Language Blog Post

Speaking to someone without using any form of language is very hard to do. Since there is no way to really speak to them the communication is not easy to understand. In my experiment I found that not being able to communicate in the normal way really made things difficult. My partner had a very hard time understanding what I was trying to say and using hand signals was not as easy as I thought it would be. It was basically like playing charades except there was no category that they knew about. Having a conversation was close to impossible. There was a lot of guessing going on and that made a conversation hard to keep going. The person I did this with had to alter how they communicated because I could not speak and there were a lot of guessing and questions going on. I would try and describe with symbols or other things and it would just lead to my partner being confused and asking a bunch of questions that would try and be what I was trying to say. People who are from different cultures have a hard time communicating and this situation I had could really relate to something like this. People who speak different languages is basically what I was doing in this experiment. I was speaking a language that someone did not understand so there was a lot of confusion. If someone who spoke English and someone who spoke German met it would be hard to communicate too. Not being able to speak and talking to someone who was speaking is the same as speaking two different languages, except when they asked what I meant, I could say yes so it would be easier than not being able to understand at all. There is a language barrier that has to be broken in order to really be able to understand one another.

After talking to someone for 15 minutes or so I never realized how important facial expression and body language is and I was really not able to keep a straight face through the whole time. I knew that body language was a huge part of having a conversation with someone. Being able to show you are happy or mad or nervous about something is a lot easier than having to say it. Body language is like saying something without actually saying it. Voice changing with each word or sentence is a huge thing too. When someone is talking soft or monotone you know something is wrong, and when someone is talking high and fast you can tell that they are happy or excited. Having to talk without all of these crucial points was hard because there was no way of telling how the person felt. It was sort of like talking over text or email. When you read how someone is talking there is no emotion or hand movements and that is how this was. It was like texting where you couldn't tell how the person felt and things could easily be skewed. Reading people while you are talking to them really helps you understand how the conversation is going and what tone that it has. Facial expressions is a big part of reading someone and reading the conversation and when a conversation is lacking that it is boring and bland. I think there are people who have problems reading body language and that is usually the person who would keep trying to talk to someone that obviously did not want to talk to them. If you are at a bar and someone has their body turned away from you and is giving you short answers and not really looking at you, that usually means that they do not want anything to do with you. Being able to read someone is important and usually if someone wants to talk to you they will be facing you and looking at your face and it will feel like a good conversation. I think that being able to read someone is important in really any situation but an environmental situation where it could be beneficial could be maybe in a natural disaster where things are really bad and if everyone is acting like it is really bad and crying it would make it worse. Seeing people worried or scared would make you feel that way and not being able to read it would be helpful and make things easier. Body language and being able to read people is very important.