Language Experiment
PART ONE:
I decided to use my boyfriend as my partner in this experiment. I told him I was coming over to see him and I will be conducting an experiment for my Physical Anthropology class. I decided not to share the rules or details because I thought it would make the experiment more fun for me. When I arrived at his apartment I gave him a hug and smiled. He started talking right away with the usual, "How are you? How was the drive? Are you hungry? I missed you," and other random questions. I nodded my head to answer a few of my questions and then he started noticing that I was not speaking. This concerned him at first, he thought I was mad or upset about something. After speaking his concerns, he put two and two together and asked, "Wait...Is this part of your experiment?" I nodded my head yes.
He then went on to ask "why" which is kind of hard to answer with your head or facial expressions so I just shrugged. He then began asking Yes or No questions to make the conversation easier for us. He asked if I was hungry, I nodded my head"yes" and he then went on to list our favorite lunch spots and we narrowed it down with my head nods. It was very interesting trying to have a general conversation with no words and just body language. It felt like he was more in charge of the conversation due to the fact that I could only use body language to communicate. I wasn't able to really ask any questions back. For 20 minutes we were able to figure out where we were going to order lunch and what we wanted to order without me saying a word.
A culture that does not use spoken word to communicate would struggle within a culture that regularly uses spoken word to communicate. For example, the deaf community constantly has to adapt or deal with struggles in the hearing community because almost everything in society is made for hearing people. But if there was a community made up of all deaf people and they only socialized with each other, they would thrive. They would accommodate for each other and build a whole society that fit their needs.
PART TWO:
For this section I decided to communicate with my mom. I told her I was conducting an experiment for my Physical Anthropology class but I didn't share any further details. I told her to have a normal conversation with me and we started talking about our weekend. We both equally engaged in the conversation but I had to keep reminding myself to refrain from my usual facial expressions, hand gestures, and vocal emphasis. I am a hand-talker, I love talking with my hands, so this was actually pretty difficult for me. My mom seemed weirded out and she seemed to be refraining from being as physical with her communication just because she picked up on my change in communication. I think she was really affected by the way I was acting because we are so close. My mom asked me if I was being sarcastic at moments in the conversation because she couldn't tell without my physical body language.
I think physical body language is very important because it's used to express mood and tone. People change moods so quickly and so many times throughout a day to day basis that it is impossible to communicate without body language. When we connect well with someone, we are usually able to read their body language better than everyone else. My best friend and I can have almost an entire conversation without words and just body language alone and we can fully understand what we're talking about. Body language can detect, sarcasm, distrust, distance, when someone is uncomfortable. As well as excitement, comfort, and tension. Knowing the signs of these feelings through body language can help in many aspects of your life.
A person who is able to read body language really well can use this to their advantage in their professional life, romantic life, and social life. Body language helps us connect well with other people. Being able to understand your boss's body language will help you get ahead in your career making it easier to survive with a good job. Being able to read someone's body language will help you navigate romantic partners possibly allowing you to have reproductive success.
All over the world there are many different religions and cultures that practice different forms of body language, although the slight wave of a hand is universally known as a way of saying "hi." But many cultures and religious practices have different ways that they communicate physically. Mixing people of different cultures and backgrounds can easily cause some confusion, especially if they don't speak the same language to begin with. Other times I can point out specific moments where men have misunderstood certain body language. This happens a lot in our society today, men seem to assume certain body language of a woman they are trying to pursue and they end up being completely wrong. I can say I have experienced this myself and I know a lot of women close to me who have also experienced this type of miscommunication. But perhaps this misunderstanding of body language could be a result of the lack of trying to properly understand body language to begin with.
A well-presented post.
ReplyDeletePart 1: Great experiment! It's always very brave to conduct it keeping your partner in the dark, but always produces more interesting results. Good description and good discussion on the issue of control of the conversation.
" A culture that does not use spoken word to communicate would struggle within a culture that regularly uses spoken word to communicate."
But that's not what the question was asking. This was about the ability of the two cultures to communicate complex ideas *within their own culture*. For example, would you be able to explain Darwin's theory of natural selection or Einstein's theory of relativity (both "complex ideas") without symbolic language? I don't think I could. If body language was better at communicating these complex ideas, we wouldn't need spoken symbolic language. Because symbolic language is pervasive in all cultures, that tells us that it is advantageous in communication, particularly with concepts that are just ideas and not things to demonstrate and show.
You are connecting the first question with the second. They are meant to be separate. That said, the deaf community is a good example and you are precisely correct to note that it really depends upon conditions. What we are looking for here are conditions creating a power differential in the conversation (you didn't have the power but your boyfriend did). If a person who was deaf was surrounded by those who hear normally (and don't use ASL), they would be lacking "power". But if you have a hearing person (again who doesn't use ASL) in a room surrounded by non-hearing people who are all communicating with ASL, then the hearing person is lacking power.
Google limited my response, so I will finish it here:
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Part 2: Great description here and I loved how your mom reacted. Very telling. About this:
" My mom asked me if I was being sarcastic at moments in the conversation because she couldn't tell without my physical body language. "
That's important. What was your mom looking for in the conversation that she was missing due to the lack of body language? When someone is being 'sarcastic', they say one thing but usually mean the opposite, correct? So their words don't match their meaning... in effect they are lying. What does this tell you about one of the functions of body language? See more below...
I don't disagree with your conclusions regarding the information we receive from body language, but you are only considering the situation where body language matches and supports the information you receive from spoken language. What does it tell you when the body language doesn't match the spoken language? Humans tend to use body language as a type of lie detector. If spoken words don't match with the body language, we are more inclined to believe the body language and doubt the words. Think about how being able to detect liars might help an individual's ability to survive and reproduce (which applies to the next section).
Okay on the adaptive benefits of body language, but what type of benefits do you get by being able to detect liars?
Your discussion of the cultural differences in body language actually applies to the last question, which asks if there are times when you should avoid reading body language. Just like different cultures speak different languages, they also have different forms of body language. Until you can "read" their body language accurately, it might be best to avoid reading too much into it as you could be risking a misinterpretation.
But back to the first question in this prompt: Are their people who have difficulty reading body language, not because of a language difference, but because of a difference in ability? What about those in the autism spectrum? One of the defining characteristics of autism is the inability to read body cues, which is why they have so much difficult in social situations, particularly with sarcasm and jokes.
Your comment on men failing to read women's body language is interesting. One thought is that men may have biological reasons to ignore certain body language or to intentionally misinterpret it. Is there a parallel for women? Do they sometimes intentionally misinterpret men's body language?