Language Barriers
This topic has intrigued me greatly in life. The main reason being is that I'm in an interracial relationship and faced with a language barrier. But in this experience I learned much about human interaction and how we are faced with communicating sans lingual communication. In some ways I've actually found this to be a beautiful thing.
When people have a language barrier between them, there is mostly a sense of tension and awkwardness, but like many other things, this is dependent on the situation. Let's say Flora, a Spanish speaking person, who only speaks Spanish and Donna, an English speaking person who only speaks English are put into a few situations. First situation is a workers strike, and picketing at the workplace where they work. Both people are early and forced to communicate and although awkward, form a bond that follows throughout the entire protest. Although its superficial from an outside perspective, the fact is, these two people, 
these two strangers formed a common bond without speech. The common bond being their similar feelings towards working conditions and their outrage. Another situation could be Donna meeting her mother in law, Flora for the first time. Although what Donna says might not really effect Flora's first impression, what is impressed is EVERYTHING Donna does. When people cannot rely on what other people say for an opinion, they resort to visual cues such as appearance and body language. An example would be, lets say, Donna walks in with ratty hair, lights a cigarette on Flora's Lady of Guadalupe candle, and eats the food loudly with her mouth open. It doesn't require a knowledge of Donna's words to figure out she's trashy.
While these sort of everyday situations wouldn't normally be considered beautiful, I simply find it amazing how humans have the power to transfer ideas, emotions, similarities, and even things they may not want to communicate to others, while being completely disconnected verbally.
Exeunt.
When people have a language barrier between them, there is mostly a sense of tension and awkwardness, but like many other things, this is dependent on the situation. Let's say Flora, a Spanish speaking person, who only speaks Spanish and Donna, an English speaking person who only speaks English are put into a few situations. First situation is a workers strike, and picketing at the workplace where they work. Both people are early and forced to communicate and although awkward, form a bond that follows throughout the entire protest. Although its superficial from an outside perspective, the fact is, these two people, 
these two strangers formed a common bond without speech. The common bond being their similar feelings towards working conditions and their outrage. Another situation could be Donna meeting her mother in law, Flora for the first time. Although what Donna says might not really effect Flora's first impression, what is impressed is EVERYTHING Donna does. When people cannot rely on what other people say for an opinion, they resort to visual cues such as appearance and body language. An example would be, lets say, Donna walks in with ratty hair, lights a cigarette on Flora's Lady of Guadalupe candle, and eats the food loudly with her mouth open. It doesn't require a knowledge of Donna's words to figure out she's trashy.While these sort of everyday situations wouldn't normally be considered beautiful, I simply find it amazing how humans have the power to transfer ideas, emotions, similarities, and even things they may not want to communicate to others, while being completely disconnected verbally.
Exeunt.
No comments:
Post a Comment