Part 1:
Initially I only planned on having a conversation with one of my friends but it ended up becoming a group conversation between me, my friend, and my friend's 7 yr old sister. So it ended up being a bit harder than I expected to communicate without talking or writing or body language but overall not all that bad since I was able to do slight head movements for certain responses that my friend was able to understand, although my friends younger sister kept asking why I wasn't talking and grew annoyed by my "lack" of action. In contrast my friend treated it like a normal conversation with me because he seemed to know I was paying attention in the conversation.
As far as control of the conversation I pretty much and zero control in the conversation since I was unable to really voice my opinion in anyway or drive the conversation in any direction. meanwhile my friends younger sister had no control mainly because she was trying to figure out why I wasn't talking so ultimately my friend had complete control over where the conversation was going. my friend's little sister mainly asked questions although they weren't relevant to the conversation in question while my friend mainly went on talking while I listened and wished I could speak instead of give slight head movements when he asked me something.
If we were all cultures clearly my friend's culture would be able to communicate complex ideas among themselves since they have the power of language and overall they would have an advantage over my culture that is unable to use language to communicate. In a modern situation that comes to my mind is how most major gangs have their own exclusive coded language in which they can communicate while police and the average individual are oblivious to and gives gangs an advantage to share their plans.
Part II:
I thought that this part was going to be easy since I would be able to actually talk, but it couldn't have been harder. yes I was able to talk and express my opinion and yes my friend was able to respond to me normally and was able to understand me enough to have somewhat normal conversation, but I found it hard to fluently talk without changing my tone of voice, making expressions and especially making body movement and found my self stopping mid-sentence and stuttering at times in order to think about what to say next for a second while preventing myself from doing anything but speaking in monotone.
Overall this assignment made me realize that hand gestures, at least in my case, aid us in talking. Being able to change vocal tone helps show a person's emotion and how they feel about a certain topic or situation. eye contact also helps show that a person acknowledges you and are paying attention to what your saying while hand gestures are able to help convey a point through imagery.
Being able to read body language allows you to understand a lot about a person. for example when a person is lying, stressed, angry, sad, happy (truly or falsely) their body language reflects that for example when a person lies they make certain gestures unless they are in a state of mind where they believe what their saying is absolute truth then or they are really good at keeping or are able to throw people off by having abnormal yet natural body language they display when they tell the truth as oppose to just a straight face, their body movements consistent between telling the truth or lying. In addition being able to read body language allows one to interpret gestures that people make for things like stop, go, no, yes, etc. and allows for one to communicate silently which may be needed or just convenient in some situation.
A 7-year old can be tough under these circumstances! Good discussion on the balance of power in the conversation, though when it comes to control, I suggest that the 7-year old had more control and power than you did since she can persist with her questions and there was nothing you could do about it!
ReplyDeleteInteresting comparison with gangs, police and language. Obviously, this gives the gangs some measure of control over the police and their own circumstances and you can see that it allows the gangs a feeling of superiority over the police since the police don't understand the "code". Interesting connection and worth exploring how we use language to control or punish or reward others around us.
Good job describing your own experiences in Part B, but usually the response of the partner is the most interesting thing about the experiment. I would have liked to have heard more about that. How did they respond to your lack of body language?
I appreciate how you emphasize the ability to use body language to determine honest or falseness in a person. This is very important, particularly from an adaptive perspective. Humans actually use body language as a bit of a lie detector. If your words don't match your body language, we tend to believe the body language, which is harder to fake, and assume you are lying. This causes problems if you know the person, but think about the implications if you are meeting a person for the first time. Would you trust them if their body language didn't match their words? Do you think you would trust them to be reliable, to help when asked, to act fairly in a business transaction? Probably not. Reading body language tells us who we can trust and who we can't and it has far-reaching implications throughout our lives.
Missing the final bullet point from the guidelines? Otherwise, good post.
Lamin,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. You were very descriptive.
Something I found particularly interesting was the gang/police comparison. I never would have thought of that. I actually had a hard time coming up with a modern mirror for this portion of the assignment, so I appreciate this fresh idea! I can definitely recognize where there might be an imbalance of power in favor of gangs who use unknown code words. It's an interesting angle.
Also, I am curious to know if you explained this assignment to the 7 year old? Not that she would necessarily grasp the entire concept. I was just wondering.
Thanks!
I loved your description on how hard it was to talk without changing your tone of voice, that was definitely the hardest part for me since i think your partner won't fully connect with you. They don't know what kind of expression is being used so it gets a little tough, Good Job!!
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