At least in the English language, communication must necessarily be distinguished from language. Communication includes all conscious (or in some definitions, even unconscious) information conveyed through the body, including hands, face, and of course the tongue. For our podcast project, we want to effectively communicate so that our audience understands exactly what we're trying to get across. There are many stock expressions we can make use of, even where our language skills fail us. For example, prohibition of particular table manners need not just be correctly using the な form, but should also include indicators with gestures and facial expressions. To this purpose we should also do some limited research on basic Japanese gestures, since these are by no means universal (Greeks shaking their head for yes has baffled plenty of tourists).
As for the linguistic aspect, we must be sure to conform entirely to the Japanese audience's expectations. Translation is indeterminate, and if we aim to be effective, we should write always in Japanese aiming to use the appropriate grammatical structures for our purpose rather than writing a script and English and seeing how well we can translate it. Communication is a complex topic and appropriately is still debated in the realm of philosophy, but for the purposes of this project our aim should be to learn how to communicate through learning the culture. Table manners, my group's topic, is a very precise and important semiotic system within Japanese culture. Part of the challenge of this project will be to communicate explicitly about an implicit system of communication. The interplay between these systems and the responses we get will certainly be interesting, and I expect to learn not only about Japanese language, but communication in general.
日本語のアナリシスは よくて、とても おもしろいです。
ReplyDeleteそして、すこし GREEKの ユーマアが すきです。
You have a very thorough analysis of communication, even to the extent of a short CC term paper! I think you have a clear understanding of what you need to accomplish through this podcast project.
がんばって！
I might just write that CC paper. I had a previous post on Heidegger and Japanese which is pretty similar to this. The only question is whether all this theoretical rambling actually produced some useful results, which I hope it did when viewing the final product: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Y316ZqdFM&feature=youtu.be
DeleteYou are so right about the non-verbal forms of communication. Sometimes the gestures and body language is more important than what is said verbally. Effectively using non-verbal communication will surely help to produce a successful podcast.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting how table manners, even between Asian cultures is very different. Once it starts to include table manners in work environments, it can become even more nerve-wracking! good luck with the project! - すぎもと
ReplyDeleteTable manners are a really fascinating part of culture. The sociologist Emile Durkheim pointed out that almost every culture has them, yet they are entirely arbitrary. For example, smacking lips is very rude in some cultures (like most Western), yet not smacking lips is incredibly rude in others. I think a cultural fluency is very connected to linguistic fluency, and these little things which we tend to ignore, like table manners, actually become very important in the society itself.
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