The conversation of Hands.

If I remember correctly, these blogs are to explore ideas and concepts we are either struggling with, or are still discovering. I want to devote this blog to an epiphany I had the other day in relation to the idea of symbols, signs, and words. The question has been posed to the class many times of whether or not language or even communication requires words and symbols. I had a moment this weekend where I communicated when a guy across the street on his bike, he had rode through half of a light and was waiting for myself and another car to go. He could not see that our light was red, however, and through very basic symbols (pointing and waving) I was able to get him to come to the realization that the light was in fact red for us and he had ride of way. Right afterwards I realized what had happened in that moment; even if he didn’t speak English at all, we still would have been able to have that moment of communication.

The concept I wish to explore during this is the idea of a natural, primitive, and instinctual language that human beings possess and the relation of the language to the concepts we are working through in class. It seemed incredible to me that the biker and I were able to communicate a complex idea with simple hand gestures, “Hey man, you should go ahead and go through the light.” “But that other car will hit me.” “No they won’t, we have a red light.” “Oh you are right; I am so embarrassed, thank you!” That entire conversation was done by signaling the things we were referencing with our hands; through some basic communication we understood exactly what the other person was attempting to get across. I think that this has important lessons to be learning for our Rhetoric classes. It shows that there are some ideas that exist and are separate from language.

I suppose the real question that I cannot answer in relation to this is: what if one of us did not speak English? Are our hand signals universal, or are we simply close enough in the colloquial table to be able to easily understand each other through hand signals? It is impossible to tell from this encounter, but it certainly gave me some things to think about.  The ability to communicate without words is an interesting thing, something that I believe we should touch in on in our class at some point, and knowing me, I will surely bring it up soon.