Verbal and Non-verbal Communication

The Housewives of Atlanta

I decided to watch the housewives of Atlanta on bravo for this assignment.  If you havr never seen this show, its about affluent wives of Atlanta, Georgia that are "friends".  Most of the show contains women arguing, hanging out, doing some type of charity and being housewives.  

As I began watching, it was really difficult not to turn on the volume.  The first scene was the women meeting at the airport on their way to somewhere.  They all seemed excited to be there.  They gave hugs, there were smiles and their husbands were dapping each other up and it seemed that they were telling each other jokes, from the way they were laughing.  The show then cut to when they were at the hotel.  One of the women, Nene, was rolling her eyes and gave another cast member a fake hug when she arrived.  The part of the show that showed the most amount of communication was at the dinner table.  All of the couples from the airport were there and two other couples as well.  The dinner received about 10 min of airtime.  For the first part of the dinner everyone was laughing and talking with each other.  Then, one of the husbands seemed to direct his questions at one of the women across the table from him.  Through body movements, facial expressions and gestures I was able to conclude that the male, Peter, was questioning the other lady, Porsha, about something.  As I looked at her answering him, she was flustered, it looked that she was speaking in a loud tone but not yelling and she was using her hands while she was speaking.   

As the dinner continued there were shots of the dinner party members making confused faces, others having side conversations in low tones voices, and hand gestures telling others to stop or to show if they were getting all worked up.  

Without the sound I assumed that everyone was friends and they were all taking a trip.  Come to find with the sound that, many of them do not like each other made clear through Nene eye roll earlier in the show.  The show culminated at the dinner at the end.  Come to find out the couples were separated from their significant other around the table to stimulate conversation and avoid conflict.  Because this show is reality TV, I feel that I was able to get the gist of the show and its cast.  If I was watching a show that I knew I would probably not have needed to turn on because I might have been able to figure out the plot through what I previously knew.  

I learned that I was mostly right about what I was viewing with and without the volume.  This tells me that non-verbal communication is a big part of communication.  It has also shown me that without listening you can miss large parts of what people are trying to communicate.