You’ll need to watch a clip from The Wolf (狼殿下) episode 25, from timestamp 24:00-36:20 ish. You can find it on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J48GLRsLcgLinks to an external site.or on Viki here: https://www.viki.com/videos/1175082v-the-wolf-episode-25Links to an external site.
If you do not know Chinese, turn the subtitles off but keep the sound on, so you can pay attention to vocalics. If you do know Chinese, mute it entirely and turn off subtitles so you aren’t paying attention to the language – you may want to use the Viki link so you can turn off the Chinese subtitles, since they are baked into the YouTube version. (And if you know the show, you will need to pay extra attention that you are using what is here as evidence, and not other context you might have from having watched it already!)
For reference, there are two main characters. The first is the woman in red with the gold headpiece; her name is Ma Zhaixing, or Xing’er. The second character is the man in black with the sides of his head shaved that she spends most of the clip interacting with; his name is Bo Wang, or you might hear Xing’er call him Langzai (Wolf boy). The two other characters in the scene briefly, are Hai Die (the woman with the tray) and Mo Xiao. Your job is to watch the clip and pay attention to how and what they seem to be communicating each to other nonverbally. Don’t worry about getting answers “right;” support your conclusions with evidence from the clip. You are welcome to watch more, if you want, for more context, but for the analysis, focus on the clip I specify.
Then discuss the following questions, being sure to use terminology from the chapter/lecture videos and referencing each of the nonverbal coding systems at least once:
What emotions do you notice these characters communicating? What evidence to you have to support that (i.e. facial expressions, gesticulations, vocalics, haptics)? Be specific. Do these emotions change over the course of the clip?
What do you know about the relationships between each of the characters just based on their nonverbal behavior towards each other? Again, be specific with your evidence! What behaviors are you using to come to your conclusions? Are there nonverbal clues that we the audience see that the characters in the clip don’t that might change how we think about their relationship?
What do you think is happening in this scene? How and to what extent do you think your own cultural background or cultural knowledge is impacting your understanding of what is happening?
Go back to the clip and rewatch it with the subtitles on (and volume, if you had it off). Were you surprised by what you did or didn’t notice without access to what they are saying? Do the nonverbal behaviors you observed help support the verbal messages, contradict the verbal messages, or some mix? What does this tell you about the relationship between verbal and nonverbal communication?
If there are cultural aspects to the nonverbal communication that you felt you didn’t understand, do a bit of basic Googling and see if you can figure out some of the cultural significance of those things (this may be particularly relevant with regards to the physical appearance and artifacts at play in this clip). What did you learn? Does this information change what you understand about this scene?
