Part 1.
I underestimated the difficulty of this task. When I first stared this assignment, I thought because my partner and I had know each other so well, it would be easy to conduct this assignment. However, when I wanted to get my point across without being able to speak proved very difficult. I was using signs, body language and my partner was speaking to me. We established a system of elimination, where i would have a signal for yes that was raising right hand and no by raising the left.
At first my partner found the task humorous and was having a lot of fun not achieving anything. Then gradually he became more sync with me. His method of communication with me remained verbal.
If my partner and I represented two different cultures meeting for the first time, the culture which could converse verbally definitely would have the advantage of communicating complex ideas. The attitude of speaking culture would be feeling superior to the culture that did not use symbolic language.
2. Speaking for 15 minutes without any "feel" to it made me sound like a robot. It felt like I wasn't real and the conversation didn't sound normal. I could not speak this way for the entire 15 minutes. My partner disconnected periodically. At times he didnt understand the true meaning or the intentions of my speech because my tone was lacking any kind of emotion. I would say the importance of non-speech language techniques are just as important as speaking verbally. They add emotion and make it more interesting, our body language tells what kind of attitude we might be having at the moment and gives the audience a sense of our personality. Presumably there might be some people who have a harder time reading body language than others, the reasons could very from being mentally challenged or not being able to see clearly.
Good description of Part A. I agree that there would be a feeling of superiority among the speaking culture compared to the non-speaking. Why is that? Why do we associate speech with advancement of some sort?
ReplyDeleteI always find it interesting that partners often seem to have just as much trouble understanding in Part B as they do in Part A, even though you can use verbal communication in Part B. You are correct about this demonstrating how important body language is to complete communication.
Can you imagine a scenario where it might be advantageous to not read body language? This was the only point missing. Otherwise, good post.