LANGUAGE

This was one of the more interesting things I think I’ve ever done. My experience was definitely a funny one, but also eye-opening as it made me realize just how vital language really is. I used my girlfriend and my girlfriend’s mum to do the experiment and they both had similar responses. At first, they thought it was funny and couldn’t hold it together. After the first 5 minutes had gone by, however, they seemed to be a lot less interested and were obviously less inclined to continue the conversation as I couldn't really add much to it. I tried to tell my girlfriend, who was making eggs at the time, that I didn't like them and that took me about 5 whole minutes to convey. Overall, the assignment was definitely a difficult one, as I had no interest in having such limited communication for 15 minutes straight. You would think that my participants would have changed their means of communication to fit with mine, but they didn’t. They continued to speak using language. However, my girlfriend did make a point to decipher each of the things I was trying to convey, word by word. But that wasn’t very efficient as it took way too long to even have a proper conversation in the first place.

The control of the conversation was entirely in the hands of my girlfriend and her mum. I could only really reply to what they were saying, as long as it was a simple question or comment. Otherwise, there was no complexity coming out of my end. Topics changed according to their discretion and became more and more simple as time went on. For example, they resorted to only asking me yes or no questions for the last 5 minutes. There were very few questions asked on my end. If conversation is supposed to be a balance between two people, then I would hardly consider this a conversation in the first place as the majority of the content was brought by them rather than myself. It definitely made me feel powerless as I had such a hard time getting them to understand me. For that reason, by the end of each conversation, I mostly left it to them as I would rather answer simple yes or no questions than spend 3 minutes trying to say “I don’t like eggs”. I consider conversation to also be a fast exchange of dialogue but unfortunately there was nothing “fast” about it.

If my girlfriend represented a culture of spoken language while I represented a language-lacking culture, I think she would have the advantage in communicating complex ideas within her population. As I mentioned earlier, I believe language to be a fairly quick exchange of information and in most cases, it is faster to use dialogue to get a point across rather than drawing, painting, or signaling symbols that mean the same things. Language looks to be specific, while symbolism and illustrations are more open to interpretation, and for that reason I believe language has the advantage. However, if me and my girlfriend (while still representing these cultures) attempted to communicate between each other, I think you would see some condescending behavior being displayed on her end as language, to most people, is the most modern form of communication. Seeing as how humans are the only species to have mastered it, I think people also see it as a display of intelligence. Therefore, I think the language bearing culture would be inclined to label the culture that uses symbolic language as either primitive or unintelligent. A modern example of this would be the sign language community vs. the spoken language community. One may think that sign language is not an effective means of communication compared to spoken language and thus, may develop a stigma or haughtiness about it. Nonetheless, the linguistic diversity displayed in sign language has proven to be quite beneficial, even to those who are able to use spoken language, as it widens the range of people you are able to communicate with. Regardless of the attitude that one speaking culture may have towards another, spoken language is only really valuable if it’s one of the more popular languages used around the world. For example, It’s usually quite rare to meet someone who can speak fluent balinese unless you are in indonesia. But why would English to Balinese communication not be a power trip of a conversation, while English to symbolism and Balinese to Symbolism, would be? Again, I think the answer to this question comes down to the common misconception that spoken language is a clear display of intelligence while Symbolism is not.

With that being said, I think it is important to look into what communication between an English speaker and a Balinese speaker would look like. Both possess the intelligent gift of language so shouldn’t communication be easy? Well, if neither party can speak the other's language, one can assume that they would resort to hand movements, body language, or in other words, symbolism. For that reason, it can be argued that nonverbal communication is equally as important as spoken language.

Although body language patterns may differ from country to country, I think that is the most basic form of common ground that humans have with one another as far as communication goes. The ability to read body language as well as convey things properly through body language can prove to be extremely beneficial when traveling. If you get lost in china and you have no way to ask anyone how to get home, you would most likely resort to using hand signals that allow the other person to interpret what your saying. Even if you are stranded in the middle of the Amazon and you come across a small amazonian tribe, the only way you will be able to ask for help, food, resources, is through symbolism and body language. For that reason, I think the ability to read body language is equally if not more imperative than spoken language as spoken language is literally only beneficial to other people in your community. The ability to read body language is also very important in one’s own community as people may be saying one thing to you, but their body language is showing you something very different. With that being said, it’s evident that someone who can efficiently use symbolism or body language as a means of communication would have much more ease in navigating the world than someone who only relies on their language to communicate; Thus, symbolism and body language prove themselves to no longer be considered “primitive” or less intelligent means of communication.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the benefit of being able to read body language. People with Autism actually struggle with this a lot making it difficult for them to decipher the true meaning in a conversation such as whether or not the speaker is being sincere or sarcastic, among other things. This usually leads to an inappropriate response. Even for those who don’t live with Autism, however, have most likely experienced the situation where body language does not give you a reliable response. I actually had an incident where I was standing behind someone in line at a grocery store, presumably a bit too close, and at one point they turned around and gave me a small smile. By having that person smile at me, I was under the impression that there wasn’t a problem. However, a couple minutes later, that same person asked me if I could give them a little more personal space. Upon hearing this, I was very confused as a smile doesn’t usually indicate that someone is unhappy with what is going on. As I said earlier, one of the faults to body language and symbolism is that it is open for interpretation and in turn, gives you the chance to make the wrong interpretation, which is exactly what happened here.