Language Assignment Experiment

I found this experiment to be entertaining for half of the time and then tiring, and kind of frustrating for the rest of the 15 minutes. I had my husband help me for the first part of the assignment. He too, thought it was fun until he realized he really was not going to be able to understand everything I was gesturing. I told him I wanted to eat something, which he was able to get from my gestures. However, when I was trying to show him what I wanted it was really hard and I realized I would not be good in charades. He also started gesturing wildly at one point which made everything even harder and also a little funnier. He said he was not sure why he did that because it was not planned it just seemed like he should also gesture and that maybe it would make things easier. It did not.

I feel like for the most part he was in control of the conversation. My husband changed topics because he was trying to figure out a conversation where he would know what I was saying. He did a lot of asking questions. I think the person who is in control of the conversation was the one who was able to use language. Even though he did not understand everything I was saying, he did get some of it and it was helpful (aside from his gesturing) that he was able to voice his thoughts and ask questions about what I was talking about. He was also able to lead the conversation in different directions.

I think the culture that uses spoken language would have the advantage of communicating complex ideas with their population. Though, I do believe if we all just used gestures, we would understand each other if that was the only way to communicate. Maybe just not very complex ideas. I think the attitudes of the speaking culture would be that of frustration towards the culture that does not use symbolic language. It really was a little more than frustrating for my husband and I both to not be able to understand how to either gesture something or for him to understand what my movements meant. I would think the deaf culture resembles this. I know that it must be frustrating for them to not be understood especially when they know exactly what they are saying and what they mean, just as it might be frustrating for the person speaking to the deaf person to get them to understand something.

For part two of this experience I had my daughter help me. It was a little hard not to make any movement or change my voice in any way. I honestly thought that this part would have been easier. I never realized how often I use my hands or the amount of times I use facial expressions. My daughter said I was creeping her out. She did laugh a lot, but she kept saying “Stop, this is weird.” or “You’re acting like a robot!” It didn’t seem like she had any difficulty in understanding me. She said maybe if I was someone else, she would need certain gestures to go along with what they said so that she could understand how they may have meant something a little better.

Even though my daughter did not seem to have difficulty in understanding our conversation without any body movements, I do believe it is very important to have those cues in a conversation. The tone of their voice, or their facial expressions could help with meaning. I sometimes have to talk to my daughter about the way she says things. I will tell her that it isn’t what she said so much as how she said it. People can interpret things very differently than you meant them just by your gestures or tone. When you read a person’s body language you can a lot of times tell how they are feeling about what they are saying. Maybe they are jokingly saying something or perhaps they are angry. You can pick up on a lot of their moods and feelings and intent behind their words if you pay attention.

The adaptive benefit to be able to read body language is that we can understand something that someone says in one way and if they said it differently or added a gesture to it you would be able to understand in a completely different way. You would also know how to approach the situation based on tone of voice and body gestures. It could be a safety feature so to speak. In all these gestures you would know what a person may expect of you or what a person’s intent is.

I know that there are people who do not do well with reading body language. I also know I have read body language wrong before. I think if someone is in a rush, they may give off certain cues that they are annoyed or angry when they aren’t.