NONVERBAL AND VERBAL COMMUNICATION

For a lesson on nonverbal and verbal communication I watched a never-seen-by-me TV show, first muted and then with sound.  The following is a summary of what I learned:

Community, season 1, episode 1 WITHOUT SOUND

• What do you think the characters' relationships are based on the ways in which they are communicating? What are they feeling and expressing based on the nonverbal behavior you are observing?

The show takes place on a college campus.  Pretty quickly they establish a main male character (man 1).  There is another male character (male 2) that introduces himself with a handshake.  The man 1 asks sees a love interest and asks man 2 about her.  Man 1 goes to see a man from human science department (man 3).  It is difficult to say if man 1 is a student or a professor.  He is wearing a button up shirt with a sweater, but also wearing track pants.  Man 1 goes to a study group and the love interest is there and it is difficult to tell whether is surprised or faking it and had planned on her being there.  He leaves quickly and has another interaction with man 3 and it is still very hard to tell the nature of their relationship.  When man 1 returns to the study group there are more people there now.  He appears to be leading the study group.  He leaves and has another interaction with man 3.  This time man 3 has a package for man 1 and it appears as though he asks for something before he gives the package to man 1.  Man 1 returns to the study group and gives them each a pep talk which makes them look happier and more confident (sitting up in there chairs, smiling, laughing).  I would guess that man 1 is a professor and he takes over the study group for man 3 in order to meet the leading lady.  However, the group looks to be a challenge and he has to decide whether to stick with them or not.  The leading lady yelling at him and his pep talk lead me to believe that he will continue with the group.

WITH SOUND

• What assumptions did you make about the characters and plot based on the ways in which you interpreted the communication you observed?  Would your assumptions have been more correct if you had been watching a show you know well?

Well, I have realized that it is difficult to watch comedies without the sound because so much of what makes the show a success is the delivery of lines.  Comedians like Mr. Bean were brilliant at nonverbal humor, using his whole body to make you laugh.  I was right about the main character having a love interest in the girl.  However, he was not a professor, but a student that was there because he faked being a lawyer without a law degree.  The 3rd character is a professor in the social science department and was a client of the main character.  The main character wanted this man to get him access to all the answers to all the tests for the semester as a favor for getting charges of a DUI dropped.  

Much of the plot was difficult or impossible for me to decipher without verbal communication.  However, I realized that when we cannot use verbal communication we make assumptions based on visual cues and our previous knowledge.  The love plot was not hard to guess because it is a story that is used regularly in other stories.  A boy likes a girl and fakes being someone or something in order to get the girl.  Then you watch as his lie blows up in his face. 

I think knowing the plot and the relationship between the characters would have made me follow the story more, but it still would not have been funny or enjoyable.  This exercise made me think about people who are deaf or have hearing challenges.  So many times it is not what we say, but how we say things that create meaning.  In this example, if I would have read subtitles I would have known the plot, but I do not think things would have been quite so funny without out hearing the delivery of the lines.  Likewise, I think this happens when we are writing texts and emails.  So much of what we say can be misinterpreted due to how the receiver reads the message.  My spouse can text me that he is finished with an errand and coming home with the children and I can text back "great" with no punctuation.  This could be read excited great or sarcastic great.  Knowing the person that you are communicating with helps with this interpretation, but it can still be misread.  In the world of written messages that we now live in there are tools created to help with this communication.  Emoticons help let the receiver know you are happy, sad, flirting, or just joking ;)  This is to replace the understanding that we get in a face-to-face or verbal conversation.  We gain a lot of meaning from body language and voice tone and inflection.  Without carefully wording your texts and emails it is easy to cause accidental conflict. 

Reference  

Harmon, D. (Writer), & Russo, A. & Russo, J. (Director). (2009, September 17). Pilot [Television series episode]. In G. Foster, D, Harmon, P. Kienlen, R. Krasnoff, C. McKenna, & T. Shapeero (Producer), Community. City, state of origin: NBC.  Retrieved on Hulu.com