Spoken vs Body Language

Part One

I am a very vocal person and I love talking, I am always finding my way into conversations. Not speaking at all was very difficult for me I felt frustrated because I wanted to be involved in the conversation. Just sitting there and not speaking felt like I was being useless and I felt like I was the brick wall. At first it wasn’t too hard because I asked my partner to tell me about something that happened to them recently so in a normal situation I would have probably just sat there and listened for the most part with little commentary. The part that got difficult was when my partner had finished their story and we still had time left in the fifteen minute conversation. At that point it became very awkward and it was hard for a new topic to be brought up. I had so many things going through my head that I felt would have been a good transition, but of course I couldn’t speak. At first there was no difference in the way my partner communicated with me but then he had to alter to my absence of communication because then he just started talking about random subjects and the conversation was just here and there with different topics.

For the most part I would have to say my partner was in control of the conversation because I couldn’t talk at all so there was no conversing on my side at all. My partner obviously had to change the topics because I was unable to initiate a topic change. It’s really hard to say who had the power in the conversation, in the beginning my partner had the power because he could talk all he wanted, but when it came to the end of the story I felt like I was the one who had the power because the conversation just ended and it went nowhere and I feel that if I was allowed to talk the conversation could have continued to something more. Overall I believe now, from this experience, that in order for a conversation to actually be a conversation it has to be a balance between the two people.

If I had to take this part of the experience and look at it as if we each represented our own culture, me being the one who does not speak and him being the one who uses spoken language, I believe that my partner would have the advantage of communicating his ideas with his population. I feel like his culture would look at mine like we don’t have any opinions and we cannot speak for ourselves. Almost as if we couldn’t make decisions by ourselves because we wouldn’t be able to communicate anything. Nothing comes to my mind how this might resemble any modern situations because, based off my knowledge, all populations use some type of spoken or symbolic language.

Part Two

When I first started this part of the experiment I thought it was going to be very easy and not difficult at all. What I did before I even started this part was I asked my partner to let me know if I was using any type of physical movements while I spoke so he could remind me that I couldn’t. In the beginning it wasn’t too hard but as we got into the conversation I found myself almost restraining my body. I know that I use a lot of body movements when I talked and so when it got more into the conversation I found it getting harder and more frustrating for me. Since I informed my partner of what the rules were for this part of the experiment he already knew I wasn’t supposed to use body movement and he didn’t really seem to respond differently than he usually would. My partner didn’t have any difficulty understanding me because I was able to clearly vocalize anything I wanted too.

This experiment showed me that you can see a lot of how the person feels by their body movements. It is almost like a whole different conversation you can see and have while have a spoken conversation. Not being able to use body movement felt like the conversation was a little boring because I was just frozen and talking. I physically could not express how I felt about the conversation. I think body movement is very important when it comes to conversing because they can tell you one thing but their body will tell you another. When someone reads a person’s body language they can see how the topic is making them feel without even hearing what they have to say.

The benefits of being able to read body language is being able to tell how someone feels when they haven’t said anything. For example, if someone is sitting in a corner alone with a frown on their face and sort of droopy shoulders, you can tell they are sad. It also allows us to know when we are doing something right versus wrong when speaking to someone else. It allows us to get more in tune with people's feelings.

I’m sure there are people who have a difficulty reading body language but I do not think I would be able to identify someone who wasn’t able to read body language. I don’t believe there is any situation where not being able to read someone’s body language would be a good thing. I think it is very important to read and understand someone’s body language. I think that the body language is where you will be able to get the most reliable information. Everyone can say anything they want whether it’s true or not but I believe body language can tell the truth and it’s hard to hide.