As world relations become more sophisticated and daily communication between people across the globe become not only commonplace, but necessary, knowledge of global languages can become a helpful asset. This notion is probably why linguistics has become more popular in the realm of higher education as well as among government and business. In an increasingly internationally conscious world, knowledge of a single language is not sufficient, necessitating a "broader, more organic knowledge of the way all language functions, what makes it operative, what can and cannot be done with it in the way of establishing communications" (Pei v). As the globe becomes smaller and speakers of different languages come into contact almost everyday, people become more curious as to how languages are related and its prominent role in world cultures.
Because language is an instrumental component of everyday life, the study of linguistics, (more specifically its branch of sociolinguistics), is not only a study of language in its technical sense, but also in its cultural sense. The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the relation between social influences, personality, and language. Though speech will also be monitored, the focus of the experiment will be on gestures, physical language, and how they differ from speaker to speaker. A questionnare, (see EXPERIMENT), was formulated to first, determine the subject's general personality traits (intravert/extravert), and secondly to evoke explanations where gestures would likely compliment spoken answers. The questionnare is divided into two different parts according to their purpose. The overall response time for the second section will be recorded and common gestures will be recorded as they occur during the interview. By observing the degree of correlation between
personality, length of answers (measured by a timer), and number of various hand gestures used, the results may show if there is any relation between these areas in the given subjects. The experiment will show that those who are given to long explanations will use a larger variety of hand gestures, and also that degree of comfort in a situation has an effect on physical expression of feelings and past events.