The Television episode I chose to watch without sound was Parenthood. I have heard a lot of friends mention watching it so I decided to use it for this assignment.
I had a very hard time understanding the relationships of the characters based on the way they were communicating. There seemed to be a large amount of characters within the episode. Therefore, it was hard to keep up with who was with who. People I thought were together while watching it without the sound were actually not together like I had thought once I watched it with the sound on. However, considering the episode began inside a house I would assume that some of the characters are related. Based off how other characters were communicating with one another with smiles, hugs, talking in close proximity I would assume they are all good friends.
At the beginning of the episode I could tell that the characters were feeling happy about something based on nonverbal behaviors of smiling, laughing, and hugging. Later on in the episode I noticed characters feeling confused or unsure based on nonverbal behaviors of making facial expressions, looking back at one another for what appeared to be affirmation, sighing, and breathing out deeply. I also noticed characters seeming to be arguing with one another based on behaviors of making facial expressions, frowning, flapping arms up and down as though they were upset, and talking in a way that appeared to be yelling.
Once I actually began watching the show with the sound turned on I realized I made some correct and some incorrect assumptions about the characters and plot based on the ways they were communicating with each other. When I thought some of the characters arguing I learned that they really weren’t arguing just discussing and actually playing around with each other. I assumed the different characters were dealing with some problems and this turned out to be true. However, I made the incorrect assumption that a character was having problems with who appeared to be his boss. Once I watched the show with the sound I realized that he actually was not having any trouble with his boss. In all actuality he pitched an idea to his boss that he thought he would decline, but his boss actually loved the idea.
Had I watched a show that I had watched before I would have made more correct assumptions because I would have an idea of the plot of the show. With prior knowledge on the plot of the show I would be able to better interpret what is going on relationship wise between characters and how they are feeling. However, there were some parts of the episode that I was able to correctly assume about based on the nonverbal behaviors and contexts portrayed. For example. without the sound I was able to correctly assume one seen was a mother trying to teach her daughter how to drive for the first time. After re-watching the episode with the sound on I realized that this is exactly what was occurring. Although some of the assumptions I had made were correct I was completely incorrect in the conversations and topics being discussed.
This was a very interesting experience for me. I grew up with my older sister being deaf. We always had closed captions on our television so that she would be able to follow along with the story. Without being able to hear the dialogue of the show was frustrating at times. I can definitely see where the frustration my sister had came from. It was also very easy to make assumptions about what was occurring that were majorly wrong in comparison to what was truly occurring. I was completely lost on the types of conversations that were occurring within the episode. No matter what nonverbal cues I was able to pick up on within the episode with the sound off I was still lost at the actually topic being discussed because I simply was not apart of the language. My major “aha” moment was my realization that without being able to hear the language being spoken within the episode I based all of my assumptions primarily on the nonverbal cues I was observing. All of the assumptions I had made were off of the nonverbal cues I had observed – Wow… I am not sure why this hit me like a ton of bricks. With this realization I was once again reminded of the impact nonverbal cues have on communication.
kindergartenteaching 
Amy,
Isn’t interesting the assumptions, both correct and incorrect, we can make without all of the pieces of communication we use. I think we can make the same errors when we hear someone talking in another room and think we know the whole story based on the tone of voice. We may hear yelling and think some is angry, just to find that they were just excited. I think this exercise is that we need more than one communication channel to understand the context of the message.
I appreciate that you have found a deeper insight on your sister’s experience in communicating in the hearing world and the connection between non-verbal and verbal cues.
Thank you for sharing,
LouAnn
Christina,
Isn’t it funny how major some of our mistakes are when it comes to reading nonverbals without having any verbals connected to them 🙂 I was reminded of something when you spoke of some of the characters earlier in your post having conversation in close proximity to each other. I recall being in my mid-twenties, and a very popular gospel singing artist’s daughter (who at the time was about eight or nine years old) came up to speak to me. I was sitting down, and she came right up to my face to talk to me–I thought there was something wrong with her eye sight or hearing. It was a bit unnerving to have her so close to my face while talking, but in retrospect I can imagine that she was accustomed to communicating that way. Both of her parents were highly visible people and often were seen talking very closely to each other (probably to keep their degree of privacy among such publicity).
Lol, this class is really teaching me alot about how important it is to receive the intended message of the communicater 🙂
Great post, Christina!
CCWhite
Reference
O’Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2009). Real communication. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
I LOVE that show….there are so many interpersonal and family relationship dynamics that you could never decipher all of the story lines through a non-verbal context. It was a great one to choose.
Thanks for connecting the assignment to a personal story. That helped deepen my level of understanding.
I find it interesting that you stated that there were so many characters that it was hard to pick up on the non verbal cues. Immediately I thought about my three year old classroom. Although I have a co teacher, 17 three year old children is a lot to manage to the extent of being able to really tune in to all of their non verbal cues.
YOu don’t really think about the tone of a show either. You can read the close captioned like your sister did and it helps a little bit and you can use your imagination but the tone really makes the humor or drama really come alive. I have never thought about that before. I wonder if you have never experienced sarcasm or certain tones in a voice if it would be as funny or even funny at all. Was your sister able to understand a show that relies heavily on tones and sarcasm? I suppose she would. Very interesting. These courses make me feel like I have been living in a lala land. I have been going along all this time just living in my ow world and not thinking about others at all, or even realizing I had to. I can’t get over the last class when we studied certain religions that have to take exams during their sacred holidays and now the fact that I haven’t considered what the limitations might be about a deaf person and their abitilty to understand sarcasm, and tone. Ugh!! I just take so much for granted.