“The Amish Lady Stole Me Anti-Virus!”
I was thinking about communication the other day, specifically speech and language.
Because I speak English right. Well the other day when I was working at one of my part-time jobs at the help desk in the library, a girl came up to me and started speaking to me in a language that I couldn’t understand. ”I’m sorry, what?” and she spoke slower, this time I could tell she was only speaking in an English accent- she was an international student.
And normally I can understand an English accent; I can watch Harry Potter and understand everything. So I asked her where she was from, and she told me Liverpool. She said that every area in England has a different accent, and that she can tell what city someone is from by their accent. She also said Harry Potter is easy enough for Americans to understand because all the accents are “just London.”
Anyway, she started telling me a story, and I had absolutely no idea what she was saying, but I caught the last part of it and I was like, “yeah.” I had to ask her to tell me again, and eventually I figured out that she was saying “I took my computer to the Amish lady at the gym who was fixing everybody’s computers,”
“wait- everybody who?” I said.
“Everybody that’s from countries.” So I guess they had something set up in the gym for the international students to help them get connected to the internet, which even American students need help doing at this university.
Anyway, she went on, “The lady made me leave my computer there, and when I got it back in a few days, I had no anti-virus! the Amish lady stole me anti-virus!” no for real, she said that. (I did explain to her that I’m sure the woman was not Amish, because if she was she wouldn’t be in that position. She was probably either mennonite or just one of those people like the Duggers are, just conservative Christians; also likely is that she was just a regular woman who had on an ankle-length denim skirt and her hair in a bun).
See I have this other part time job, working for the Lock Haven University Foundation Phonathon. We call all the alumni, faculty, and parents of students and ask them to donate money to the annual fund. But they can’t just make it that simple for us. We have to do this stoopid thing called “building rapport” with the alum.
So we have to sit there and have an awkward conversation with whoever we are talking with before we ask them for money. It’s so dumb, because anyone on the other line is going to know that I just want to ask for money. We have to ask them questions and get them talking about their jobs, did they end up working in the field that they studied at Lock Haven, did LHU help them establish that career, why did you decide to go into that field, did you like Lock Haven and why, and any kind of other question we can think of for four-eight minutes before we can get to the ask.
And you can just tell they don’t want to be talking to you, and they can tell that I don’t really want to be talking to them- I’m just not that good at acting, especially over the phone. So it’s basically just a horrifyingly awkward conversation that I would seriously kill to get out of.
And it doesn’t make any sense, because everyday in the call center we are supposed to sit beside a different caller, so we can learn things from each other. And you know, I always get along with whoever I’m sitting next to. I can always talk to them and be like, “wow what an awkward conversation,” and then in between calls we talk about the different conundrums we’ve gotten into over the phone, and usually we have like friendly compition like who will raise more money in an evening.
Anyway, these things got me thinking about speech communication. It seems like when two people are speaking the same language, directly to one another, it should be the most clear and understandable form of human communication. But it’s just not so.
Like one time my dad called me about the refridgerator, and he said to me, “do you want me to leave this fridge at your brothers?” and I guess he meant do I want it in my room, or am I not gonna use it so go ahead and give it to him. but I was so confused, and I didn’t know what he was asking. The truth was I didn’t need it and he could have left it there, but in the end he ended up bringing it to me because of the whole misunderstanding.
So it seems like speech communication is not just communicating by talking to each other. There seem to be a million other environmental factors. It doesn’t make sense that I can’t understand a girl who is speaking english to me, and it doesn’t make sense that when I’m talking on the phone I sound like a bumbling idiot, but to the guy next to me I sound like a regular person who can hold a conversation- when I don’t know either of them.
hm. Here I am at the end and I really don’t know what the point of this one is. I guess I’m just pointing out what a strange shape verbal communication is in.
