Language Post

Part 1: Mum’s the Word

    There are times where it is easy to communicate without words, but these times are often few and far between. One example of a time where non-verbal communication is easy is during tactical military operations. Yet the main reason non-verbal communication is effective during this time is everyone has been trained to be fluent in the non-verbal language of hand signals that is used. I assumed that this symbolic language assignment would be similar to tactical military operations and it would be easy to convey my thoughts….. I was very wrong. I picked my wonderful wife as my partner for this assignment and gave no warning regarding the assignment. After about a minute of trying to use solely non-verbal communication with her as she spoke to me, she became concerned for me and thought that I might be choking. This forced me to break character for a few seconds and explain my lack of words before she attempted the Heimlich maneuver on me. After I notified her of the assignment I found it very difficult to express to her that I wanted to go out and get Chinese food for dinner.  After attempting to pretend that I was using chopsticks for a time and her not grasping the symbolism, I rubbed my belly and obtained a stir-fry wok cooking bowl from the kitchen. Thankfully this worked and she grasped the idea I was attempting to convey. Even a idea as simple as I’m hungry becomes difficult without written or spoken language. If a culture, such as our own, met a culture that did not have a written language most people would think that the culture without language is of lower intelligence. Yet in this situation with a spoken language culture meeting a non-spoken language culture the advantage in communication would go to the culture that can best convey ideas without words if the spoken language culture has an open mind. This is due to the non-spoken language culture being able to convey ideas through body language and physically showing the spoken language culture the idea they are trying to convey, such as when I showed my wife the wok. Examples of individuals that have trouble communicating with the spoken language today are children with severe autism. It has been proven that children with autism who lack verbal communication skill are still having thoughts and ideas similar to other children their age, but they have great difficulty conveying these thoughts and ideas. Often the use of an intermediate form of communicating with a consistent texture is helpful, such as using the keyboard of an iPad.

Part 2: Look Ma’ No Hands!

    I found it quite difficult to not use my hands to speak and not use any non-verbal cues. Honestly, I felt as though I was acting like a robot for the full fifteen minutes (yet I know during the project I started using a few non-verbal cues and had to stop myself). Conveying ideas was easy without the use of non-verbal cues, but conveying the importance of the ideas proved to be much more difficult and it became difficult for my partner in this project to grasp the levels of importance I was attempting to convey regarding certain subjects. This project proved to me that the use of signs in our language is very important. Cues such as inflection and body language bear heavily on our daily communication. The ability to read a persons body language is somewhat universal, yet persons with autism lack the ability to read body language. This also makes it difficult for autistic children to know when a person is mad or unhappy. Not being able to read body language is a serious drawback due to many parts of human communication being more than just the words that they are saying. An environment where it could be beneficial to not read body language is in a situation where you are meeting a new culture, this is due to some body language being universal and yet some aspects of body language being learned. In this situation the body language that the other culture is presenting may not mean the same thing in your culture.