Language Blog

Today was a day like any other. However, for this particular experiment I chose to do it with my children and this is how it played out.

On any given day, I'd ask my son, Ryan, who is in Kindergarten questions such as: 'What did you learn in Math today?' 'What did you do in P.E.? etc. He'd tell me things like, 'well, I learned shapes and my numbers, an in P.E., we played soccer.' When it's my daughter's turn to tell me, she would fill me in on how space debris is bad for the earth. This is where I would get so thrilled to see them so excited about their day. However, as I signed them out and on the walk to the car, I let them in on this fun experiment I was doing for my Anthropology class. I explained that for 15 minutes, I would have to communicate with them without speaking. Naturally, they were curious on how I was going to do that. I told them I could communicate with them without talking. I could use movement like opening my eyes wide which would indicate excitement, or frown for a sad face, etc.

So the experiment began...it was so difficult not to verbally share in their enthusiasm about their day. Ryan expected me to respond to what he was telling me but instead, I gave him thumbs up with a big, cheesy smile when he informed me he colored a beautiful picture for me. And for my daughter, I made a sad face when she spoke about how she fell during recess.

I think my children found it quite amusing when I didn't talk back but rather used various facial expression to respond to them. They didn't alter their way of communicating with me at all. In fact, they probably got a kick out of it and we will probably incorporate this way of communicating some more.


If my children, for this example, represented people from another culture, I think my children, being that they have the ability to communicate verbally would have the advantage in communicating complex ideas because they can say exactly what they need to say and there would be no guessing. I, on the other hand, would have the disadvantage because I can make a sad face and the verbal person would want to know exactly why. There are only so many movements I can make and not get my exact point across. 

There might be some prejudices towards the culture using the symbolic language because perhaps the speaking culture expects the other person to respond verbally as opposed to symbolically.

I think individuals in our culture who may have difficulty communicating with spoken language could someone with a hearing impairment. Although they may be able to communicate with ASL (if they know it), I can imagine it would probably be a difficult thing to understand what a verbal person is trying to say.

After my 15 minutes of not using verbal communication with my children were up, and boy, I think they were happy to hear my voice again, I let them know the experiment wasn't over. I had to spend another 15 minutes of just using my voice to talk to them without any hand gestures or facial expressions. THIS WAS SO HARD FOR ME because I talk with my hands. We set the timer for 15 minutes and I only lasted 3 minutes of monotone communication. I thought this would be a breeze but it wasn't and I can safely say it was a quite difficult thing to do.

My children were waiting for me to laugh or giggle at their silliness or bust out with my 'hand talking'. I wish I could have taken pictures of the looks on their faces when all they hear was a monotone voice with absolutely no expression to it.

I think it's really important to be able to communicate not only with words but with your body and I do think there are people out there who have difficulty reading body language, perhaps someone who is blind because well, they can't see so that would be a disadvantage for them. It's a plus to be able to read body language and I will give an example. Let's say you are at work and you see a co-worker who isn't speaking but you can immediately see he/she is not having such a good day. You can then make a choice to approach the person or not - all depending if you want to take that chance or not.

An environmental condition where one may not be able to read body language could be when reading someone's email or text. There is no way of actually seeing what the person is doing on the other end but perhaps can feel if they are having a good day or not by how the email/text comes across.

I can say I really enjoyed this experiment. It was really interesting to know I can not last a very long time without using body movement to talk and my kids had fun being able to help mom out with her homework.