A Work of Art in a Museum - Essay Example

Conversation School The conversation that I’ve recently took part in happened between me and my close friend and was engaged with discussion around a work of art in a museum. The communicative situation gave me an opportunity to observe different aspects of the speech act and my interlocutor’s behavioral patterns. The conversation started with an analysis of a piece of art. My interlocutor (Mike) was standing in front of the painting and tried to construct a consistent argumentation by pointing on the parts of the painting he was interpreting. His body language seemed constrained, because he crossed his legs and tried to protect his chest zone from time to time by crossing his hands or putting his arm on his chest. At the very beginning of the conversation he felt free expressing his emotions, but as more we were talking as more his gestures were becoming abrupt, so he was gesturing more when he was trying to prove something and he was standing crossing his hands on the chest while listening to my retorts. It was very obvious when Mike disagreed with me, because he put his right forefinger on his mouth like he was trying to close his lips with something in order not to say anything when he disagreed with me. Furthermore, in the moments when our conversation turned into a hot discussion, he uncrossed his legs and stood up in a straight posture, bending his chest towards me like if he wanted to fight with me. As for Mike’s facial expressions they were multiple and depended on the course of our conversation. When we got into discussion, Mike’s facial expressions demonstrated aggression, for instance, he frown his knit brows and screwed up his lips. However when we agreed with each other’s points he usually smiled and his pupils became bigger. As far as our conversation mostly consisted of discussions and arguments the general tone and cadence of the verbal part of it were intensive and mostly were conducted on raised voice. When we just started the conversation our tones were soft and our voices were of the same volume. Notwithstanding that our discussion started unexpectedly, we had been raising our tones since the very moment our disagreement appeared. Thus our voices had been rising for some period of time, until we started almost yelling at each other, but then we had to lower our voices into whispering, because it was prohibited to turn on caps lock voice in the museum. Still even when we had to whisper, we used voice inflections in order to emphasize on the specific points, which each of us tried to make the other change his opinion about. My interlocutor used slang as well as I did, because the conversation was emotional and our arguments mostly concerned our own opinions on the matter rather than it was a kind of scientific discussion that didn’t require using everyday slang language. As far as Mike is a very emotional person, I was mostly a passive listener rather than active speaker in this conversation. We both tried to understand each other’s points at the very beginning of the conversation, although when it turned into a hot discussion we stopped asking each other any follow-up questions, because we both wanted to speak out in favor of our own positions. Thus I should say that I had actually asked Mike some additional questions for the first 3 minutes of the conversation until the moment when we found out that we had a huge disagreement. However, Mike didn’t ask me anything throughout the entire conversation, because most of the time he was trying to foist his own ideas in, so he wasn’t really interested in my point of view. The discussion that we had was engaged with an art style of the particular painting, so we often used other paintings of the same artist, available in the museum, in order to support our arguments with some evidences. Mike often pointed on certain parts of the painting (without directly touching it) in order to pay my attention on what exactly he was talking about. It is possible to say that the painting was the main illustration of our conversation, because the entire discussion was based on its attributes and elements. Thus the proxemics of our conversation played crucial role. The environment we were in during the conversation limited the rates of voices we were allowed to use and restricted the manner of speaking that was appropriate for a conversation in such place as museum. Thus even when we were getting too emotional, we still had to take control over intensity of our verbal communication. As for non-verbal communication the proxemics of the conversation made us limit our gestures and keep our non-verbal actions within the scopes of decency in order for us not to use rude signs and aggressive body language. The museum was also the most appropriate place for the kind of discussion we had and in fact it actually was the reason of the conversation. That’s why the place was the starting point and influential part of the communicative situation. As far as the discussion was mostly conducted in quite aggressive way, reciprocity almost didn’t take place in it. The only moment when we used it was when we were trying to get over the conflict at the end of the conversation, so we used reciprocity to end up the discussion and agreed that each of us was partially right regarding the matter. The communicative situation was itself a kind of a conflict. And in some points of our discussion we weren’t able to control neither our verbal nor our non-verbal expressions. So at a certain point I realized that there was no rational way out of the argument because each of us was assured about his own stance and wasn’t willing to change his own point of view. Thus I decided that acceptance of my opponent’s point of view (even demonstrative) would be more useful for preservation of our relationships than keeping fighting. Eventually we ended up with an act of reciprocity and gave credit to each other’s points of view. Read More