Body Language: Not what you hear, but what you see.

Remember Chapter 5? The one on non-spoken communication? The lesson where the Australian guy in a suit demonstrated how we unconsciously know how to interpret body language?
Well, here is Allan Pease again in case you don't remember:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoEfCOTcYIQ

Body language plays such a large part of our lives every single day however we don't even notice it. It is widely agreed that body language plays a significantly larger role in us being able to understand other people as compared to spoken words. According to Professor Albert Mehrabian, who has pioneered the understanding of communications since the 1960s:

• 7% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in the words that are spoken
• 38% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is paralinguistic (the way that the words are said)
• 55% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in facial expressions

We are constantly exposed to body language when we interact with other people. Like you instinctively know when is the appropriate time to go up to someone and talk to him/her. And when that person is actually listening to what you say, whether the person's responses are truthful or not. You can kind of see it, rather than pick up something a little off just from the words that person is saying.

Like when the person you are talking to is constantly making eye contact and not being easily distracted by other things, you know you have that person's attention and they are willing to hold a conversation. Or when Murphy's Law strikes and due to the Law of Encounters, you suddenly find yourself with a person you don't really want to talk to.

Like so,



You would to everything you can to break off the conversation as fast as possible with the least pain right? So, you would act like you're in a hurry or distracted and constantly check you phone for example, all the while saying all the right things. All of this is to just convey the message that this conversation is getting awkward and you don't wanna talk anymore, but in a more subtle, and less direct way.

Another situation would be when you come up to someone and you get a feeling that you don't want to approach the person just by the way he acts. His/her body language tells you so much without him/her needing to say a word.



 "Be water, my friend."


You wouldn't wanna mess with him right? Even if you wanted to you simply can't. He's Bruce Lee.
But, the main point is the body language part.

The point is recognizing body language and interpreting it correctly will help you through daily life, it lets you see so many other hidden meanings you could have missed and enable you to react accordingly. Recognizing negative vibes early on would save you from making the wrong choices, and this can be applied in almost every aspect of daily life.


Mehrabian's Communication Research, Retrieved from: http://www.businessballs.com/mehrabiancommunications.htm
Bruce Lee picture, retrieved from http://www.bruceleedivinewind.com/

How often do we assume ladybugs are female?

Recalling Chapter 4 on the spoken language, we learnt that language affects the way we see the world. Focusing on this point, I went to dig around the Internet, and found several studies which I thought were really interesting.


1. Language shapes colour perception

"Different languages divide up the color continuum differently: some make many more distinctions between colors than others, and the boundaries often don't line up across languages."

You might have experienced this quite often. Like how I would describe our UB tee as blue, but my friend who studied design comes waltzing in and tells me it's navy, or palatinate, or cobalt. Or something.



"BLUE. Why are you being so picky about this?!"


But that is just English. What about languages that have lesser terms for colours?

Example. Here be colours.



To most of us, we know that they are orange, pink and red respectively. But to people from the Himba tribe, they call all these "serandu". To put this into perspective, give them a red card, they say it's "serandu". Give them an orange card, and it's "serandu" as well. They can see that they are different if you put them next to each other, but show them separately, and they might confuse them to be the same card.

To make things more interesting, if you teach them new names for the colours, they are able to learn how to identify the different shades in the future even without any comparison.

Let's go back to different shades of blue (again, haha). To an English speaker, all shades of blue are called "Blue". But in Russian, there is no such single term that categorises all shades we term as blue. They have this different terms between light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). Due to having more words for different shades of blue, Russians are better than English speakers in visually discriminating shades of blue.


Nooooooo they are all blueeeeeeeee.


2. Language determines your navigational ability

If I tell you to give me directions, you would often use words like, "left", "right", "in front", "behind" etc. Most of these terms are relative to us. A typical string of directions would be, "turn left (from where you are) at the end of the block", "go forward (from here) and then turn right at the corner"

But for Aboriginal people, they give directions with Naughty Elephant Spray Water cardinal-direction terms aka North South East West. For everything. Directions become "Go southwest, then head Northeast to the west". Telling them that they have something on one of their legs, and you have to say "There's something on your southeast leg."

Tell them to come over and sit with you, and it will be "Hey, take your bags and come sit to the northnorthwest."

This means that for Aboriginal people, they must stay oriented at all times without the help of a compass or a smartphone with 3G capability. English speakers rely on language that uses relative reference frames (i.e. Your left is my right), whereas Aboriginal people uses absolute reference frames (North will always be North. Turn 180 degrees from North, and it's South) This results in Aboroginal people being better navigators than English speakers, even in unfamiliar territory, because they are just so much better at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are.

Now for another interesting bit: Imagine if you never had a "left" in your vocabulary. Will it still affect the way you navigate?

The answer is yes.

A group of deaf schoolschildren invented their own sign language in the 1970s. In the early stages of developing this language, they did not have terms for "left" and "right". Even though all their senses function the same as us, not only they are having extreme difficulty explaining space, they have difficulty figuring out where things are too. In a study, an item was placed at the corner of a room, and they were told to direct a fellow person to the item. The result was that because of the lack of certain linguistic codes for space such as "left of", they have more difficulty internalising a mental map of the room and orientate themselves properly.

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In several of these links, they mentioned that language shape how we perceive space, time, colors, and objects. If you search around, studies have found that language can also affect people in more profound ways such as "constructing events, reason about causality, keep track of numbers, understand material substance, perceive and experience emotion, reason about other people's minds, choose to take risks, and even in the way they choose professions and spouses." (Google around. Examples are everywhere!)

This all ties back to how language is arbitrary, how it shapes the way we think and view the world, and even our lifestyle. They all support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in which it suggests that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, like how the ability to recognise colours comes with having names for them. It brings a whole new deep meaning to the point in our slides that says, "Language is a kind of knowledge."


This is the end of my long-winded entry. For those who are bored, I give you some fun. This has got nothing to do with communications, but well..

Munsell Hue Test

My eyes just died. But at least I have a victory.




I took ages completing this. Glad that this doesn't have a timer. I had to keep leaning back and forth. Blue-Green row was the hardest for me; I was working on the blue side, then by the time I reached the green bit, they all looked the same to me HAHAHA.

Formation of Chinese Character

A few days ago, my brother approached me asking me about Oracle Bone Script （甲骨文）which left me in shock as he was never interested in this kind of stuffs. When I asked him why, he explained to me that his teacher had shown him an article about it. As he knows that I learned History in Chinese in JC and that I was in Chinese Cultral Society, he thought of asking me about it. Due to this, I started digging for all the stuffs I know about it. This triggered me into writing this blog post because after reading back, I find it interesting about how the oracle bone scripts becomes the Simplified Chinese characters that we are learning today.

Oracle bone script is considered the earliest form of Chinese character which later developed to the modern Chinese characters. The origin of it's name is due to these characters being carved on the shell to turtles or the animal bones. Then towards the end of Shang dynasty, Bronze script is created. As the name suggest, it is Chinese characters engraved in bronze whereby the characters are first carved in the inner mold before the molten bronze is poured in.

During the Warring states of Qin, Seal script arises and it is further divided into Large Seal Script and Small Seal script. Large Seal script evolved from the Chinese Bronze Script. In Qin dynasty there were different types of word form used in different states in China. Therefore after the unification of China, Qin Shi Huang commanded one of his officials Li Shi to systematize the characters throughout China, thus the formation of Small Seal Scripts. Seal Script is also an ancient form of calligraphy is mostly widely used in seal engraving.

So where does the Chinese characters that we learn today are formed? In actual fact, Traditional Chinese emerge with Clerical script. In Han dynasty, Clerical script was created. As the sides of the Chinese characters are more squarish compared to Seal script, it was faster to write. From the formation of Clerical script, Cursive script, Regular Script and Semi-cursive scripts were created as the different style of calligraphy.

Lastly, the Simplified Chinese characters which is taught in Singapore was first discovered during the Northern and Southern Dynasty of China. In Tang dynasty that there was an increase in Simplified Chinese Characters. However, it was until 1909 that Simplified Chinese Characters were firstly publicized. In 1935, the first table for Simplified Chinese character was introduced and there was an exercise to promote the use of Simplified Chinese. But it was stopped during 1937 due to the Second Sino-Japanese War. Only in 1950s, after the formation of People's Republic of China there were further simplification of Chinese Characters. In 1964, the Chinese government introduced the Simplified Chinese Charaters table which consists 2238 characters formed the standard words that China used now.

Linking back to Singapore, do you actually know that first batch of Simplified Chinese characters was introduced in 1969? After 3 rounds simplification, in 1976 Singapore had the same set of Simplified Chinese characters as China. Imagine if there was o simplification of Chinese Characters, Singapore might be like Taiwan and Hong Kong using simplified Chinese characters isn't it?

Styles of Communications.

Do you know how we first started our form of communications on Earth and how it revolves till to date?

It was from the olden days, where people are not illiterate, whom produced the first form of communication on earth. Like how we understand:
Fire is being made to form a communication between the sender and the receiver through the smoke indication. Symbols are being crafted on stones and walls in ancient times.

But how do we derive to the kind of communications we have to date?
As the years passed, people started to learn the ways of writing, the style of communicating properly and how to convey a message.

In today’s society, our communications have increased tremendously with the different styles of communication, from our body languages to the communications in the cyber world. Our first communication before entering into this world is when we were a foetus in our mothers’ uteruses. It is when we react to our parents through kicking or punching inside our mothers’ wombs. When we were born, crying is the only method in helping us to convey our messages and emotions to our parents. Even as a child, we have our own ways of communication and seek for attention when we needed it.

It is when we start to learn the ways of conveying our messages to the society where we have to change our style of communication with the flow of the changing state of society, be it at work, in school or even in the public. For example, when we were at work, we wouldn’t possibly talk to our boss in an informal way as compared to talking to our best friends. It is the status and the place of interaction that changes our style of communication at different point of time. When we communicate at certain point, our body language also informs one our thoughts and how we react to the situation. In public places when we were alone, we tend to not caring our surroundings and keep to ourselves. For instance, teenagers do put on their headphones and cut off all noises beyond them when they are alone outside or in public transports. This is a kind of communication we tend to portray in today’s society.

To me, I feel that communications had always played a huge part to our life. Through the ways of communication, it really helps us to see one better, and understand them deeper; however, I also believe that communications can be a form of a lie, where people would use it to hide their real emotions. Different styles of communications could portray who we are and how we handle the different situations in this society. Without communication, it is hard for us to understand people, in the form of their thoughts and emotions.