Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Sacks again
Following the Sacks read recorded on 9th August, I have now had a go at two books from the one and only university for the deaf, Gallaudet, one called '1,000 Signs of Life' and one called 'Language in Motion', both selected more or less at random from Amazon searches, something I do not do very often. The latter was a very good introduction to the whole business of Sign, in particular ASL. But while one comes away with the thought that if one was younger and had more time it would be interesting to try to learn the language, mainly because it looks to be a lot more unlike English than the French or German one was apt to learn at school, the story I came away from Sacks with stands. The story from that easy going read was good.
But it was interesting to read about punning in ASL, some of it coming from the sign for something being a variant of the sign for some prominent characteristic of the something, an arrangement which some of the somethings sometimes find offensive. So, for example, one of the signs for 'Jew' is or is close to the sign for 'beard' (a word that I, a hearing person, use to label the earnest types with loud regional accents who dominate the television documentary airwaves. No reflection on their religion whatsoever). One of the signs for 'Methodist' is or is close to the sign for 'enthusiast'.
I wondered about the lack of a written version of ASL. English is subject to a lot of normalising pressure from the media, a lot of it printed. There are lots of books about English. There are dictionaries. There is the internet. We all speak it in much the same way. But there is no widely used system for translating ASL into text and while one might have books in the form of a DVD, I have no idea how much of that there might be and what the quality might be like. Rather patchy I should imagine: a lot of work over the centuries has made books what they are today, an investment which has not been made in books for the deaf. Which must mean that ASL varies a lot from speaker to speaker and from place to place. Perhaps to the point where some ASL speakers have trouble understanding others - which rather goes against the whole communication point of language in the first place. And maybe the ASL tradition is the sort of oral tradition that anthropologists go on about, the sort of tradition that gave us those pinnacles of world literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey. At least for those few of us who can still read the lingo - which I should say does not include me
Another rather down point was the way in which some ASL speakers are a bit snooty about ASL speakers who were not deaf from birth. They rather resent, in particular, hearing people muscling in on their scene , a scene which they cannot really understand. An understandable if rather tiresome point. Surely it is better for some of us to try to engage with them in their language, rather than always making them engage with us in ours?
Are any other universities for the deaf? There must be a lot more deaf people in China and India than in the US, but maybe there the deaf have no choice but to go to a university for the hearing. Google comes up with various deaf departments within hearing universities which no doubt provide support for the deaf to exist in a hearing world, but do they provide community in the way of Gallaudet? Given that the (fully) deaf are maybe 0.2% of the population, a full blown university may not be viable in a country much smaller than the US. By way of comparison, maybe twice as many people are (fully) blind.
Bottom line, getting the right balance between segregation and integration is not easy. We don't even know what the balance is, never mind about how to get there.
PS: now moved on from macaroni to pearl barley. First go was to pad out the remains of the steak and kidney with some of the stuff. Second go was to make a sort of beef porridge from pearl barley, lentils, onion and stewing steak. This last, not for the first time as I recall doing something of the sort before, maybe without the lentils.
But it was interesting to read about punning in ASL, some of it coming from the sign for something being a variant of the sign for some prominent characteristic of the something, an arrangement which some of the somethings sometimes find offensive. So, for example, one of the signs for 'Jew' is or is close to the sign for 'beard' (a word that I, a hearing person, use to label the earnest types with loud regional accents who dominate the television documentary airwaves. No reflection on their religion whatsoever). One of the signs for 'Methodist' is or is close to the sign for 'enthusiast'.
I wondered about the lack of a written version of ASL. English is subject to a lot of normalising pressure from the media, a lot of it printed. There are lots of books about English. There are dictionaries. There is the internet. We all speak it in much the same way. But there is no widely used system for translating ASL into text and while one might have books in the form of a DVD, I have no idea how much of that there might be and what the quality might be like. Rather patchy I should imagine: a lot of work over the centuries has made books what they are today, an investment which has not been made in books for the deaf. Which must mean that ASL varies a lot from speaker to speaker and from place to place. Perhaps to the point where some ASL speakers have trouble understanding others - which rather goes against the whole communication point of language in the first place. And maybe the ASL tradition is the sort of oral tradition that anthropologists go on about, the sort of tradition that gave us those pinnacles of world literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey. At least for those few of us who can still read the lingo - which I should say does not include me
Another rather down point was the way in which some ASL speakers are a bit snooty about ASL speakers who were not deaf from birth. They rather resent, in particular, hearing people muscling in on their scene , a scene which they cannot really understand. An understandable if rather tiresome point. Surely it is better for some of us to try to engage with them in their language, rather than always making them engage with us in ours?
Are any other universities for the deaf? There must be a lot more deaf people in China and India than in the US, but maybe there the deaf have no choice but to go to a university for the hearing. Google comes up with various deaf departments within hearing universities which no doubt provide support for the deaf to exist in a hearing world, but do they provide community in the way of Gallaudet? Given that the (fully) deaf are maybe 0.2% of the population, a full blown university may not be viable in a country much smaller than the US. By way of comparison, maybe twice as many people are (fully) blind.
Bottom line, getting the right balance between segregation and integration is not easy. We don't even know what the balance is, never mind about how to get there.
PS: now moved on from macaroni to pearl barley. First go was to pad out the remains of the steak and kidney with some of the stuff. Second go was to make a sort of beef porridge from pearl barley, lentils, onion and stewing steak. This last, not for the first time as I recall doing something of the sort before, maybe without the lentils.
# posted by Jim @ 1:57 AM 
