Language Communication

            My language assignment experiment was conducted at a coffee shop with two close friends. To assert some sort of structure, I decided that there should be a singular topic for the conversation, we decided on trying to communicate what we would be having to eat and drink from that particular coffee shop. Needless to say, it was very difficult being in a group where speech facilitated communicating the individual needs of each person except in my case, as I had to rely on extenuating means to convey the same message. My friends easily described exactly what they wanted; even specifics were discussed such as “low fat milk” and “toasted” bagels, all within a matter of seconds. I was faced with a long and frustrating pantomime display in order to simply request tea, obviously, the particulars of the tea being hot or cold and which was my flavor of choice, where harder to express without using speech, and were vaguely understood among my group.

            My friends found the communication interaction in the first round just as frustrating as did. My lack of speech forced them to alter their communication skills requiring them to recompose how they understood what I wanted, as they could no longer rely on my verbal cues.  One of the things that became apparent almost immediately was the role of assistant, as they each took it upon themselves to guess what I was trying to convey. Towards the end of the 15-minute time period they seemed to be getting increasingly frustrated and would quickly guess as to what I was trying to express, whereas as in the beginning, they allowed me to fully “explain” what I wanted. A positive change in their ways of communication skills was the understanding of certain “words” that slowly developed. For example, the word for “warm” was transformed into a new hand sign that I developed when initially trying to express that I wanted warm tea. In the last minutes of the allotted time, when things that needed to be described as “warm” presented itself, it was quickly understood and the conversation would progress to the next defining word.

            If I were to imagine that my group was 3 separate cultures trying to communicate complex ideas, I would say that the advantage would be to the group(s) that communicates in verbal speech that can be comprehended by the other parties. Although, as I noticed with my friends, communicating one’s needs requires some sort of validation that there is an understanding of what is being requested, aside from the immediate result of what is wanted. Normally, we rely on verbal cues of “I understand” or similar reaffirmations of comprehension, however when faced with a party that cannot express this verbally, the speaking party is initially unsure if their statement was adequate enough to convey their concepts. So in terms of different cultural parties trying to express complex ideas to a nonverbal party, they do not have as simple of a task as would one would initially assume. They are also presented with a frustrating situation when these complex ideas are not easily formulated and therefore trying to decipher what the nonverbal party is trying to communicate is extremely difficult. Not being to understand speech, or a lack thereof is just as difficult as not speaking. The speaking party has to fill holes in the communication interaction that may or may not be correct, and if they are indeed incorrect, the person must start from scratch without any constructive criticism as to how closely they initially understood the proposed idea. Commuting those same needs without verbal cues however, pose a completely different challenge, which is what I found to be most difficult. For example, people who are mute have the inability of verbal speech entirely and rely on alternative means of communication. The interaction of speaking and mute individuals is much different than two speaking individuals. Although the mute posses the same understanding of speech, because they cannot reaffirm, through immediate verbal speech, validation of the spoken communication, we as speakers tend to speak slower or simpler, as if to facilitate the understanding process of the mute person. This also seems to be the case with deaf people, I myself have found myself speaking slower and annunciating my words thoroughly to reassure myself that I was clear in conveying my message. The fault in us as speaking individuals is assuming that the nonspeaking parties do not understand, simply because they cannot reaffirm they can indeed understand, through verbal speech. Speaking individuals also seem to be impatient in allowing the nonverbal party to express themselves over long periods of time of communication.

            When we attempted the second part of the experiment, we each took turns of not using any other means of communication and tried to rely solely on verbal speech. This was extremely hard to accomplish. One friend could not get pass 5 words without some form of physical gesture, the second friend had a difficult time controlling her facial expressions, whereas I failed miserably at maintaining my voice at a consistent tone of voice. I lasted the longest out of my friends, and I barely passed the 2-minute mark after about 30 minutes of trial and error. For me particularly, maintaining a steady tone of voice was the hardest thing to do. Speech tone adjusts to what is being discussed, it plays a large part of how I convey my thoughts, losing that aspect of speech was difficult because it felt as what I was saying, wasn’t being fully understood as there was no emphases in words or expression to animate what I meant.

            After the initial humorous appeal wore off, I found my partners quite bored in what I was trying to convey. It seemed as if they were not interested or distracted by the constant monotone speech. The liveliness of the conversation was gone and they didn’t fully understand how I felt about what I was saying unless I used very direct and specific words explaining what physical cues would imply. For example, normally, if something is sweet, I shrug my shoulders and scrunch my face and say “its sweet”, the physical cues express the intensity of the sweetness, however when I tried to express the same concept, it came out as a flat “my iced tea is sweet”. I had to reaffirm what was missing in what would be expressed in my physical gestures by saying, “my iced tea is so sweet that it gave me chills and shocked my back molars”, and even that complete description seemed to fall short.

            This experiment clearly expresses how important signs are in our means of communication. We underestimate the value that these physical cues posses, as they present subliminal emotional reinforcement of what we are speaking of. These techniques are extremely important in our ability to communicate effectively; especially when presented in situations when one party has a difficult time expressing themselves verbally, the use of physical gestures can substitute or make up for the breaks in verbal communication. We can attain a lot of valuable information from body language and tone of voice that are adequate forms of communication as well. These tools especially express emotion and intensity of what is being said which could sometimes be difficult to express in verbal communication.

In my experience, I have noticed that children with autism have a difficulty reading body language, particularly those with Aspergers. This group of individuals has a hard time deciphering the meanings behind certain body language gestures, and the interpretation and origin of such is of a confusing nature to them. This lack of full comprehension of nonverbal gestures can create mistrust in people, as we have difficult time establishing trust in objects and people that we cannot fully understand. The ability that reading body language posses, is understanding the underlying expression of emotion that is lacking in speech. I found that these physical gestures could do many things to increase the reception of the message being relayed, by complementing and accentuating what is being said. You can also get a lot just from eye contact, an emotional understanding that is not done justice by simple words. It also can reaffirm what we are trying to convey, like in my previous example of my tea being sweet, my body language would have normally complemented, accentuated, reassured and substituted a lengthy spoken sentence, all with nonverbal communication. I cannot conclude in an environmental condition where there is a benefit in not reading body language, as I believe that just as much of our communication skills rely on body language as they do in verbal speech. I started to think of situations where not relying on body language could assist in not falling for some sort of fraud or prevent someone from being duped, however nonverbal communication can also expose a contradiction in the spoken speech such as lies.

Lynnet Rodriguez