Week 3 : Language

Part 1:
I found this to be difficult when i was communicating with my partner as i lacked the ability to be more descriptive with what i was trying to say. Many of the trains of though were boiled down to simple smiles and negative gestures but I lacked the ability to truly express full ideas. In turn my partner after the initial few minutes changed the conversation into close ended questions were a simple head nod or facial expression could answer the questions, otherwise he was left with half answered questions. In the end i believe that the culture that has the advantage is the culture that is able to communicate complex ideas not thru one mean but thru a cornucopia of way, be it spoken, written or thru body language. In retrospect i believe that the culture that is able to communicate more efficiently will alter their way of communicating with the opposing subject. Their questions and interactions will be a lot more brief, many times missing pertinent information not because they are careless but because they lacked the ability to have full understanding. Having worked many years in retail and customer service based jobs i've bared witness to people becoming agitated and down right nasty because they were unable to communicate with someone that lacked the ability to communicate with them. In the successful communication I did notice that several times a lot more bodily gestures were made, words were spoken more slowly and like an intricate game of charades a lot of guessing took place.

Part 2:
I regretfully was not able to do the 15 uninterrupted minutes without any physical embelishments. I would soon laugh when i heard my voice or would catch myself making facial expressions. What i did notice thou in the time that i was able to strip myself of all embellishments was that i lacked the ability to convey proper tones my jokes did not make sense, my sarcasm and compliments were misconstruded. Even any authority that i held over my pet dog was lost and he just stared at me confused. My partner was confused at my train of thoughts, often picking up on punch lines and tongue in cheek remarks were now lost altogether. The conversation turned into a very boring one sided relay of though because my responses were neither supportive or encouraging, this caused the conversation to turn into a monolog. I think the usage of "signs" has become indispensable to properly communicate, long ago were the days were a prolific vocabulary was common, instead its been replaced by tones and hand gestures. I do believe that there are individual that lack the agility or the ability altogether to recognize different gestures made with the body. Some of these individuals are people with SLD, a characteristic that manifest itself with the inability to use non verbal methods of communication. A time where there would be a benefit in not reading someones body language would most likely be when you meet someone that is of different cultural background or just plain different from you, your body language and non verbal methods of communication have developed thru the interaction with a certain culture and the individual. We can't be quick to expect people to share similar non verbal communications, we could misconstrued someones lack of interest as flat out hostility or their kindness as something else.

Part 3:
I believe that if we would of been permitted to use any form of written language it would of aided in the ability to communicate, There was a level of communication done non verbally but it lacked the "why" factor. I would of been able to properly explain why i like certain things over something else or why i would place something in a specific area, it would of allowed us to convey ideas in depth although much slower than spoken words. For a culture that not only develops but uses written language they are able to establish precedence of their history, their history can be passed down without their history being altered by word of mouth and someones failing memory. In regards to the spread of ideas around the world via the written language i believe it to of had a unifying effect, to a certain extent we remove the individual from the equation, what we propose are ideas without the unnecessary non verbal undertones that someone would bring or further yet the unnecessary misunderstanding that could arise from a misconstrued body language misconception.