Part 1 – Mr. Silent
I found this part of the experiment easy. The reason is that there was more than one person, so they did most of the conversing and I really did not have to do much. At first, they would ask me questions or for my opinion and I would just laugh and makes gestures and some facial expressions. After a while, they started to get frustrated and would leave me out of the conversation. They came back around and started to make conversation that required less complex responses, so I did not feel left out. I believe if it were just one other person that it would have been a more difficult in the sense that trying to communicate with that one person would bring more challenges. Those challenges would be if that other individual would understand my non-verbal gestures to be able to continue the conversation or just get frustrated and walk away as my partners did. The culture that has the advantage would be the one that has spoken language to communicate complex ideas. We live in a complex society that has television, computers, and sports and many other activities that require the use of many words to communicate these ideas about what we do in life. If we had lived in the Neanderthal era, communication without language would be easier, since the only thing we would had to worry about was food and shelter. The speaking culture’s attitude would be of power because they will be able to communicate with more ease and are easier to understand. I say this because when I was not able to communicate I felt powerless where I could not get my point across by using non-verbal communication. Individuals in our culture that have trouble communicating would be those that speak a different or foreign language. The affects would be about the same as in this experiment. The individual that speaks the foreign language would have difficulty and would not try to interact with others that speak English. That individual would live in a community that speaks his or her language, so the interaction would not be so frustrating.
Part 2 – Mr. No Embellishments
I was only able to last a few minutes of only using speech for communicating. This was difficult for me because I use a lot of facial expression and hand movements when I talk. You pretty much have to be a robot, since they are motionless and talk in a monotone voice. My partners were greatly affected because they are used to me having more vocal intonation and using hand gestures and facial expressions. They could not tell if I was being serious or had any emotion and said, “It seemed like we were talking to a brick wall.” The use of sign says a lot about the way we use our language and is very important to communicate non-speech language to communicate effectively. Without this technique, this world would be dull that everyone would be monotonous and emotionless. Imagine nobody laughing or getting excited about something that just happened. I think that everyone has a certain degree of difficulty reading body language. You have to know the individual to read their body language correctly because there is not one definition for a type of body movement and everyone reacts differently. The adaptive benefit would be that the individual would fit into any type of crowd and be able to communicate effectively. In a chemical environment would be a benefit to not reading body language, for the fact that most of the body language means that the individual is near death.
Great discussion for part 1. I liked how you made the connection with our early ancestors and Neanderthals. Good job outlining how this affected your partners in conversation.
ReplyDeleteMost people are surprised to have more difficulty with the second part of this experiment and it usually heavily impact their partners.
There are individuals in our society who specifically have great difficulty reading body language. Can you think of who they might be?
I don't think I understand this last statement: "In a chemical environment would be a benefit to not reading body language, for the fact that most of the body language means that the individual is near death."
I really liked the titles of your parts in this assignment. I completely agree that the second part was really hard. You made great connections to anthropology in general and kept me interested the whole time. I agree with L Rodriguez that the last statement made no sense. But great post otherwise.
ReplyDeleteThe second part of the assignment was very hard and I do understand what you meant with the exercise and how hard it is to communicate with out any sign language.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you title your assignments, they were a bit amusing. I agree with you with the second part being really hard. I, myself only lasted about 5 minutes before using my hands. Overall, good post!
ReplyDeleteI probably went a little to the extreme. What I meant by a chemical environment is that people are exposed to a certain chemical like serum gas and there body language would indicate that they are affected, knowing this would alert that they are near dead. Maybe a better example would be during a disaster because everyone is showing fear or confusion, so you would not want to read other peoples body language in that you might become even more scared to what had occurred.
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