Language Blog

Part 1-

I found this experiment very difficult, I never knew how much I relied on language until I wasn’t able to use my voice. I had the conversation with my mother and she and I are both very expressive and loud because we are Italian. We were able to have a conversation and some what understand what we were communicating through my hand gestures. It was a very funny experiment. I was still very hard for me not to use my voice because I like to talk a lot.

The patterns of the conversation were unlike any conversation I have ever had because I wasn’t able to respond with my voice. My mother would keep giving me a confused look because she didn’t understands some of the gestures I was giving. I never realized how important symbolic communication was.

If my conversation represented two cultures meeting for the first time it would be filled with a lot of confusion. I think that the culture that doesn’t have verbal language would have the advantage. If to people meet for the first time and they don’t speak the same language then they both would resort to gesturing and pointing at things to describe what they are trying to say. The culture that does have symbolic language might look to the other culture as under advanced or not as intelligent. One example of people not having symbolic language today would be the deaf. Yes, they do have sign language but they are not verbally speaking with one another. It seems it would be hard for people to understand one another if they both didn’t speak rather than one person having symbolic language and the other not. I also think it takes longer for these people in our society to communicate with one another. Not having symbolic language would be very hard to deal with.

Part 2-

 I was only able to last about 10 minutes because it was so difficult to communicate. I found this part of the experiment the most difficult. I am a very expressive person and I always use my hands to gesture. The hardest part of this experiment was not being able to raise my eyebrows or smile or even point or move my hands. I am always a person that gets my point across by using my facial expressions. My friends and family always say they can see how I am feeling that day by the look on my face.

My mother seemed somewhat board by the conversation that we were having because we were not able to communicate in the same way that we normally do. Normal words or exciting comments did not come across the same way because there was not passion behind the conversation or the words. After this experiment I have found that non-speech language is even more important that verbal language because you can’t get the real feeling or emotion across about an issue or great conversation without expression or gestures. Sign language is more important that some of us even know or will ever even realize because we take all of our forms of language for granted.

I think that most people have a hard time understanding body language. I know when I am in a room with a crowd or people I can look around and understand what most people are feeling just by their body language. For example the other day I was standing in line at the grocery store and the person behind me was standing way to close and invading my personal space so I leaned and moved feather way to show them I was uncomfortable and it worked. I sent another message to someone without saying any words and just using my body language. I think a benefit to not reading body language would be when you are trying to push your way to the front of a line and you can see that people are standing in the way or not moving forward and you push past them to hurry along with your day and you can obviously see they are annoyed but if you just keep moving it won’t matter.

Part 3-

 I always think that having written language will help any situation. Sometimes it is easier to communicate with written language rather than verbal because when you write it can sometimes be easier to express how you are really feeling. If I was able to write in part one the conversation would have taken longer but would have been a lot easier to understand. Being able to write down what questions I had for my mother would have been better than trying to point or communicate with my facial expressions.

Written language has many advantages to start it can last for generations rather the verbal communication that can be forgotten about in a minute or two. If you have written communication you can always remember what conversation that you have had. I also think that with written communication people are more willing to be open about what they are feel because some people have a hard time getting across the real message they want to portray. A culture that uses written communication can only grow and prosper form being able to communicate in many different ways.

Written communication has impacted the world for many years. We are able to learn and grow from reading other writings from different cultures. We are able to send message around the world through written communication. Without written communication we as a society would not be as advanced. We are now able to contact any nation on the planet and send them so form of written communication in order to get our message across. I feel that written communication is the strongest form of communication that we have.