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November 17, 2005
Conversational Style
I had an interesting conversation with my neighbor recently. Normally I'm not much of a pauser and half way through the conversation I remembered our assignment and so started pausing and stopped interjecting. The effects were immediate - he started taking his time and talked much more slowly. He paused for long intervals in the middle of a sentence seeming to ponder the very air around him. I think my neighbor enjoyed my not talking! And it definitely changed the nature of the interaction but I was just jumping up and down inside after about 2 minutes and had to excuse myself. I did enjoy the experiment though.
Nanette asked us another question awhile back that I also had the opportunity to explore recently. She asked if people of different cultures use different gestures. And shortly after that a woman, of Indian decent, approached me at the T stop to ask for directions. As she spoke she bobbed her head from side to side in a characteristically Indian fashion and I realized that we do gesture differently based on our cultural norms and that these must indeed lead to some of the stereotypes about different cultures that Nanette was discussing.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at November 17, 2005 06:13 PM