Language Blog Post

Despite the constant regulations and lockdowns being set into action these past couple weeks, my family and I have had no difficulties keeping ourselves entertained, whether its with puzzles, binge-watching new Netflix series, or just plain-old conversation within the comfort of our own living room.  I have noticed that whatever activity is at hand, regardless of what it is, communication is the main component that instigates and adds fluidity to our activities.  When we were assigned to partake in a conversation without any version of a symbolic language, the activities that were at hand became a lot less fluid and a little more robotic.  I decided to try this experiment with my two younger siblings, who both obviously lead the conversation seeing as to the fact I could not physically speak.  My contributions to the conversation were limited strictly to responses, such as nodding my head up or down to give a simple "yes" or "no".  I cursed myself for never taking sign language in high school, which made this experiment difficult and overall lead to nowhere in terms of my communication.  However, my siblings failed to show any signs of indifference toward me, and actually spoke more freely and asked more questions as a result from my silence.  Although they did their best to include me in most conversations, there were times in which I had no choice but to only observe and listen, such as an eruption of a side topic or a joke being told, which  i could respond to only with a laugh.  Nonetheless, there was no doubt about who owned the conversations held throughout the experiment, it was clearly my siblings were were laughing hysterically by the end of the night.  To analyze this experiment in a parallel format, the similarities can be made between two cultures who have different methods of communication.  Although I had a minimal amount of success using a communicative method that uses no symbolic language, there may be cultures that exist today that may be able to use this method very effectively.  However, the results from the experiment shows that the culture with a spoken language may have an easier time communicating complex ideas within their population because our alphabet and speech allows it.  Because of this, it may seem as though the culture with a spoken language share more intelligence amongst themselves than the culture without a spoken language, and this belief may be exhibited through their behavior towards one another.  One example of this that can be seen in recent history is the colonization of our miraculous country, which was stolen from Natives that did not speak in the same tongue as the Europeans who colonized their land.  The Europeans believed they were more intelligent than the Natives because of their lack of knowledge in terms of language, and so they took advantage of them.

The second part of this assignment was evidently more difficult than it lead on to be.  Absence of any physical movement, along with lack of vocal intonations and arm movements made communicating a point more difficult.  My partners, who have switched from my siblings to now both of my parents, were constantly being thrown off by my points being made in my conversation because the lack of emotion and enthusiasm in the way I was communicating was sending mixed signals.  We take for granted our ability to use signs as a form of communication, because without them it is hard to tell what exactly is trying to be communicated in the first place.  This is shown to be true because a lot of information can be found out just by paying attention to someone's body language, such as the kind of mood they're in, what their immediate intentions may be, or even what they may be thinking.  Reading someone's body language is also a major tool when it comes to survival because it could mean the difference between life or death.  When in the wild, and being constantly on the lookout for other predators, it is essential to be able to recognize the dangers posed in front of you and react.  Reading the body language of a predator can give off signals of a potential threat, which can be recognized and escaped from if noticed early enough.  Avoiding predators makes more time to gather resources, which increase a likelihood of reproducing.  An exemplary situation that reading body language is not useful in is when put in front of a pathological liar, who may appear as sincere when telling a lie.  A common method to distinguish liars is to look at their eyes, and see if they lock onto yours or not.  But this can become deceitful once a pathological liar does the same thing.  It goes to show that body language is not always reliable, and as a matter of fact can be used as a tool to deceit others.