Language Experiment

Part I:  No spoken language allowed

I did my communication experiment with my 14 year old daughter.  We set a timer for 15 minutes for each round, Part 1, no speech allowed and Part 2, no gestures of any kind allowed.  Trying to communicate without words was very difficult.  Only the simplest of concepts could be explained.  Yes and no questions were easy, or letting her know she had guessed correctly.  But I was trying to communicate the idea that a woman who had sent me a letter was someone I needed to contact.  My daughter thought that I was talking about someone else and there were actually 3 different people that had to do with this particular communication.  So, it was very difficult to try and describe the identities of 3 different people to her.  

My daughter was very frustrated and telling me that I was not a very good communicator and that I was the one who had to find a different way to communicate with her.  Although we were both laughing at my attempts to communicate complex ideas, if this were a serious conversation, she was really starting to look at me and treat me as if I were not intelligent at all.

If we were from two different cultures, my daughter being able to use spoken language definitely had the advantage in communicating.  While I understood what she needed simply with her words, my gesturing could only be understood for very simple ideas.  Her attitudes towards me did begin to change the longer time went on.  She was beginning to dismiss me and really wanted to disengage in conversation at all.  I found myself getting very frustrated knowing the idea I was trying to communicate, but having limited means to express myself.  While written language would bridge the gap, unless both of these cultures had the same written language, the same frustrations would persist.  This made me feel that if I were part of the deaf community trying to communicate with the non-deaf community, it would be a very frustrating existence trying to communicate.  The fact that the deaf have created sign language is an amazing accomplishment in being able to communicate complex ideas without being able to hear speech. Yet, still, not all of us know sign language and therefore do not communicate with the deaf community.  So there is a large part of our culture most of us simply choose not to be able to speak with, myself included.  I even have partially deaf friends who are involved heavily in that community, but it has never crossed my mind to learn any of that language.

Part II: No gestures of any kind allowed

Again using my daughter to communicate with, we switched the timer to continue the experiment for another 15 minutes.  We were sure to read the rules and my daughter took great delight in letting me know if I unconsciously made any eyebrow movements with my speech.  I had my hands in my pockets, but noticed how difficult it was to separate completely spoken language from any facial gestures of any kind. 

There was considerably less frustration in regards to being able to communicate complex ideas when I was able to speak.  But my daughter found the lack of gesturing to be very strange and without vocal inflection, I had to communicate things like, whether I was joking, or upset or happy by stating those emotions rather than being able to read my body language.

I found that the “signs” or non-verbal parts of our communication are just as important in communicating the right ideas more efficiently.  It took far longer for me to communicate when I also had to explain my emotions with words rather than just being able to use my vocal inflection or facial expressions to communicate those things.

I have a son who is autistic and while he is very high functioning and is graduating from high school this week, it has been a life-long struggle for him in terms of communication.  When he was young, he did not naturally read things such as personal space, facial expressions, etc. as part of language.  I had to physically show him what the appropriate distance was to stand when having a conversation with another person.  Also, if I was angry and telling him no, that he could not do something, he did not understand the expression on my face or inflection in my voice to know that I was angry.  He would start laughing because he thought my face looked funny that way.  So, I have a magnet on my fridge that shows human facial expressions and what they mean and we would use this picture frame smaller magnet to encircle the example of how we were feeling on a particular day and what that looked like to show him what people were trying to tell him without their words.  Language development was also difficult because he would “parrot” or repeat whatever he saw or heard on TV, but this was not necessarily communicating.  He would continually only want to talk to you about Star Wars or some other favorite movie, but this was not really having a conversation.  So, having personally experienced this throughout his life, I am keenly aware of how important both spoken language and the ability to read expressions are in our communication.   

I cannot think of any environmental condition where not reading body language would be a benefit except if there were some society where a lack of expression was somehow a beneficial survival technique and therefore the group that survived and was able to have offspring were quiet and expressionless people.  There was a study done by Dr. Paul Ekman on human facial expressions where he studied over 20,000 individuals from all cultures and races and studied their natural reactions and expression to basic human emotions.  He found that the expression of emotions was uniform in humans across all cultures, i.e. happy, sad, angry, etc. even among isolated groups, and therefore he concluded facial expression of emotions to be a biological function.  It was an interesting study and he has a website which can teach you to better read face and body language at http://www.paulekman.com/. 

Conclusion:

My conclusion is that both the development of spoken language combined with the ability to use signs and facial expression are all very important parts of language and the ability to communicate ideas effectively and efficiently with one another.  These developments have enabled our culture to grow and our species to become even more prolific today.