week 7 Assignment

Part I

-          For the first part of the assignment I found this a little difficult. One of the hardest parts was getting my points or opinions across on subjects, things such as explaining getting a puppy, or having to get my car washed, this felt like trying to communicate with someone who spoke a different language so I tried to get my points across by doing motions that would be easily figured out, such as putting both hands in front of me as if I was driving a car. As we got further into the conversation, my partner had to really pay attention to my movements and ask a little bit more questions that were yes and no as I made my gestures. As my partner did change to better understand the way I talked I also realized unconsciously she slowled down the way she spoke as if she was speaking to someone who barely understood her questions like an individual who is maybe not familiar with English. If me and my partner were two different cultures meeting for the first time, due to the fact she has more ways of communicating, she had a bigger advantage in the language/culture barriers. It is really hard for me to fully express myself lacking ability to use symbolic language, so I do think in some way someone with more expressions and ways of explaining their points or views will have the advantage. The speaking culture might get frustrated after some time due to the fact they have to concentrate harder to get the other cultures point across. One of the cultures that has trouble communicating in a similar way to this exercise would be first generation Hispanic individuals due to the fact a lot of them do not understand English too well. Some of the reason that they have a disadvantage as well is that there are very different parts of the English language with a lot of words that sound the same. This affects how they interact everyday with friends, or co-workers in a big way so they have to become very body language expressive. IF there was anything that could make it easier for them to communicate is to better look at facial expression as well as gestures of the other conversation partner.

Part II

-          To be fully honest this part of the assignment was very easy for me, to keep a monotone voice and no hand gestures. My brother has been doing something similar for a while where he changes accents such as Irish or imitates different people. So after observing him do that random I thought I would give this a good shot at a place with a lot of random people. So to do this part of the assignment I did it at a St. Patrick’s Day party. Most people that saw the way I was acting at first a little weird, and as I continued the assignment I realized a lot of people would notice me say something to maybe a joke with no change in a tone of voice so they didn’t know whether I was being sarcastic or truthful with my statements. The difficulties of this other than not being able to see if someone is joking or being serious was that there was no follow through with certain words when explaining a story such as a car accident that I happen to drive by, without those expressions it was just clear that people had a hard time in a bit of a way following along to what I said. I can see groups of people that have no social skills or maybe that were home schooled to have issues with things such as body language due to only experiencing it from a few group of people but none to the extreme of the exercise, I can also see people with language barriers having issues with body language due to each “culture” expressing differently though achieving the same result. One of the adaptive benefits to reading  body language would be that you can get a point across or lead a conversation with such things, the more visuals you can bring to somebody in a conversation the easier it is to follow along which allows from a better relation within those boundaries. It is really hard to see it sometimes because we get very interested in products but when shopping for things such as cars or maybe cell phones, we like ask questions which we might know the answer to, but in the way sales people will get you fascinated and keep you interested is by working a lot with their body movements and reading yours. Sales people guide you to where you feel most comfortable within a conversation, so I do believe that not showing body language or exercising in those point would be best fit for when going around and shopping for certain things. One of the other things about this is that if you chose to ignore a salesperson’s body language, there si a big change what they are trying to excite you about will not leave you surprised or wanting exactly what they are inending to sell you. So in a real life situation there is benefits to no body language as well as monotone speech.