Signed language

Evolution / Signed language — 7 Comments
23
Jul 11

Kim’s Game and the Kinaesthetic Thinker

real/image

“Deaf people are people of the eye.”

“Deaf people see things differently.”

“Deaf people can see more.”

The experiment on peripheral vision was used as an indicator that Deaf people better utilised their sight compared to non-deaf people. I am still left scratching my head. You know why? My peripheral vision is just rubbish. Rather than denounce the whole idea, I find myself wanted to understand it better.

I find myself pondering about Neil Flemming and the VAK model (later VARK). Flemming identified three types of thinkers: visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. He later added ‘reading’ for people who think in ‘text’. While people can think differently, they also learn different. So the VAK model can influence teaching and learning practice, ie. to operate in the visual, auditory or kinaesthetic domain. You can find a lot of evidence in the English language, such as: I see what you mean, I hear what you are saying, and I get the gist of what you mean. Essentially, they all mean the same thing but expressed in different ways, depending on how one thinks. Depending on which characteristics one exhibits, you can observe if a person is a visual thinker, or not.

Are Deaf people visual thinkers? It would involve someone who can think in pictures or film. Someone who can recall images again in their minds. They can create images of how things will look before they are made. They are the observers, the people who sit in the street-side cafes and watch the world go by, and they catch the smallest details. They can abstract ideas from what is seen. They can interpret reality into something that can be perceived different to invoke a reaction, like impressionism and cubism.

I find it difficult to imagine that all Deaf people are visual thinkers. I remember an exercise I used as a trainer, regular, over a period of 8 years. It was called Kim’s Game. 30 different everyday objects are placed on a table in another room. A group of four people are instructed that they will see around 30 objects on a table and, as a team, remember as many objects as they can. They are not allowed to communicate whilst in the room and objects can only be viewed for 30 seconds. The group would organise themselves to look at different parts of the table and work together to remember as many as they can.

I do not recall that Deaf people were better at this ‘game’ than non-deaf people. In fact their scores are very similar. If Deaf people were truly visual thinkers, they should excel in this test. But they don’t. Why don’t they?

There is another type of thinker that might be an alternative option: the kinaesthetic thinker. It is where a person operates in the feeling domain. The thinker is more tactile, using movement and touch to express their feelings. Kinaesthetic thinkers express through doing, touching, feeling, moving.

When you think of a Deaf person expressing their ideas through their movement, you realise that signed languages are very well equipped to do this. The changes in rhythm, tempo or temperature can change how the same sign is expressed and its meaning. Our signed language poetry has it in abundance. The movements are collected into abstract ideas by the way of signs. Classic examples include classifiers and placements that create rules to bring the real or imagined space into the hands (or topographical space).

I would expect all people to be able to think in the visual, auditory or kinaesthetic modes but one will be adopted more favourably. Here is a simple idea that will help you to decide if you are a visual or kinaesthetic thinker. You are asked to describe a room in your house that you know well. Try to recall the room in as much detail as you can. When you have finished, think about what you have just said and decide whether you described the room as an observer looking at a picture or a film, in the observer position, or were you in the picture or film and moving about in the room referring to the things as they are laid out in front of you?

If you are the observer, then you are operating in the visual mode but if you are in the room, then you are operating in the kinaesthetic mode.

The idea of ‘kinaesthetic people’ reminds me of a previous blog I wrote on ‘sensorimotor’ stages of cognitive development (Piaget). The act of moving, sensing, feeling, emoting the space they are in. The movement can be real (moving in space) or abstracted (signing in topographical space). This coincides with ideas that signed languages are less iconic than we think, the sign for bird may look iconic to us as signed language users but they are not iconic to non-signed language users. Therefore, signed languages are an abstracted representation of what is real.

I am left thinking about a piece of poetry by Dot Miles. She used her hands to describe a tree by a lake in the sun; one hand to represent the tree and another to represent the reflection of the tree on the lake. But then she moved, her eyes switched from the observer of her creation to actually being there, looking at the tree and admiring the reflection in the rising sun. It was a classic Miles moment when she is there, feeling, emoting and living in her creations. She wasn’t creating pictures for you to see, she was creating worlds for you to sit in and feel, right in the palm of her hands.

Photo by Max Sparber
Capital / Culture / Signed language — Comments Off
21
Jul 11

The Thought Experiment

My brain

When most of us imagine an experiment, we imagine people dressed in white coats with subjects succumbing to their will. In reality, these tests are done under careful scrutiny and has a lengthy ethical review process. But there is a different type of experiment that doesn’t require subjects, it is a thought experiment.

One of the most famous thought experiments is Schrödinger’s Cat. It described a cat locked inside a metal box attached to a decaying atom. If the atom decayed, it would trigger a canister of hydrochloric acid to be released inside the box and the fumes would kill the cat. Because the decaying of the atom has a 50:50 chance that it could decay, or not; the state of atomic flux would also place the cat in the same flux. Hence, inside the box, the cat was both alive and dead at the same time. This is a scientific definition of a paradox.

If you get the experiment, great, but if you don’t, not to worry. The point is that the concept of paradox can be defined. A thought experiment creates an undeniable proof that does not need to be put into practice. Nobody wants to force a cat inside a metal box, neither should it happen. So, it stays as a thought experiment.

In my thought experiment, I want to give a group of people 100 gold coins. This group is going shopping. They can not buy anything, they can only purchase items from a given list that I have supplied. The only rule is that each person must be genuine and buy something that they will want/use.

The group must be a mixture of deaf and hearing people. In fact, the diversity of the group will come under four categories:

  • A hearing person who only uses English.
  • A deaf person who only uses English.
  • A deaf person who only uses BSL.
  • A deaf person fluent in both BSL and English.
So each person will have 100 gold coins to buy as much of the following they wish. Every item they invest in is worth 10 gold coins each. There are two lists to choose from:
  • The entire works of Shakespeare.
  • The music of Beethoven on CDs.
  • Tickets to see the Swan Lake ballet.
  • A guided tour around a national museum.
  • A visit to the opera:  Mozart’s last concerto.
  • An invitation to the national Monarch or President’s meet and greet event.
And this list as well:
  • Tickets for the Deaf cruise, sailing through the Caribbean with 2000 Deaf people on the ship.
  • Full video collection of sign language poems, such as Clayton Valli or Dot Miles.
  • Entry to an event hosted by Signmark, a Deaf rapper.
  • A day in the Deaf historical archives.
  • A night out in the International Deaf Club.
  • A Volunteer OverSeas trip to build a school for Deaf children.

You may have guessed that the former list represents what is known as culture with a capital ‘C’, or otherwise known as ‘higher culture’. The latter represents that cultural activities that would be of value to members of the Deaf community. One would assume that all items on the list are accessible to all people, therefore interpreter and captioning services would be available; the question is whether these four people would be interested to invest money in them.

The results could look something like this:

  • A hearing person who only uses English. [100 gold coins spent]
  • A deaf person who only uses English. [30 gold coins spent]
  • A deaf person who only uses BSL. [70 gold coins spent]
  • A deaf person fluent in both BSL and English. [100 gold coins spent]

The more one spends on the two lists, the more they are able to operate within the cultural norms of the worlds we live in (Deaf or non-deaf). The higher access and interest in these cultural items results with a person who has a higher level of cultural capital. Hence, a more culturally competent individual would be more successful financially and be more connected.

Bilingual Deaf people and a non-deaf person will always be able to spend the most, they will be the most culturally adept. At the other end of the scale, the deaf person who uses English as their only means of communication has so little cultural resources available to them. They feel on the ‘rim’ of both communities, or both worlds. Hence, they are least likely to be culturally mobilised, less socially connected and with lower economic power. The move to ‘normalise’ deaf people by offering resources to use their residual hearing as a route to equality is essentially flawed. It leaves a person who is not able to function in either Deaf or non-deaf worlds because they do not have the cultural resources available to them.

There is nothing paradoxical about this thought experiment but one can not escape that fact that the ‘normalisation agenda’ is a route to further segregation and exclusion; opposite to current thinking on ‘inclusion’. Like a cat in metal boxes sitting in a persistant state of flux: they are deaf-cum-hearing people but, at this point in time, neither of the two. The medical/educational agendas are creating social paradox, they are placing deaf people in a state of flux. This thought experiment has suddenly become very real.

A photograph of my brain from 3 angles.
Capital / Signed language — Comments Off
13
Jul 11

The Experiment: The Shopping Test

Shopping

I was first introduced to British Signed Language in 1989 and it wasn’t until 1993, when I became fluent enough to hold a conversation with any Deaf person. I felt like the honorary guest who cuts the red ribbon without an audience, it was the start of a new era. I felt I had attained all the resources available to me to live as a Deaf person. But it left me with a problem.

My speech is indistinguishable from another hearing person, except on some moments when I sound like I have a cold. But generally, hearing people have a tendency to follow me quite well. But I was left with a conundrum: I now have two national languages I can use in the UK, which one do I use?

The issue of whether I use BSL with my Deaf peers is not part of this question; if they use BSL, so will I. The question is more concerned with which language I use with hearing people. In my early 20s, I conducted an experiment – it was the test that defined my life.

I picked a popular high street store that was famous for its clothes and food. It has a wide cross section of the market from the economical to the spendthrift customer. Nationally, it is considered the store for the Middle England. It was the ideal location for my experiment because I was more likely to be associated with people who shop there.

My experiment was to ask for directions to a particular part of the store. My intention was to ask a member of staff to give me those directions and monitor their response. The constant is that I am deaf, I am unable to hear; also the question will be the same one each time. The only variable is that I ask the question in a different language: spoken English or in BSL. Now, most hearing people do not know BSL, of course, so I allowed for variation bordering on gesture in order to get the point across. What is important is that the communication would be done manually and not orally. The question I chose was: “where can I find some socks?”

Here were the results:

English test

I spoke clearly to the attendant and she replied quickly with her face pointing in the direction of where I needed to go but I was unable to lipread exactly what she said. I reminded her that I was deaf and couldn’t follow what she said. More abrupt this time, a short repeat but still unable to get it. I stressed my situation again and forced her to repeat and gave some guidance on how to communicate with me. Slight improvement, she is faced me this time, but the facial expressions look stressed and shoulders were up. She looks annoyed. I received the information this time but the voice was raised sharply. I couldn’t hear the voice but I noticed people standing nearby turning sharply towards her. I thanked her and left.

General evaluation: the stress level was high and the attendant seems confused on the extent of my hearing abilities. She used the voice as an indicator of how much I can hear. It is a false indicator because I am unable to hear her voice. I have to rely on lipreading to understand her.

BSL Test

I approached the attendant and caught her eye. I showed her that I am Deaf using the appropriate sign. Her face lit up and she put the objects in her hands away. She spoke clearly and I have understood what she said, she was asking how she could help. I asked where the socks were and she didn’t quite get it. I used a gesture for socks and it was clear straight away. The attendant then described where I should be going but she looked away, I informed her that I didn’t get what she said. She suggested that she could take me to the area I need to go to and I walk with her, until she points to the exact location. I say thank you and wave goodbye.

General evaluation: much lower stress levels, more able to communicate in the visible dimension rather than the auditory one. She went for the fact I could not hear and communicated with me effectively. There were still communication problems but the attitude was more effective generally.

Of course, I couldn’t take the results from just two separate individuals as evidence, I had to do this a few times and check the responses. The general evaluations still persists. Hearing people are more able to communicate effectively when they have a better indication of how much one can ‘hear’ and not how well one can ‘speak’. If I communicate to a level that is befitting my levels of hearing, I am more able to communicate with hearing people, which is less stressful and more productive.

Hence, when I go out in public and communicate with hearing people generally; I will use BSL.

Photo by Jackie Kever

Education / Signed language — Comments Off
8
Jul 11

1945-70: The Height of Loquomania

Pinochios

Before the Second World War, the practice of oral education was threadbare. There were a few niche schools supporting children with residual hearing to develop their speech but most children were educated through the combined method. It was the combination of lipreading, fingerspelling and sign language.

Two events took place that completely changed the landscape: the 1944 Education Act and the 1948 NID campaign for free hearing aids on the NHS. It opened the door to practice the Pure Oral approach in education for deaf children on a grand scale (the idea was first introduced to the UK in 1889). The small Dene H0llow Oral School in Burgess Hill, after several moves to different addresses in Brighton and Hove, was led by a Suffragette, Ms. Mary Hare. The drive to open new grammar schools in the UK supported the efforts to open the Mary Hare Grammar School in Newbury in 1946; 1 year after her death. This growth was mirrored in other similar stories in Ovingdean Hall, Hamilton Lodge, Burwood Park, Tewin Water, and many more.

In 1948, the technology developed in the Second World War allowed for experimentation in the use of audio amplification technology in the classroom. It is here you see images of children, wearing headphones, staring blankly at the teacher speaking into a microphone. The children remember the days when they left their classroom with red-hot ears. In 1952, every deaf child had access to a pair of body-worn hearing aids.

The two developments opened the door to loquomania (latin: loquela, speech(n.)). The obsession with speech. [Derived from logocentrism where speech is given greater importance over the written word; cf. loquella, language].

You have to remember that before the Second World War, speaking and listening was not the primary means for teaching English. The reading of the written word was more successful, supported by lipreading and fingerspelling. It is a similar system to the one originally codified by Abbe del’Epee in France and Braidwood in Edinburgh, in 1760 (onwards). Deaf people had good English. For the hearing educators, the ability to read and write English was not enough, so the focus changed to speech. It was the Holy Grail of deaf education, the litmus test of the cure for the deaf ‘affliction’, for normalisation. Teachers employed physically invasive techniques of speech therapy, punishment and abuse to push deaf children to speak. Loquomania was at its height and the children spent hours trying to speak and learning very little. In 1979, the Conrad report identified that deaf children left school (ie. 16 years old) with a reading age of 8¾. It was the death-knell of loquomania, the decades of abuse came to very little.

The 1970s rescued the education system’s reputation with the  popularity of Piaget stages of cognitive development and Montessori’s learning through play (Phillips Deaf Unit, University of Sussex). Suddenly, education should be child-centred and alter to the educational needs of the child respective to their age and abilities. It also came with various signed systems (Cued Speech, Paget Gorman, Signed Exact English) that made English visible again. The pre-war solutions were dusted off the shelves, repackaged and sold back to education.

Today, there are still echos of loquomania, where hearing educators feverishly push deaf children to speak. There is no doubt that speech is an important skill but it is not THE skill. The most essential skill for life is the use of a language, be it in English or BSL, because without that language, deaf people would not have the ability to formulate their ideas. And deaf people without ideas, without hope and expectation, without critique and reflection – is the rise of the subaltern (Gramsci). Like puppets, we are pulled by their strings and carry their voices.

“No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you I write myself anew. I am still author, authority. I am still coloniser, the speaking subject and you are now at the center of my talk.” (Hook)

Picture by Jesus_Leon
Evolution / Signed language — 1 Comment
19
Jun 11

Baby Signing and Piaget’s Evolution

Baby says 'hello'

I am here at the start of a new blog, there is a blank sheet in front of me that needs to be filled with ideas. I didn’t start this blog on a whim, something inspired me to write. I don’t want to start with the name of the blog or a justification of why this blog exists, it just does; accept it. It will become whatever it will become.

I want to start with Emma and Grace. Emma is a new Mum and she gave birth to Grace just 5 months ago. When Emma was heavily pregnant last year, I offered to provide BSL tuition for the office staff – Emma just loved it. To inspire her, I suggested the idea of ‘baby signs‘ and gave her a spiel of benefits. To be honest, baby signs are a bit of a fad. Learning a few signs for milk, sleep, eat, like, and don’t like are not going to turn children into little Einsteins. But there is an inspiration for a parent to communicate with a child before the development of speech. If anything helps a parent to watch and observe children’s attempt to communicate more closely, it can only be a good thing.

Before you run to the cliff and jump into the chasm of wild statements, I am not talking about deaf children; I want to talk about all children. The children who try to tell parents their needs, and when it fails, they cry, scream and throw a tantrum. We must accept that tantrums are just another form of communication, more alarming because of the urgency and because the previous attempts to communicate had failed.

Jean Piaget is someone who understands something about children, about their cognitive development. How a child develops their association with the world. It is Piaget who understood the terrible twos; when the child perceives a world that revolves around them. He also observed how this stage moves to another, to a stage of relationships and relating with members of the family and others. The child moves from ‘egocentric’ to ‘sociocentric’ stages in psychological development.

Piaget went further to describe how a child has four different stages of development: sensorimotor (putting objects in the mouth in order to sense them); preoperational (developing motor skills through magical thinking); concrete operational (using motor skills logically); and formal operational thinking (developing abstract thoughts). As you can see, the four stages moves through the ages of 0 to 16 onwards. The stages happen to us all, and it can’t be avoided.

Even further than that, the four stages are typical of evolutionary development of mankind. It was William Stokoe who made the link between signed language and evolution. The utilisation of objects, or tools, is something we can associate with human evolution, when early human beings used tools kill their hunt. The increased amount of protein in the early human’s diet, led to the next stage, and so forth.

Sign language is also a tool. It is a tool of communication and expression of ideas, a language. Stokoe expressed the idea that early human beings most probably used a signed language of some form, before the development of vocal chords and the brain’s ability to make complex sounds and recognise them.

This thinking reminds me of my nephew, Daniele. At just 6 months old, I saw his hands change from gently moving in the air to purposefully touching his face with small fists. I tried to imagine, what would that sensation represent; what is that big object that touches a baby’s face. I realised that it was most probably the most important object in his life, his mother’s breast. I warned his mother that Daniele was asking for a feed, but she did what every mother would do, ‘I’ll just wait until he starts crying.’ Lo and behold, just 30 seconds later; Daniele started screaming. Daniele’s hands, his tools for communication, was reaching out to the world, but no-one was watching.

As much as signed language was an important step in the evolution of human beings, signed language is also an important step in the cognitive development of children. It is in the sensorimotor period of development at the ages of 0 to 2 years old, when movement and senses are closely entwined. A parent needs to learn how to watch these movements and interpret them into expressions of needs and desires, and respond to them. A parent could learn how to express simple ideas in signed language and relate them to real objects, in the same way that a child assimilates objects through their mouth.

Baby signing has a danger of becoming a fad. But if we go back to our evolutionary roots to sign and watch, before the child can hear and speak, parents are playing a crucial part in their child’s development.