The Language Experiments

Part 1: Charades

Part 1 was like trying to play a game of charades. It took forever to get simple ideas across to my best friend (who was helping me with these language experiments). Anything complex was way beyond what I could express using body language, and it was frustrating trying to get her to understand. She started off asking me things like "how are you" and "why" when I indicated I was tired (sleepy). The why wasn't something I could get across to her, so she started trying to guess by throwing out ideas like in a game of charades. After she figured out I had kept waking up all night long, she started trying to ask simple yes or no questions or questions that could be easily answered using body language. I had a really hard time starting new trains of thought, and she ran out of simple ideas to try to ask me, so our conversation was under 10 minutes long. If this was a real life type of situation, I would say the person with the words could express more complex ideas than those without words. I think the culture with the symbolic language would think the culture without it was living in the dark ages, not nearly as advanced as them, and perhaps a little slow or mentally handicapped. I think autistic people have difficulty expressing things with a spoken language; at least they don't express things in a manner that those without autism are used to. I think people who don't have autism marginalize those who do.

Part 2: Robot

I felt like a robot while having a conversation with my best friend. We were actually able to last an entire 15 minutes, but it felt as if there was a lot lacking. I had a hard time conveying emotion of any sort without using body language (it's amazing how much I use my hands and eyebrows). Trying not to gesture in any way and trying not to use tonal inflections were the hardest things for me. My best friend thought I seemed flat and rigid; she actually didn't like this part at all and preferred the gesturing language experiment better. She's so used to getting my opinions about things; clothes, politics, what I think someone else meant when they said something. She ended up steering away from that type of conversation because she said a lot of what helped her out was how I reacted non-verbally to something. My words were important, but so was the underlying meaning that my non-verbal queues expressed. I think non-verbal language helps to portray the emotion behind the words. If I say I love you without any sort of body language, then it's just words. The non-verbal language helps give depth and meaning to those words. As far as those who have difficulty reading body language, I think people with Asperger's Syndrome have a difficult time reading body language and therefore often misinterpret what someone's trying to say. I think if you have the ability to read body language, then you are more aware of the other person's emotions. I think this is beneficial in times when someone is potentially violent; reading those queues can help you know when to get far away from the hostile person. But I can't think of an environmental condition where there is a benefit to not reading body language. I'm sure there are situations out there where this would be beneficial, but I can't think of any at the moment.

Part 3: Written Language

I think part 1 would have been a lot easier to communicate if I had been able to write things down. The conversation would have been slow, but it would have conveyed more than just body language alone. For example, about 4 months ago, I went to a small coffee shop where the lady behind the counter had had a reaction to an antibiotic she was taking. She had lost her voice because of it and hadn't been able to speak for 3 weeks (with 6 more weeks to go - how she got the 6 weeks part, I'm not sure; doctors orders? - I didn't ask). She really thought it sucked. She wrote down short sentences that conveyed most of the thought and then filled in the emotional part with body clues. It was amazing at how little she actually had to write to convey the message she wanted to with a mixture of written words and body language. However, there are times when the written word alone can be misread when there isn't a person behind it giving the non-verbal clues as to the actual meaning of what they've written (like in emails). There's also culture to take into account when thinking globally. Even if you can read the same language as someone on the other side of the planet, it doesn't mean you'll understand the culture behind the words. Take Australia and New Zealand, for example, that are almost on the completely opposite end of the world from us. They speak our language (English) and yet they have a different culture and different values. While we may communicate basically well together, there will be a different usage of the language, different slang words, different meanings behind the thoughts and words than us. For instance, in New Zealand, an anklebiter is not a small dog (as is often assumed in the US). Instead, it's a toddler or small child. So while globalization can benefit everyone by bringing us closer together and being able to understand each other better, it can also be detrimental to those who assume other cultures use language in the same way we do.