Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Cultural Differences

As this story from the Ball State Daily News says, in conversation we convey only a portion of our intended meaning with words. The rest depends on gesture and facial expression. If words have individual meanings for each person, how much more so with gesture? A knowledge of grammar and dictionaries helps improve our awareness of the verbal abstractions we make, but few such resources exist for gestural meaning. Furthermore, we know we face a challenge when learning a foreign language, but how many of us remember that we need to learn the gestural component of that language in order to successfully communicate?

Read the story here: The Ball State Daily News - Body language can cause confusion

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

On Silence

Aldous Huxley, writer, scientist and philosopher, obviously understood the important different between the verbal and object levels. Imagine what he might have said about television!

Aldous Huxley - On Silence