Language Experiment

 Fifteen minutes without symbolic language is a hard task; especially when the other person in the conversation doesn't know it's an experiment. Being the one who wasn't allowed to speak or write was uncomfortable and led to a lot of gesturing pointing and general miming without using real signs (as far as I know). It was essentially a game of charades, and how my participant acted before knowing what was happening. As I was trying to gesture my way into describing my day they were blurting out words and sentences trying to guess what I was trying to convey. With every change of facial que, a new try to the meaning came out. At times when there was something near me to demonstrate I had to grab, point, or mime with objects. In an odd way, I think that I really had the most power in that position. This is because as I was trying to convey they were trying to understand and that meant that I set the pace of the "conversation". As I was leading they were following and guessing because I knew what I wanted to say but they were trying to figure it out. This might be an odd outcome because it was a friend who took it as fun and a joke and not someone random who might've just up and left the interaction. If we had been two different cultures meeting for the first time I think the speaker would have the power over the non-speaker. That would be because in this example the speaker would be within their own world and culture so they would hold all of the knowledge and might even at times look down on the non-speakers. That happens here in the US a lot with deaf, hard of hearing, and mute people. Many deaf people have historically been labeled as unintelligent and have been misunderstood. With the deaf community, I have seen both shows of power where speakers and non-speakers have had power, this happens when the "speaker" roll flips. I have seen hearing and speaking people who are interested in ASL or take it as a game try to convey their messages to deaf people and the deaf people being in their community hold the power in the conversation as they sign with others and are at home. The other has also happened where deaf people are away from their communities and have to socialize in public with hearing people. When necessary they struggle to communicate and more often than not they are pushed to the side by the "speaker". Although not using symbolic language was hard I did not expect being able to speak without tone or other markers to be harder.

Speaking with no tone, facial expressions, or body language of any kind is horrible. A fifteen-minute timer in these conditions feels like an eternity. It was almost so bad that I felt like just sitting silently for the entire time. It was robotic and unnatural which made me actually give up around 8 minutes. Speaking without tone was the hardest part of this section of the experiment. It's almost like text-to-speech recognition. My participant felt the same way she did not like talking to me like this at all. I thought that if I could at least add more tone to my voice I would be able to convey more meaning and not have such vague responses. Not even a head tilt to show confusion. My participant felt that I was missing something that made me more of myself and said she felt like she was talking to some AI. I believe this experiment shows that our language is not only spoken but other aspects of it keep us going and help to convey our full thoughts and meanings. This can be any type of meaning such as emotion, emphasis, or even context if pointing when talking. Some people have a hard time reading body language such as those on the autism spectrum. This may come in handy in some situations where different cultures collide. That is because what is a normal sign or bodily action in one culture may not be normal at all, it might be confusing, evoking different feelings. This could also be good in high-stakes environments like a negotiation where the content of the words themselves may be more important than how a person has moved while talking or squinted their eyes at some point.

I imagine if I was able to write during the experiment it would have gone a lot smoother. This is because I would not only have content but also context or backing which would be body language or gestures. Without being in conversation at the time I think that written language has many values. It not only allows for a safer passage of information because of its unchanging nature on the page but it also allows people to workshop their thoughts. By doing so those who then read this information would also learn from it and be able to use it to their advantage at later times. Written language has had a great impact on the globalization of ideas around the world. By translating texts from one language to another people are able to learn from different points of view around the world. This will spread ideas and in some cases such as scientific articles or experiments, they will be able to be peer reviewed to confirm findings.