"Boomz??!"

The controversy surrounding Miss Singapore World Winner, Ris Low, 19, is a perfect example of the relationship between perception and verbal communication. She was criticised by the public after winning the Miss Singapore because of her poor English. When Youtube videos of her interviews in the contest spread in the Internet, she was made into a laughing stock because of laughable mispronounced words like "rad" instead "red" and "preens" instead of "prints". Her famous made-up word, "boomz" was soon becoming her trademark which she defended herself by saying she usually said when she "could not find the right word" to add "a comic book effect". People were saying she was a bad representation of Singapore. She was perceived to be a shame to Singapore. What do you think? (Taken from The Sunday Times, 27th September 2009, HOME pages 8 and 9)

The way we perceive our environment provide insights into the way we make sense of the world around us. In this case, probably because of fundamental attribution errors, she was perceived to be a shame to Singapore. In fundamental attribution errors, people assume that the cause of behaviour is the person, not the situation. The public may had assume that the reason for her poor English was because she did not study hard enough when she was in school. However, she scored a B3 in her O Level English. Perhaps, she was nervous and was put on the spot during the stressful interview and as result, she said the first words that came to mind which unfortunately, turned out to be nonsensical. In self-serving bias, we judge ourselves more tolerantly than we judge others by over-emphasising situational explanations for own negative actions. This is exactly what happened in this case; people are judging Ris Low less tolerantly than they judge themselves. Imagine if this situation happens to you. Would you blame the situation you are in or yourself?

In verbal communication, language influences our cognition, the words we use influence the way we think. Probably, she used the word, "boomz" to tell us how she felt at that point of time. One of a language-based barriers to communication is slang. Ris Low actually defended herself by saying that "rad" was an American way of saying "red". "Red" was a British pronounciation. I guess that was the reason why she was perceived to be a disgrace to Singapore. She was probably alienated by the masses as most people pronounced "red" as "red".

Perception and verbal communication goes hand in hand. Verbal communication creates the first impression. When you cannot speak well, you are perceived to be a disgrace to Singapore whose first language among its people is English. However, it also depends on the situation you are in or context. If you are some random person on the streets, you will not be criticised as badly as Ris Low who is going to represent Singapore in South Africa in the Miss Singapore World 2009 pageant.

The Power of Non-Verbal Communication

The murder of Yale graduate student, Annie Le is causing a buzz in the news recently. Her body was found stuffed inside the wall of a laboratory in the Yale University Medical School last Sunday, the day where she was supposed to get married to her fiancé. So far, the police had brought in a suspect for questioning, an animal laboratory technician named Raymond Clark. He was reported to have scratches on his chest as if he was involved in some sort of a struggle. More recently, the police believed Raymond Clark could possibly be the killer of Annie Le because of the discovery of strong evidence against him. (Read more in The Straits Times, Saturday, 19th September 2009, Page A24)

Based on the evidence collected by the police thus far, I could conclude that Raymond Clark engaged in a lot of non-verbal communication which fortunately, led the police to him. Without realizing, he was sending messages to the police non- verbally through his body language and actions. Firstly, Clark was known to use a green pen to sign in for work because he wanted to be different. However, the green pen was found at the crime scene, leaving a piece of crucial evidence behind. Secondly, his swipe card records and body language told all. According to his swipe card records, he was caught moving from room to room as if trying to find a place to hide a body. At the end, it showed him going to the laboratory where coincidentally the place Annie Le’s body was found. Thirdly, he failed the lie detector test which is a huge indicator that he might know something about Annie Le’s case. It was reported that the machine went off the chart when he was asked whether he knew anything about Annie Le’s whereabouts.

Police said that Clark was remaining silent. From the pragmatic perspective, silence is part of communication. In fact, silence is a paralinguistics which is a study of vocal nonverbal cues. Although he was not engaging in verbal communication with the police, the three non-verbal evidences stated above were pointing to him.

Therefore, in a police investigation, non-verbal communication is more important than verbal communication. Police looked out for non-verbal cues rather than verbal cues as the latter may be inaccurate due to the suspect telling lies. At this point of time, police perceives Raymond Clark to be the murderer of Annie Le. Let’s see if the police’s perception is right; only time will tell. Rest in peace, Annie Le.

The Fallen

Four years ago, Park Jaebum, leader of rising Korean boyband, 2PM, wrote harsh comments on his MySpace page regarding Korea. Now four years later, he had forgotten what he had wrote before, had no idea that it’s coming to haunt him and affect his singing career. Recently, his MySpace page got exposed and his comments like Korea is gay and I hate Koreans were circulating around the internet like rapid fire. Soon, Koreans were criticizing him. He was guilty and apologized, explaining that he was young back then and knew little about the Korean culture and language since he was born and raised in the States. Four days after the controversy was blown out of proportion, he announced that he would be quitting 2PM and left Korea for America that same day. Fans of 2PM were taken aback and blamed the antis and netizens for the sudden departure of their idol. They were upset that despite the singer’s public apology through 2PM official fancafe, the public is still unsatisfied, deepening his guilt further and in the end, causing him to leave Korea altogether.

(Read more at this website: http://www.allkpop.com/index.php/full_story/2pms_jaebeom_calls_it_quits/)

The question is, can modes of communication like the internet destroy a person’s career within days? The answer is, it sure can and this incident is a proven example. When celebrities reach a certain level of fame, there are surely a group of people who are determined to bring them down. They dug out celebrities’ past through the internet, specifically through many networking sites such as Friendster, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. If they find information about their favourite artiste that can be sensational news to the public, they spread the news quickly through the same way, the internet. Therefore, the internet is indeed a powerful tool because news can be transmitted fast with a click of the mouse. However, if used for the wrong reasons, the internet can also be a cruel tool especially to celebrities as that can potentially end their careers. This is exactly what happened to Park Jaebum. It’s a scary thought; you just need one person to find his MySpace page and the comments he made four years ago were front page news the next day followed by the headlines that he called it quits.

Through this incident, another question is raised. Why is it so hard to forgive and forget even after he apologized? In my opinion, you shouldn’t let the past interfere with the present. You should accept an individual as how he is today and not judge him by his past. I’m not saying that I condone Jaebum’s actions when he made that harsh comments, neither am I defending him because I’m a 2PM fan. I know what he wrote was wrong, but didn’t he admitted to his mistake and apologized for it? Afterall, he's human and human makes mistakes. Learning from his mistake is all that matters. No matter how cliché that sounds, that is reality.

It is heartbreaking to see a talented singer with so much energy on stage giving up on his dream because he felt that he cannot face the public after what he did. I just hope that through this, the media would give him a break and the netizens will use this time to find ways to forgive him.