Complex discussions without words

This week’s post concern the obverse of non-verbal communication using words. It is about complex discussions between people where while superficial trivial conversation is occurring at a verbal level some serious discussion is going on non-verbally.

A friend of mine who used to drop into my office in Luce Hall for a chat now and then was debriefing on an incident over the weekend. She had caught up with her boyfriend who was a rural vet surgeon.  He had to make a morning call before the weekend was clear so she tagged along. The vet met the farmer and the three of them proceeded to the shed where a sick cow lay minding her own business. The vet and the farmer talked about the football, the up-coming agricultural fair, the price of turnips, the weather, what the kids had been up to, in fact everything except what the matter was with the cow.

After 20 minutes the two men looked at each other and the farmer said to the vet “Right, we’d better put her down then”. Not a single word had been spoken about the cow. Both minds had been working in sync observing the animal, absorbing and analysing data and drawing conclusions in a complex and costly decision making process until a consensus was reached non-verbally about what action needed to be taken.

Both men may have been having internal verbal discussions about the cow in parallel with superficial trivia that was linking them but these were certainly not expressed. A complex discussion occurred between two people where while superficial trivial conversation was occurring at a verbal level a serious abstract and complex discussion was going on non-verbally.