Topic 142: Silent Talkers

Carol:

   Speak, Hands

I have been at many public events where the stage was shared by both a speaker and a sign language interpreter.  Some of them were lyrical in their hand movements, showing a particular grace that was almost balletic. Others used shorter, choppy, clipped movements. Invariably, I listen to the speaker and watch the interpreter because I enjoy both the sound and sight of language.
 

I had always been interested in sign language because of Helen Keller.  William Gibson’s play The Miracle Worker was a staple in high school literature books and the 1962 film had revealed her story to millions. Whenever I want an eloquent quote about language and the world opened up by being able to “name the world,” I turn to Helen Keller.  Her genius  was such that she not only learned oral language but to speak also German and French; but, her description of learning manual language from  her teacher Miss Sullivan’s touches me the most:   

Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten–a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.  (source: Keller Ch 5)

Helen Keller and her Teacher, 1888

When Megan was in grade school, she read the biography of Helen Keller that I had kept from my own grade school days. She taught herself the sign language alphabet from diagrams in the back of the book.
 

My closest encounter with sign language was at the Catholic high school where I worked in the mid- 1970’s. I was responsible for testing prospective students and interviewing them along with their families. One girl arrived with   parents who seemed more excited than their daughter.  As we sat down, this 8th grade girl explained that both of her parents were deaf (she was not) and that she would act as their interpreter. We proceeded with the interview, and she showed herself to be a poised, experienced “silent talker” for me as I asked a series of questions. 
 

Sometime in the mid-80’s, I happened to turn on the Richard Simmons Show. The program caught my attention because the corner of the TV screen included a little box showing a young woman using sign language. I looked more closely and realized this was my former student from Los Angeles. When the camera panned back out, it showed that she was not interpreting for the television audience but for the group of guests who were following Richard Simmons in his fitness routine. There in the middle of the group were my student’s parents, stretching and jumping and puffing right along with Richard as their eyes followed the “silent talk” of their daughter. They looked just as eager and happy as they had in my school office 10 years earlier.
 

As usually happens, I did a lot of online research before I started this essay. I learned a little bit about the hand positions (mudra) in meditation, the importance of hand movements in Hula dancing, and the brain research that shows the same part of the brain is stimulated when people use the silent talk of manual language as when they use oral language. It’s all there on the Internet. What is not there is the eloquence of Helen Keller and the eager faces of two deaf people swaying to the silent talk of their daughter’s beautiful hands.
  

Sources:
Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: Doubleday, 1905.
         

Megan:

I Can Hear You Now

When I was a kid, I read Helen Keller’s biography and was utterly fascinated by her story. In the back of a book were drawings of hands demonstrating the American Sign Language alphabet and I spent hours learning the signs and spelling things out. To this day, when I find a word that I like, I spell it with my hand. I don’t even think about it, wouldn’t have realized even except that I caught myself doing it the other night while watching a TV with my parents. It’s a funny little tic I have – I also write the alphabet over and over in my journal when I can’t think of what I want to say.

Most of you know that I am “deaf” in one ear. I’m not actually deaf at all, but my right ear is my good ear, so I usually arrange myself so that I am sitting to the left of a group of people. I wore giant, around-the-ear hearing aids in both ears growing up, but when it was time to go to high school I upgraded to wearing only one tiny hearing aid in my left ear – which I then decided not to wear at all.

I’m not sure when I got so sloppy about wearing it, but there came a point when I put in the hearing aid that the world became too loud. It wasn’t a case of the volume being set too high – I know I was hearing at a normal level. I had become accustomed to going through life at a slightly dampened volume. Although almost everyone I know can cite an example of a time when they asked me one question but I answered another, it’s always obvious right away from the expression on someone’s face that I’ve misheard him. This hasn’t affected me academically or at work, because for the most part, I know what to do to make sure I can hear.

Eventually I stopped telling people about the hearing loss unless it came up, mostly because I forget about it. When I was in school, my parents reminded me at the beginning of each year to let my teacher’s know. Most of them were cool about it and trusted me to sit where I’d be best able to hear and then never mentioned it again. But I had one math teacher in high school who asked me if I knew sign language. I said I’d taught myself the alphabet. She suggested I also start lip reading because chances are I’d become completely deaf soon and would need those skills. Maybe she had good intentions, but since she had no medical experience or knowledge of the circumstances around my hearing loss, I took her assumption as an insult. So, I hated her. And I demonstrated my hatred of her by nearly failing her class because that’s what emotional teenage girls do.

If I ever do go completely deaf, I’m not sure the sign language will help me that much. I can sort of read lips, but not well enough to eavesdrop on conversations across the room. With the signing, I only know the letters, not the signs for words. It’s like speaking aloud by spelling e-a-c-h w-o-r-d  -- slow and hard to follow. Anyway, it probably won’t be that big of a deal. By the time the old-age hearing loss joins with the birth-defect hearing loss to produce total absence of sound, everyone will be using machines to communicate anyway. We’re already doing that now.