Language, Nonverbal, Listening

For this assignment, again consider what you have been learning about communication skills and styles. Then record an episode of a television show you do not normally watch. Watch the show with the sound turned off.

• What do you think the characters’ relationships are based on the ways in which they are communicating?
• What are they feeling and expressing based on the nonverbal behavior you are observing?

Now, watch the show with the sound turned on.

• What assumptions did you make about the characters and plot based on the ways in which you interpreted the communication you observed?
• Would your assumptions have been more correct if you had been watching a show you know well?

I decided to watch the show “Cougar Town”.  With the sound off I noticed that the 4 characters seemed friendly by laughing together.  The main character sat on a chair with another man and snuggled with him, put her arm around him, and he smiled back at her, that suggested to me that they were a couple.  Another man and woman were sitting on an opposite couch, although they were not touching affectionately, they were still sitting closely.  The man would make eye contact with everyone and speak, and the woman would then talk with her eyebrows lifted, not looking at him, and smirking.  Afterwards the other couple would laugh.  This indicated to me that the woman was making fun of the man.    The main character (a woman) got up and stood behind a counter while still talking to the group.  She used high arched eyebrows which told me she was saying something important to her.  The other characters listened intently, leaning forward in their chairs, making direct eye contact, and one character putting her hand to her chin.  The main character began to look up to the ceiling and look as if she was not talking to the group anymore.  Her mouth began to not open as wide, indicating to me that she was talking more quietly, perhaps to herself.  Then the other woman made a gesture with her hands as if to reel something in, this told me that she was asking the main character to come back to the situation at hand. 

Watching it with the sound on I was correct to assume that the main character and the man she was sitting with on the chair were an item.  They talked about their sex life for a moment and then snuggled.  I had missed previously that the other couple who were sitting on the couch had made disgusted looks.  I believe I didn’t notice this because I wasn’t able to hear the first couple mention their sex life, so I didn’t make that correlation as a joke to make faces at their comment.  When the main character went behind the counter, she started to talk intensely about a plot she was conceiving.  This is why her arched brows and direct eye contact were made.  Then she slowly started to go off into her own world, questioning things that the other members of the group had no idea about.  The woman on the couch asked to come back to their conversation.  That was evident with the sound off as well. 

The dialogue that was used made the show make sense and the gestures that were made were easier to predict and follow when I could hear what was being said.  Otherwise, with the sound off I had no predictions as to what would happen or why it was happening.  I was making assumptions.  I could make my own story line for what was occurring only because these gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, were common to me.  However, with the sound on, all of these began to form together with their dialogue.  How the characters spoke and how they changed pitch and tone and of course, what they said, all made the story lines comes together and meant something more than just what I saw with the sound off.    

I think it was easy to assume what the characters were feeling.  Because feelings of disgust, sadness, and happiness are easily read on faces.  But the content of the characters’ words were totally different than what I had imagined they were saying J