Speech vs. Hand Gestures

In part “A” of this experiment I thought that it would be simple, but then again I’ve never really played fair when it came to Pictionary so right off the back there was a problem. It was extremely difficult for me not to use words to communicate what I was thinking. My hand gestures, facial expression, and body positioning were not enough to fully get what I was trying to say. My friends that I was talking to were frustrated at first because they couldn’t really understand what I was trying to tell them.  Eventually they slowed the conversation down so, we were not moving from topic to topic as quickly as we would normally. They would ask more simple questions that when added together supplied the answer to the more complicated question they had initially.

I believe that a culture with speech has a little more of an advantage in expressing complex ideas.  This however comes with specifics. For example they would have the advantage when communicating with people who communicate in the same way they do, and thus they could fully express what they mean, with a lower chance of misunderstanding. Where as a culture who only communicates to each other without words has a higher chance of misunderstanding signals. However, if these two cultures were to communicate with each other, even though it would be hard, the culture without speech would have the advantage. This is because through speech they wouldn’t necessarily understand each other, but some body movements and expressions are universal and so it would be possible to better communicate what they mean. 

Stating this however, in our culture there are those who cannot speak, such as the mute, some mentally handicapped, some who don’t understand a particular language. In these cases these people are looked down upon because our main culture is one of spoken words. By looking down upon these people it makes them believe they are lower then the rest, which is not true. Speech is not the only way to communicate, which I learned the hard way through this exercise.

 In part “B”, I had the initial impression that it would be easier, but let me tell you I apparently really like to talk using my hands, and changing volume quite a bit. I was not able to last the entire time, I was describing the book I was reading, and in talking about one of my favorite parts I couldn’t help but giggle a little bit. I love adding emphasis, so just talking was boring. I needed to add flare to my speech and so it was hard to just simply talk, nothing else.

My friends were kind of bored. The conversation got mundane, and eventually trailed off. I tried to start it again by talking about my book, but then broke the rules. Without me using excitement, sadness, emotion, or hand gestures my friends lost interest. Through this I can safely conclude that non-verbal communication is just as important as speech, because it is what adds that character of the person. It is what shows our humanity, one cannot exist without the other.

There are people out there I believe that have a difficult time reading body language, but it is mostly a natural instinct and we all do it to varying degrees. However those who can read body language really do have a large advantage. We give so much away in our non-verbal communication that we don’t even realize and so being able to understand what people are feeling without them having to say can be helpful. I cannot think of a situation where there would be a time that reading non-verbal skills would be a bad thing. In every situation that I can think of non-verbal skills are the backbone the meat of language, however one cannot exist without the other, speech and non-verbal skills go together.