Language Blog

Part 1:

1)Did you find this experiment difficult or easy? Explain.

I felt it was difficult at the beginning of the conversation. However, it became ok without verbal communication after few mins because my conversation partner and I actually have experienced this experiment before.

My conversation partner is American and I am Japanese. We did not know each other's language when we first met in Japan 7 years ago. 

2)What were the impressions of partners in the conversation? Did they alter their way of communicating with you because of your absence of symbolic communication? Describe.

My conversation partner have experience with me only communicating by body language, and he is also used to know my physical expressions. I did not use a variety of body moving to describe things, but he was able to understand me and we kept conversation as well as when we use verbal communication.   

3)Imagine that you and your partners in the conversation represent two different cultures meeting for the first time. Which culture has the advantage in communicating complex ideas? What attitudes might the speaking culture have toward the culture that does not use symbolic language?

Identify individuals in our culture that have difficulty communicating with spoken language and explore how that suggests how these who do speak interact with those individuals.

I think verbal communication is based on common sense, culture and custom. If the culture was different, it is hard to describe complex idea without verbal communication.

When my conversation partner and I met 7 years ago, we didn't understand each other's language. We used body language and gesture to have conversation, and slowly developed "our own language" which we call Japanglish (Japanese + English). 

Our Japanglish does not have much vocabulary but one word can cover pretty wide range of similar words in the other language. So it allows us to communicate with minimum vocabulary which covers only our needs. However, this language is based on our long time experience of communication and our mixed language culture and others cannot understand it even though it is developed language in English and Japanese.

Japanglish is general term of combined English and Japanese language which is used among English speaker and Japanese speaker couples. Though, all different couples uses different Japanglish. It is kind of isolated language between only two people. 

when if there are 2 couples who all speaks Japanglish, they would not understand each other because the coverage of each couple's Japanglish would be so different.

Verbal communication is developed on culture and custom, and is used in people who shares common sense. Most important thing of communicating complex ideas is not spoken language, I think it is sharing common sense. If there were 2 cultures which are spoken language culture and non-spoken language culture, and if they met an had a conversation, there would not be advantage and they will create 3rd language beyond their language, or they will search for the common ground. 

One of my friends is a deaf. 

Some of my friends talk to her with sign language. I cannot do sign language, so she read my lips to understand me. What I do when I talk to her is exaggerating my body expression.

Part2:

1)Were you able to last for the full 15 minutes of using only speech for communicating? What made this experiment difficult for you?

I felt this is much easier than part1 at the beginning. I didn't use my body movement or gesture to explain things. Though, my conversation partner pointed out that my face express a lot in the conversation. I think body language is hard to control and it is connected to emotions and feelings more directly than verbal expression.

2)How were your partners in this part of the experiment affected by your communication limitations? Explain.

I think my conversation partner's talking was more distant than when we experiment part one. I did not use vocal intonation which is very normal in Japanese speaking. Japanese doesn't use vocal intonation as much as English. Because I am not used to use verbal intonation, I use more facial expression. However, I was not allowed to use facial expression in this experiment, it made my conversation partner much more difficult to understand me speaking.

3) What does this experiment say about our use of "signs" in our language, i.e., how important is non-speech language techniques in our ability to communicate effectively?

As I mentioned in part 2.1, I felt body language express our emotion and feelings more that verbal communication. Non-speech language techniques are not good to describe things, but good way to show our emotions. The conversation without body movement felt really distant and it did not seem interactive.

While I was speaks only with body language, my conversation partner paid extra attention to understand me, and I saw him making effort to understand what I tried to tell him.

My overall impression of non-speech language is that it can make better connection between people. 

4) Are there people who have difficulty reading body language? Describe the adaptive benefit to possessing the ability to read body language. Can you describe environmental conditions where there might be a benefit to nor reading body language?

Blind people cannot read body language. 

the benefit of reading body language is that it is almost universal. Body language cannot explain complex ideas as well as spoken language. However, the expression of body language are simple and clear, and it can explain explain basic motion of thing in our life. Because body language is developed on our shared common sense.

I cannot imagine there is any natural case when it is better for evolution not to read body language. Reading body language helps understanding different individuals, and meek them closer. Sometimes creates sympathy, so might be good not to have a skill to read body language when if you need to be cold-blood or not willing to understand others.