One day in the EGL 102 class, Prof. Sloan challenges the students to decide: Which one is the most crucial for communication and human interaction, our sight or our hearing. He continued to ask, “Which ability would you rather not have?”. This question was intriguing to me. I gathered my confidence and raised my hand. I said that I would rather lose my hearing because I do not mind the silence. Working as a retail employee in a busy and loud working environment, I long for silence. If I can work without hearing the demanding and condescending tone of the entitled people in the store, I might be liking my job.

My supporting argument for preferring losing my hearing was: it is easier not to see people rather than to not hearing people. To not seeing people, we can just look away or close our eyes, but to not hear someone, it would be harder, because we do not own ear lids. It is especially more laborious when people we are interacting with are loud.

For this final project, I chose the same topic for my essay, “Of the three modes of communication we discussed most (visual, verbal/linguistic, auditory), which is most critical to human interaction”—however, this time I have a different argument. I would not choose which mode of communication I would rather have or not. Instead, I argue that modes of communication are not the only key to successful communication and meaningful human interaction. Furthermore, I argue that above our ability to choose between modes of communication, the most crucial component of human interaction is understanding the context of communication and interaction.

First Example: Mask Wearing in the Store
In the wake of Covid-19 Pandemic, as a grocery store employee, I am “lucky” enough to witness everything that is happening amidst this unprecedented situation. I was a journalist before I am working in a grocery store, I enthusiastically observe and absorb all of the adjustment in the store. One example is the face-covering or face-mask order implementation from the State of Illinois. Starting from April 2020, the state of Illinois announced that everybody in the public area must wear a face mask, including in the grocery store where I am working, Whole Foods Market.

Whole Foods Market employees, Amazon shopper employees, and customers are all wearing a mask while doing their activity in the store. Although disposable face mask was available for employees at my store since the end of March, around two weeks before the mandatory mask-wearing order from the state, many of my fellow employees refused to wear one. There were various reasons behind their refusal; one of the main reasons was that they were not feeling comfortable while wearing the mask. Nevertheless, now every employee needs to wear a face-mask, regardless of their being comfortable or not.

Moreover, as I started to wear a face-mask when working, I noticed some development on my interaction, both with fellow employees and customers. Firstly, although there is a barrier in front of our mouth that makes it harder for us to hear each other, I can communicate effectively with my coworkers and regular customers. Regular customers already know the name of the products that they want. They know their measurement without having me explain to them while wearing a face mask and maintaining six feet of physical distancing. Albeit it is hard to communicate verbally, we can still achieve our goal in the transaction.

Undoubtedly, this is not the case for every customer. Yesterday, I had a customer that was ordering a fried chicken from the cold case. While I was handling his chicken, he keeps asking me, “Is it half? Is it half?”. I put the chicken on the scale. I showed him that the weight, it was half a pound. “Yes, it is half a pound,” I said. He nodded. I continue to put the fried chicken in the bag. He asked me again, “Is it half?”. I said, “You can see the price and the weight on the sticker.” After I handed him the bag with a fried chicken breast inside it, I noticed that he squeezed the bag, trying to feel the chicken. I was confused. He finally said, “It is not HOT!”.
All the time, he was asking me if the chicken was “hot” not “half.” I did not understand. First reasoning of my misunderstanding was it was hard to hear him because both of us were wearing face-masks (he was wearing an American-flag face-mask that was honestly adding more distraction). Second, I assumed that he understood that the fried chicken was in a cold case; thus, the chicken would not be hot. My expectation that he has the regular customer’s awareness — that everything inside the case is supposed to be cold– was wrong. Unlike the first interaction, this one is not an effective transaction (although he still takes the cold fried chicken breast).

As I am doing my research for this essay, I found this article about multimodality in human interaction. Charles Goodwin, in Multimodality in Human Interaction (Goodwin, 2010), introduces Chil, a man who is suffering from aphasia. As a result of his condition, Chil only manages to say “Yes”, “No” and “And”. Goodwin argues that despite his severely impoverished language, Chil can make a move in the conversation that is both intricate and precise (Goodwin, 88). In the article, Goodwin is telling a story about Chil’s conversation with his son Chuck, his daughter-in law-Candy, and his daughter Pat. Goodwin states that “… as someone who regularly acts and moves within Chil’s local neighborhood Pat can be expected to recognize such structure. A stranger would not” (Goodwin, 2010: 91).

I argue that during limited communication modes due to face masks, in the case of a grocery store, a regular customer would act like Chil’s children in this story. Meanwhile, new customers would act just like strangers to Chil. Story of Chil proves that despite limited modes of verbal communication, Chil can still have effective human interaction with his children. Just like my story in the store, both Chil and his children, and me and my regular customer, all of us need to familiarize ourselves with the structure in the environment to achieve a successful communication.

Second Example: Case of Indonesia’s Former President
In 2001, a brief period before Indonesia had its first female President, Indonesia democratically elected its first President. He was Abdurrahman Wahid, famously known in Indonesia as Gus Dur. Gus Dur was born in Jombang, East Java, on August 4th, 1940. His father was a prominent Muslim leader from the largest Indonesia’s Muslim organization, Nahdatul Ulama (NU). In the 1960s, Gus Dur went abroad to study literature and social sciences at the University of Baghdad in Iraq and Islamic law at Al Azhar University in Cairo. He later studied at the University of Toronto (Lamb, 2009). In 1985, when Gus Dur was twenty-four years old, his sight started to be declined due to glaucoma (Riwayat, 2009). Despite losing sight, he still managed to become the leader of NU (beginning from 1984), and later he becomes the President of Indonesia, before his impeachment.
During his administration, Gus Dur drew a lot of controversies.

Nevertheless, on the day he died, every Indonesian mourned him and regretted how they treated its former President. He is now remembered as a beloved leader of the country that was ahead of his time.
President Abdurrahman Wahid had proven that losing sight did not stop him from communicating effectively with his followers and later with international leaders. It is even more captivating because he was not born with glaucoma; he adapted to it. His lack of visual mode did not interfere with his ability to have meaningful interactions and to be a compelling communicator.

Context from each example
Indeed, a lot of contexts played to achieve Gus Dur’s level of successful interaction. So does with Chil’s effective interaction with his children, also my interaction with customers during face-mask wearing order. Sunday Ogala in “Non-Verbal Behaviors as Enhancers of Social Interaction: A Study of Communicative Interactions of the Igala Speaking People of Kogi State, Nigeria at Chieftaincy Installation Ceremonies” summarized four types of contexts that have effects on utterance interpretation (Ogala, 2016: 68). Those four contexts are the physical context, the socio-cultural context, the linguistic context, and the psychological context. These contexts also applied to my argument.

Time and place define the physical context. This context applied to an effective transaction between regular customers and me. Regular customers that have visited the store frequently would have more understanding than a first-time customer. It is also applied to Chil’s interaction with his children. If Chil’s interaction were not at his own home, when his children were not present, Chil would not have meaningful communication.

The socio-cultural context has to do with the beliefs, habits, value systems, or cultures of those involved in the communicative exchange. It includes their nationality, their relationship to the occasion at hand (Ogala, 2016: 68). Born as a son of a prominent Indonesian Muslim leader and later also be the leader of the same organization, certainly, Gus Dur was showered with a lot of value that most Indonesian do not have. Gus dur’s socio-cultural context and his wit and academic brilliance were among the most influential modes that lead him to be a president, regardless of his physical condition.

The psychological context deals with the state of mind of those involved in the interaction. In defining meaning, we also have to take into cognizance the senders and receivers of message, their sex, age, and social class, their role relationships, the type of activity they engaged in, and so on (Ogala, 2016: 68). This context applied in every example in this essay. Chil’s story, Gus Dur’s story, and my store all have different psychological context. Gus Dur would have a different interaction with his disciples, an interaction that could not be compared to interaction between the store customers and me.

All these examples bring me back to EGL 102 first few weeks when we were discussing Robert Atwan’s Convergence, especially the introduction part: message, method, medium (Atwan, 2005). I see the human body as a container of message, method, and medium. In human interaction, I argue that humans will always find a way to interact with each other. I argue that modes of communication, which include visual, verbal/linguistic, and auditory, are important, but the more essential is our willingness to have that human interaction and how we use other mediums and methods as an extension of our body to deliver our message.

We can easily see this during the time of stay at home order like this. Amidst the lockdown and stay at home order, people are reaching out throughout social media and other applications. As I see it right now, willingness to have human interaction would probably integral part of a person’s desire to live. After all, what kind of life is it without anybody else?

Works Cited Entry
Atwan, Robert. Convergences: Message, method, medium. Macmillan, 2005.
Goodwin, Charles. “Multimodality in Human Interaction.” Calidoscopio 8.2 (2010).
Lamb, David. “Abdurrahman Wahid Dies at 69; Former Indonesian President”. LA Times. 31 December 2009. http://www.latimes.com
Ogala, Sunday. “NON-VERBAL BEHAVIORS AS ENHANCERS OF SOCIAL INTERACTION: A STUDY OF COMMUNICATIVE INTERACTIONS OF THE IGALA SPEAKING PEOPLE OF KOGI STATE, NIGERIA, AT CHIEFTAINCY INSTALLATION CEREMONIES.” International Journal of Arts & Sciences 9.1 (2016): 63.
“Riwayat Penyakit Gus Dur Dimulai 1985”. Liputan 6. 31 December 2019. http://www.liputan6.com