Language

Speaking to others as humans comes naturally, I cannot imagine how we would work as a society without any type of language. Wether it is with our hands, written, expressions, and most importantly, by vocals meaning that we talk to one another through words that our ancestors made up and that we now are educated with to live our everyday life.

 1.-    The first part of this assignment required me to engage in a conversation but not use any type of language as in speaking, writing, or sign language. I decided to take the opportunity to engage in our daily lunch at work at the salon and try the experiment with co workers. I explained to them that it was an experiment for class and that i just needed them to act normal like if it were any other day. So me and the girls had a full conversation for about twenty minutes on what they did over the weekend. It was hard to not speak with words for I am a fairly talkative person and wanted to talk but could not. Instead, I went ahead and nodded, used facial expressions, and my hands as well- not to make sign language but actually thumbs up and thumbs down. I found this experiment difficult but in a way that at many times i wanted to speak out loud to give my opinion on what we were talking about but could not since I had to remain quiet at all times. The impressions of my co workers were surprised for some did not think i could manage to stay quiet past five minutes. Others, wanted to laugh at the fact that i was not speaking and made such funny faces at times. They did not alter the way of communicating, on the other hand, most of them got the hang of what i would try to say or express even though there were a few giggles since it felt like we were playing pictionary.  The culture i think that would have more advantages would be the speaking culture rather than a symbolic culture because they can use hands, words, expressions while symbolic culture cannot communicate with words.
     There are individuals in our culture who do not get the chance to speak for they had complications in their lives that made them not be able to communicate speaking languages. However, thanks to American Sign Language they have the ability to communicate with an alphabet made with hand gestures. This affects those who do speak because they may not know that the other person cannot speak but in an effort to make the non speakers feel comfortable, they try to find a way to communicate even with simple gestures. I think in our society people who do have the privilege to speak find it a bit awkward when interacting with someone who cannot communicate with words. Personally, i treat everyone the same, and when i encounter someone who does not speak but uses ASL instead, i take the extra time to understand what they are trying to explain as best and courteous as possible.


 2.-   In the second part, i was asked to talk but not use my hands, gestures, any facial expressions, or any difference in my tone of voice. This was HARD! I can be quiet for a while, but to talk and not express in my tone how excited i may be or sad, was tough, as well as not using my hands! I tend to express or do some kind of movement with my hands at almost all times when I'm talking it just comes naturally. I was able to last the fifteen minutes but like i said, it was hard to do so, i wanted to quit and just use my hands but i didn't. It was so boring to talk monotone and not be able to express how i really felt and that was what i found most difficult for me. I did the experiment with my co workers again and this time, they could not help but laugh on how serious i was being since I'm not much of a serious person at times, i think this definitely did make a difference in how they would communicate with me since half of them left the room because of how serious the look on my face was.
    I think what this experiment said about how we use signs in our language is that it plays a huge role in our everyday life and it is a very important factor to communicate effectively with others. If we all did not express how we felt by using our hands, raising our voices, or facial expressions, we would be boring! Not only that, but the way we communicate would not be the same and would definitely not mean the same to us as it does today.There are people who have difficulties reading body language, take for example people who cannot see.  There are advantages to that being that sometimes its better not to see what people are doing and disadvantages being that for that same reason, the other person can be doing something mean and you are not aware of it. It definitely makes quite the difference and i believe that we should all just treat one another with nothing but respect.