Language 

For my language assignment, I sat down with a few people from work. I thought that this would be the best way for me to do this assignment because I only know these people as co-workers and not outside of work. I do not know there sense of humor or anything about them besides their work ethics. I figured that for both parts of the assignment, that it would not only let me get to know them better, but I also wouldn't be able to expect what they were going to say or do. It would get me a better all around experience dealing with individuals that have different ways of communicating with me rather than my family or significant others that would know what to expect from me.

I actually decided to first walk up to the group of my chosen participants and join in on their conversation. Only trick was, I wasn't able to actually "join in" verbally. The looks on their faces were priceless when I just simply nodded, pointed and shook my head to them. They looked at me as if I was crazy. They actually all asked me if I was sick or had lost my voice. I was only able to go on with this for about 2 minutes before everyone was starting to walk away from me thinking I was weird. I then told everyone what I was doing. They joined in with me and we had a "conversation". It was so hard to not speak! I have never had to do this before and struggled a lot. I felt like I was playing charades and no one could guess what I was trying to say. There really was no way to know what I was referring to or "saying" since we didn't start off with a topic, just like it would be if you were communicating with someone foreign. 

During this time, everyone started to speak very slow and also started to use a lot of hand gestures almost as if I couldn't hear them. They knew that I physically could hear them but it was just a instinct for them to do so. They would not talk over one another either which normally happens frequently. If we were to be from two different cultures, I feel that I had a better advantage at communicating than they did, since I could not communicate back with words, they had to understand my gestures. I know that it is harder for people that are deaf to communicate with others since the American language is very difficult and complex, but I think when you take out all of the extra words and added in stuff, it breaks it down to a much easier language and communication. When you slow down our everyday super fast process of talking and communicating, things get a lot more understandable and free-flowing. 

So I usually talk an extreme amount and use even more facial expressions, hand gestures and shoulder shrugs than the normal human being. This next part of the assignment was horrible for me as you could imagine. It took me three tries to figure out that I was not going to be able to make it the full 15 minutes. About 6 minutes was my best try and that was with me really focusing on not using any of my gestures. The conversation was a lot slower and more concentrated on my task at hand rather than on the topic of interest. My co-workers did not know what to take of what I was saying either. We are not very close in friendship, but they at least know what a normal response or feeling to something might be and I gave none of that. When you say, "Ya, that sounds awesome," in a mono-tone voice, they did not know whether or not I was being sarcastic or excited about what they said. Not being able to physically express yourself in conversation makes the conversation dull and boring! I think that non-verbal communication while communicating is probably more important than the verbal communication. I honestly do not know what I would do if I could not scrunch my face up when I said "Ew" about something. This second part of the assignment made me realize how much easier the first part was than I originally thought. I actually went back and did the first part of the assignment over later with my boyfriend and it went much smoother than my first try around. I was able to use my facial expressions and hand motions more freely and recognize that I could easily communicate with just that. It did take a little bit more time to get my point across, but he got the "picture". 

I think the adaptive benefit to being able to read body language would to be if you ever encountered someone who did not fully understand English. If you could sort of make out what they were saying but a few words did not fit, and you could see that their facial expression was showing what they meant, you would be able to make out their sentence. When people can't make out body language, like blind people, they will go by the different pitches in your tone of voice to help them understand your point of view, whether it be sad, angry, happy or excited. This is to them as facial expressions and body movement is to people who can see. I personally do not know of any environmental conditions that would make it easier to not be able to read body language. I think that body language is just as important to us as actual verbal language is.