“Talking without Talking” – Observations of Non-Verbal Communication when used as a Primary Mode of Communication in Non- Specialists

Non-Verbal Communication (NVC) plays a significant role in our day to day communicative needs, transmitting a range of messages from subtle emotional indicators to explicit information. In this study, we focus on NVC in a linguistically restrictive environment, whereby pairs of Non-Specialists must complete two tasks whilst pilot testing with several participants and received feedback, which we applied in follow-up only communicating non-verbally: the first a building and instruction task, the second a slide based exercise based on the popular game Charades. We identify that whilst NVC seemingly has no ‘written’ rules, patterns and common features can be observed in the participants performance, leading us to questions such as ‘To what extent can independent NVC operate as a communicative medium?’, ‘Can similarities be drawn between a participants NVC and their native L1?’, and ‘What’re the limitations of this method of communication?’ It is my belief that studies of Restricted Language, such as this one, could provide the field of Linguistics with interesting new perspectives and ideas that could compliment data attained with pre-existing methods, as well as providing an insight into how language users deal with exceptional circumstances, and what this tells us of their linguistic ability and intuition.