Language Week 3 Assignment

When performing the experiment, I found it very difficult to communicate. It took several minutes to communicate idea or sometimes they did not understand what I was trying to communicate at all. I felt like I was playing charades. My partner at first became frustrated with trying to figure out what I was saying. After the first 5-10 minutes, it became a little easier than when we first began because of  hand signs or body language I would repeat and he learned to associate those signs with words or that certain idea. The way he asked me questions or responded back to me made it simpler for me to respond and for him to understand. If there was something that could be answered with a yes or no with body language or something that could be answered with a simple idea, he formed it that way so it was easier to communicate. If we were two different cultures who could not understand each other, one could speak and the other could not, I think it would be easier for the non-speaking culture to express more complicated ideas because the non-speaking culture could still describe and communicate things to the speaking culture through hand signs. For example, the non-speaking culture could communicate a bird by making a bird with their hands, but if the speaking culture just said the word "bird" the non-speaking culture would not understand because that is not their language. I believe the speaking culture would still have a superior attitude toward the culture that does not speak. They would see the non-speaking culture as primitive or basic because they speak with their hands or use other things to communicate instead of with their voice. If however, like in the experiment, both cultures understood the spoken language, but only one could communicate it, the speaking culture would have the advantage over the non-speaking language. This true with people who are deaf and cannot speak very well or with people who are mute. They are a non-speaking culture within a speaking culture. They can communicate through sign language, but the majority of speaking people do not know or understand sign language.

I believe the second part of the experiment was harder. I do not think I was able to last for the full 15 minutes. I kept trying to raise my hands and move them around to emphasize what I was saying. I start to change the tone of my voice, but would stop myself. I did not have as much problems with moving my head, but one or two times I tried to move my head. I went longer than 15 minutes only to make up for the times where I did raise or lower my tone of voice or moved my hands. I kept having to correct myself. Near the end it became easier not to have the urge to make hand, facial, head, or tone of voice movements. After the experiment when I discussed with my partner, he said that the hardest part was he couldn't tell when I was being funny, serious, sarcastic, or passionate about what I was saying. There were no signs in the face or the tone of voice to indicate to him what exactly I was trying to say. This experiment shows that it is helpful to have both "signs" and the spoken language, especially in the culture we are in we need both to communicate effectively.  There are some people who cannot read body language such as people with the Asperger's syndrome. They cannot interpret body language or tone of voice. The adaptative ability is that you can communicate effectively with people around you. You know how to respond to something. If someone insults you, but they use a joking tone of voice, you know not to take it seriously because they are playing around. If someone insults with a serious tone of voice and body language indicating the same thing, you know to take offense and leave or respond back angrily. I do not think I can come up with an enviromental condition where it would benefit you to not use body language. Possibly a place where it is extremely hot or cold and you do not want to waste energy that you can use to survive by using extra things to communicate where it is not extremely necessary to use body language or hand signals.

Yes, I do believe part one would have been easier, if you were allowed to use written language. I think it would be easier because then you would have been able to communicate complex ideas. I think it would be especially easier for people that live in this culture where the written language is becoming more prominent. There is less face to face interaction. There is email, social networks, and text messaging. In these forms of communication, which are being used more and more, there is no hand signals or head movements and there is no tone of voice. We are learning to interpret the tone in written language, but it is still hard to interpret if someone is being sarcastic, for example. Many cultures use it and develop it. We are a culture that is developing it right now through the devices I just listed. It gives an advantage because ideas can now spread extremely fast and we can communicate to people a world away through the written language. The written language has made everything globalized from business, entertainment, media, etc. Everyone can communicate with everyone else in the world easily just through email or social networking site. Now looking at written language specifically it changed everything. The written language is also how we know things from thousands of years ago because it was written down somewhere.