Don't Speak! The Language Experiment

I conducted both of my language experiments using my husband as my partner so we could reflect on the differences, including advantages and disadvantages of both types of communication.

In the first experiment I attempted to communicate with my husband without using any symbolic language.  This was extremely difficult because I didn’t know how to convey things I was trying to tell him and I kept getting frustrated.  I felt like I had nothing to fall back on to get him to understand, so our conversation kept stalling and the simplest idea took forever to figure out.  I’d try to point or wiggle my fingers or do anything I could think of to make him understand and finally, a lot of the time I just gave up.  The way my husband communicated with me was also altered by this experiment.  For one thing, he was also getting frustrated when he couldn’t figure out what I was trying to say and each time he would guess and I would shake my head no, he would get more aggravated so that a relatively benign conversation became uncomfortable rather quickly.  He works at Home Depot in Sylmar, which has a large Hispanic clientele, and he said that this is sometimes what it feels like when clients are trying to explain something to him and he doesn’t speak their language or vice versa.  Everyone tends to get aggravated.  This brings me to the final point: thinking about how hard it must be to be a person who does not speak English in America, or a deaf person trying to communicate in a hearing world.  In this experiment my husband had the definite advantage because there was a societal “agreement” that his spoken language was correct, so the onus was on me to try and figure out a way to make him understand me, not the other way around.  This must be how non-english speaking people, or deaf people feel in our society: the attitude in our country is that they are responsible for getting the rest of us to understand what they want and need. 

The second experiment was quite different.  It was difficult for entirely different reasons, although we were able to go the entire 15 minutes.  I purposely waited to tell my husband a joke I had heard earlier so I could see how it would be to tell this joke to him with no facial movement, no vocal intonation or variety, and no body movement.  It was so difficult, especially not to laugh while telling it.  He said it definitely ruined the joke to a large degree.  The next thing I noted was that he mentioned something good that he had accomplished and I told him how proud I was of him, and then I asked him if it felt like I was proud and he said “No”.  He said it did not feel encouraging at all.  On the plus side, we were really listening to each other because I was talking so monotone that it made it easy to hear every word.  I usually talk very fast and my husband told me this was the slowest he had ever heard me speak.  He also said that some of my word choices were interesting and did not necessarily sound like “me” because I had time to think before I spoke.  So that might be a good thing to consider trying to do more of in the future.  The experiment showed us both how vital the non-verbal components of communication are.  The fact that my husband didn’t feel praised by me was a big thing.  Furthermore, I love to tell jokes and laughter is a huge part of our daily lives and we realized that our voices, facial expressions and body language are actually sometimes even more important than the words we are saying.  Without these we might not be able to laugh like we do!  Unfortunately there are many people who have trouble reading and understanding these non-verbal cues.  My own nephew Vincent is autistic and I have watched him struggle with this from a very young age.  He did not say his first word until he was five and I remember how we all tried to connect with him.  Now, because he has been working with special therapists for years he is able to speak and do many things he could not, but he still misses many of the subtle nuances of language (puns, inside jokes, analogies) that we take for granted.  In addition, he misses many of the non-verbal clues, like when someone is being sarcastic, he would take what they are saying literally.  Or if someone looks bored or embarrassed by what he is saying he would never pick up on that.  I am trying to think of an environmental situation when it might be beneficial to not pick up on verbal cues and I am honestly at a loss.  I rely on them so much to get a “read” on things, which is why I get frustrated by texting sometimes, so I am really unsure of when that information would not be a good thing to have.   Perhaps someone will let me know in my comments section. J

In conclusion, the experiment really opened both my eyes and my husband’s eyes to the importance of verbal and non-verbal communication.  I think in the future we will try to be more understanding of people who, for whatever reason, may be struggling to understand our language.  We will also try not to assume that the onus is on the other person to make us understand them rather than try harder to meet in the middle.  We also realized that even with each other this would be a great idea, because even though we technically both speak English, sometimes I have no earthly idea what he is talking about!