It is indisputable that language makes big influence and difference in verbal communication. Just take an incident that happened two days ago as an example.
I had lent my friend, X my rice cooker and a bowl about one week ago. Besides borrowed my utensils, X also borrowed a plate from my roommate and a tin opener from my friend who is staying beside my room. One important thing to note is X is not borrowed the stuff for himself, but for his friends. X always helps his friends (the same friends) borrow things from my group of friends. However, this is not the thing that we care. The thing that matter (a little bit only) is X did not tell us that the things that he borrowed are for his friends. At this moment, you must be wondering how we knew it. The answer is sometimes the person who returned the things to us was X’s friend, and occasionally, he told my roommate he is borrowing the things for his friends. (After borrowing the things)
To be honest, we do not like one of X’s friend as she is very arrogant and does not say ‘hi’ to us although we have been in the same class and often see each other in college and hostel. She did not reply ‘hi’ or smile to us even when we said ‘hi’ to her. Nevertheless, she did notify others who she considered intelligent. Such a bigheaded person… (X does not know that we are not very happy with the girl) Although we are not very happy with her, this will not stop us from lending her things. We are not such stingy people.
When X borrowed the stuff, he did not tell us when he will return the things to us. At the night which X borrowed the stuff, my roommate sms X and asked him when he will return the stuff to us as one of the things he borrowed was belonged to my friend who stays beside my room. As we are not very close to the friend, it is not good to borrow her thing for a long period although we had told her it is borrowed for another friend. Back to the sms, he replied “later”. However, he did not return the stuff. My roommate had sms X several times after that day regarding this matter to ask him when he will return those things. Nevertheless, the same results turned out. X broke all his promises, so I do not have a good impression on him already.
On last Thursday, X, finally returned the stuff to us when I was on the way home to my hometown. Among the stuff that X returned to us, there were extra spoons which were not belonging to us. In order to make sure those are not my spoons, my roommate sms me. The sms is like this: “You did not borrow any spoon from X?” Then I was confused. I spoke to myself: “Har? Is there any error in this message?” However, I was a little bit annoyed. So, I replied her with this message: “Who want to borrow his spoon wor? I also have many spoons la. No. He said I borrowed from him?” At last, she said she had made an error in that message. It should be: “X did not borrow any spoon from you?”
From this, we can see that how language makes a huge impact in communication especially when my roommate made the syntactic error in the usage of ‘borrow’ and ‘lend’. Besides, it is obvious that ‘No single person or event causes another’s reaction’. Communication is a process. The things that annoyed me were not the message only, but all those things that linked together. Furthermore, intrapersonal and dyadic communications occurred when I spoke to myself and the communication between my roommate and me.
0 comments:
Post a Comment