful.

If I were to imagine that my partners and I represented two different cultures that had met for the first time, I would give only one culture some great advantages in communicating complex ideas. The culture that would be able to express symbolic language would be able to use language to explain what they are saying and how they feel, but another culture would have no idea how to interpret this. On the other hand, a person who is not able to express themselves with symbolic language can find a way to communicate with people regardless of their culture. They don’t need to understand each other verbally or symbolically because they are speaking a language that does not exactly need to be learned. I would have to say that people who can communicate without using symbolic language have a better chance of communicating complex ideas to other cultures because they have a variety of ways to communicate in order to get their point across that seem to be more understandable to some one who does not speak their language.

Individuals in our culture that have difficulty communicating with spoken language may have a hard time relating to other people. They are known as handicapped, might even be put into different schools, and could be out casted from certain environments. I have a friend who is deaf, and from what she has told me, it is hard to make friends with other people who do not know sign language. She says that most people avoid talking to her because they are impatient and don’t want to try. It might seem like common sense, but many people do not know that deaf people have trouble speaking to others as well as hearing others. It helps that she is able to text people through her phone and computer, but at the same time, she is still rejected from so many people and things because of her disability. She is not able to go to school unless she pays extra money for a specific program, and she has also never had a job. I took sign language classes in order to communicate with her, but we also text because I am not fluent. Some other ways we communicate with each other are using our hand gestures and facial expressions.

I honestly was not able to last fifteen minutes of speaking without being able to use any physical embellishments. This experiment was difficult for me because I naturally use my hands, and face, and tone of voice to show how I feel about what I am talking about. Without being able to do this, my partner had no idea whether I was serious, sarcastic, rude, or friendly. There were a few times when my partner became offended because he assumed I was insulted him when I was actually joking. There was also a time where I became offended because when I was speaking sarcastically, my partner assumed I was being serious and said something serious back that hurt my feelings. This is why we did not last fifteen minutes.

My partner was affected in a negative way because he kept taking things that I was saying the wrong way. I either was insulting him, or was not interested in what he was saying due to not being able to speak enthusiastically or show any facial expressions. He ended up not speaking to me for an entire day until I finally was able to tell him that the way I was acting was for an experiment in one of my classes. I didn’t want to tell anyone that I was performing an experiment until afterwards in order to get a better result.

This experiment says a lot about our use of “signs” in our language. Using signs is just as important in communication as language, if not more. Sure people will be able to understand what we are saying, but without and signs, they will not understand the way we are saying something and might get a completely different idea of what we are telling them.

I believe that many people have difficulty reading body language. Dating is the most common example of how people can find it difficult to read a person’s body language. On a first date, a man tries to kiss a woman because he thought the date went well. Little did he know that her legs were crossed away from him the whole time, she kept excusing herself to go to the restroom, and texted on her phone most of the night while giving him a few courtesy laughs. There are benefits to being able to read body language such as being able to figure out when the right time to talk to your boss is about the vacation time you would like to take off. Also, it helps you determine whether a person is interested in you, so you know that it is okay to ask for their phone number. There are many advantages to reading body language, and in my opinion, having this ability makes life much easier. I can not see how not being able to read body language can benefit a person, except maybe to not let the way certain people’s thoughts affect you. Body language can show how a person feels about you, and this might distract or upset you if the body language is negative.