NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION

For this week’s assignment, we were asked to review a television show that we normally do not watch. I just so happened to choose a show titled, “Dr. Ken”. I have never heard of, nor have seen the show before but was flipping through the channel listing to find a show to record. First, I must say that having to intentionally watch a show with the volume muted was quite interesting. From what I could observe, the show is centered on a doctor who is of Asian descent and his family which consists of a wife and two children. The show also involves co-workers and or his colleague of doctors in a hospital setting. When the show first came on I noticed that Dr. Ken was sitting at the kitchen table eating and having a verbal conversation with a woman who may be his wife. As he is eating, she is talking and going through pieces of mail. She opens one piece, reads it and then looks at him and asks a question with a serious look on her face.  As she  is speaking, he never looks up but he laughs and makes a comment. She still has the look of seriousness on her face and begins to continue to glare at him.  The scene then switches to a hospital setting where Dr. Ken is communicating with several people in the area. He walks over to one doctor and asks a question, she replies with a nod and he appears to be laughing and making comments. One moment he begins to dance as I can tell that the show has lots of humor in it. The next scene is shown as Dr. Ken is having a physical done by one of his colleagues. As the scene continues, all throughout the episode there is a lot of non-verbal facial expressions, such as head nodding, arm and hand gestures, looks of frustration, disgust, happiness and lots of eye contact all used as ways to communicate.  Body language was also viewed throughout the show. It also appeared that Dr. Ken did a lot of dance moves to bring about a funny and playful interaction.

After viewing the show without the voice, I then watched the show with the volume. Some of my observations and assumptions appeared correct. It appears Dr. Ken’s wife was looking for insurance and asked him when was the last time he had a physical. It was determined that he had not so he had to ask one of his colleagues to conduct one so that they could get approved. Throughout the screening which consisited of a many different checks, it was determined that he had good health but that he was stressed. He figured that his wife was his “stressor” and he told her so. She took offense and became offended because she said she wasn’t the case of his stress. Come to find out that it was the children that were the stressors because of the issues they had going on. His wife helped him to figure this out but leading up to the end of the show, their communication of verbal and non-verbals were expressive.  At the end which was nice both verbal language and non verbals were used. They made up by talking and listening to each other and then making up with a kiss.

Conducting this exercise was a learning experience as it takes much attention to detail to really look at the ways in which communication is conveyed. Everyday individuals learn to communicate whether by listening, hearing, speaking, kinetics, gestures or use of nonverbal means of communication to get messages out so that they are understood.