02/06/20: The sounds of silence

When we think of silence we think of usually no communication but that in fact is not the case considering there is other ways of communications without having to make a physical sound by mouth or that the ear has to hear. We think of non verbal communication and we use this on day to day basis when we roll our eyes or do gestures with our hands and that is a way of communicating. When I think of how someone might shift there body position it reminds me of interrogation in the criminal justice system because they look at the way people respond through body language to help them with hints to know whether or not this person can be guilty or can also show them if they are nervous as well. There was also a point that was brought out that said ” eye behavior follows a definite set of rules, the rules vary according to the place” which I totally agree because some people look at eye contact with some one as being respectful and somewhere else it can be seen as a sign of disrespect. This is where ethnocentrism could come into play because in America eye contact is respectful and someone somewhere of a different culture could come here and not give eye contact and we judge them because they are not “respecting” us although they have no idea that it is part of our culture . I never payed attention to also how we have phases of “distances” consisting of intimate, personal, social and public and this makes total sense because depending on the situation and person we usually have a reasonable distance between us . This reminds me of the example in class when we talked about kissing how we look at as if we have to be intimate but in France they kiss on the cheeks twice and Germany they kiss three times on the cheeks after meeting one another so it shows how cultures could be different and in America we have distances that fit into our “norms”. All these non verbal communications some might understand but if they were coming from a different culture they could be totally confused because of the cultural differences.