Reflection #1: Language as a Tool

Without language, there is nothing; no culture, systems of living, civilized lifestyles and there is no way to make sense of the world.

Inform: Not a day goes by that I don't use language to inform people. Lately I've been informing people so much more than I'm used to. Being inside the center of Deaf culture has my brain exploding with information. It's not a part of the hearing culture to tell everyone you meet your full name and where you're from. I think my phone is suffering the most what with all the new names and numbers stored in it. Through my signing, people learn more than just textbook type facts about me. Along with my name and where I grew up, the way I use language to give them information provides them with knowledge I wouldn't be able to put into words. My signing style teaches them a bit about my personality. Body language plays a large factor in how people perceive you also. How I greet them after we've met tells them even more. Each moment that goes by teaches someone something new about me. The sign name I was just recently given has to do with me being independent and in people's faces. I'm upfront and don't back down from a challenge. Through language, my best friend and roommate was able to learn that about me. Everyone around me teaches me in the exact same way. In my opinion, it's easy to figure out someone's personality through the way they speak. Their actions play an important role but language has actions beat. Language is whatever is inside the person's mind coming out for the world to interpret as it will. Through language we inform and learn from the world.

Convince: What better way to win an argument or persuade someone to follow your agenda than to tell them exactly why your way is better than theirs? How else is the person going to know the reasons they need to do as you do? When I try to think about convincing someone of something without using language, I feel like it's impossible. Maybe if you're trying to convince someone to go somewhere with you, you could drag them along wherever you're going. I'm not sure I would count that though. Look at me; I'm arguing with myself here, trying to convince myself that there might be a way to convince someone of something without language. The way you use language is the most important factor of convincing a person of something. If you're trying to convince a company to hire you and you come in like, "Yo yo yo 'sup home dog?" I highly doubt they'll seriously even consider hiring you. Changing the level of your language helps you connect with people properly. Speaking in the way I used as an example may convince someone to be your friend because they also speak like that. But using that kind of vocabulary everywhere will most likely convince people of something negative. Language provides a way to connect to the people around you, which convinces them of how to perceive you.

Explore: I'm not exactly sure how a person can use language to explore. The only way I can think of is if you want to explore a person's mind but that's the same thing as my inform paragraph (in my opinion). Let me think a little on this. Inside my mind I found a thought: someone can use language to explore by naming the things around their world. In my case, I would not be eager to run out into the woods for a camping trip if nothing in there had a name. Everything there would scare me because I would have no idea what it was. Without knowing what it is, you can't expect to know what it would do to you. Could it harm you? Can you eat it in case of an emergency? How will it interact with me? Out in the wilderness, things are given names to familiarize the person with that object. If we just walked around not knowing what things were called, the nameless objects would seem more foreboding. A large boulder without a name is a giant, hard object that hurts to hit. That thing could do anything to someone. With a name, rock, the object becomes familiar. Familiarizing everything causes people to want to learn more. The more you know, the more you want to know. Language helps break the barrier between the foreign object and the person.

Decide: Many people I know refer to other people when they're trying to solve a problem. Decisions to be made usually go through a web of friends before it finally gets back to you. Their words, their feedback, their ideas influence the way you choose to deal with the situation it corresponds with. For instance, an ex of mine decided to pop back into my life. He was a very important ex, one of the ones that you know really altered your personality permanently. The first thing I did was seek out my best friend and ask her what to do. Although I make my own decisions and take the blame if the decision makes things turn out badly for me, I still go to her first. Then I have other friends I can talk to. Even without asking another person what to do, my own mind battles with itself over what I should do when something is really puzzling. Language provides me with the tool I need to make sense of what the decision would mean for me. Randomly deciding what to do about everything before at least internally discussing it rarely ever happens with anyone.

Meditate/Pray: Personally, I don't do a lot of either one of those things. I'm not a church going citizen. I suppose that when I really need time to cool down, I blast my headphones. Without the music, I tend to start to feel lost or like I have ADHD. Their words sometimes make me feel like they're singing about exactly what I feel outside. Feeling like someone knew exactly how I felt us the most amazing feeling. The language the artists use to express how they feel a helps me relax so much Without language and music, I have no idea what I would turn to to relax.

Each paragraph was an argument of my thesis.