Silence, more than just Golden

I saw this film a while back and it still creeps me out a little bit. It wasn't because of the quiet, but the dolls oh God! Anyways, the concept behind this movie was you scream or make a sound and you die with your tongue cut out. In communications case, I don't know if silence will save your life, but it can share a various amount of meanings depending on how you're silent. Silence is almost like an unwritten rule. One of those things you know is there, but isnt really noticed until someone else mentions it. You could be having an arguement with someone, and as soon as they come back at you with something witty, you go quiet. This could be interpreted as you're thinking of something else to say, you're embarassed, you agree, or you may not want to admit defeat. Therefore your silence says it for you. I personally enjoy silence as a communication technique, because i'm a more interpersonal person myself. I'd rather show things through my actions than my words, like many other cultures among the world. Once again, different cultures may have different meanings behind their use of silence. In Asia, silence is considered a sign of respect, especially in business settings. But, among Americans silence is considered rude or being in-attentive to the person addressing you. In contrast, silence is similar between diversitites in terms of making a change. Gandhi used silence as a nonviolent protest technique to gain India's indepence, as stated on pg 119. While, in America silence is used to protest against discrimination among the LGBT community. Silence is definitly a subject I have a bit of a passion for.
   

Kinesics, a language all to itself...

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"Gestures, body movements, facial expressions, and eye contact are behaviors termed kinesics," is a passage taken from pg 113 in the book. It connects directly to the video because the video is a prime example of kinesics in action. Kinesics can be used express feelings, point out objects, recreate a scene, or even convey class levels. It can even be it's own language if interpreted correctly, and for people born deaf it is the only form of communicating to others besides writing. There's American Sign Language (asl), British Sign Language and even deaf communities around the globe made up of different cultures. Eventhough this is the main positive outcome of kinesics, it can also cause barriers or discrepancies among cross-culture communication. In America, throwing up the middle finger generally means "up-yours". However, in Japan it is a greeting, and in Japanese sign language it means older brother. So depending on where you are and where you are from, using kinesics can bring about a positive or negative outcome.  

Cues and Blues

On page 106 of Jandt's book, cues are discussed and mentioned as behaviors that are recognized world-wide in similar or the same ways. Most people think a cue is a signal of some sort that directs a person to perform an action. In terms of communication, cues are facial expressions that show a persons outward feelings about something, or how others should feel about a situation. Take for example this cat...

The facial expression on this cat is laughter, cueing to anybody else that something was funny. In the second paragraph on page 106, it states "Most people worldwide correctly identify the facial expressions of anger, disgust, happiness, fear, sadness, and surprise." So universally, cues seem to benefit the population as a whole. 

Non verbal communication, is it really communicating?

I used to question and look at people funny when they would throw up hand signals or move around in strange ways while another person was talking to them. It took a while for me to realize that this person was deaf and was commnicating through sign language instead of saying words verbally. Chapter 5 in Jandts book goes into so much more detail about different forms of nonverbal communication that didn't even involve sign language. Some of the main ideas I caught onto were cues, kinesics, silence, haptics, and mainly olfactics.

While learning sign launguage this quarter, it never really occured to me that there are so many various ways people communicate daily without even saying a word.