The new deaf generation....speaking and listening

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rockin'robin said:
Of course it is....so was that 30-35 years ago for you, deafskeptic? What was done about it? Did you tell ur parents? Was the principal informed about this? I've never heard of anything as drastic as this! The only thing done to me was that I was not allowed to sign and had to sit in front of the class to lipread, all of my teachers were hearing.....And I understood the reason behind it....And it's the reason my speech is still intact to this day.

I went to school at NCSD, for 2 years there and never did I see any abuse of the students such as this. Even at public schools, before I lost my hearing, I sat in front of the class, right beside the teacher so I could hear more clearly.
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I have seen deaf students in the mainstream humiliated in this way as recently as last academic year.
 
GrendelQ said:
The issue is not whether someone "speaks like hearies" or "the miracle of CI/HA". It's about how comfortable someone is in the use of language: fluency is flow, ease, speed. The issue is fluency. You can be perfectly fluent and not have perfect diction. You can be perfectly fluent and slur. You can be perfectly fluent and not "speak the same as a hearie."
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GrendelQ said:
Please look up fluency. You will see no mention of resonance, articulation, even clarity. You are talking about a very different measure. The issue we're discussing is fluency.

You took issue with the word "fluency" as used in the opening of the OP's posted video where they described the scene as "Deaf children learn to listen and speak fluently" and said that wasn't possible.

Beclak has repeatedly stated that no d/Deaf person can ever be fluent in a spoken language. I continue to disagree.

I know d/Deaf people who describe themselves as fluent in both spoken and written English. I've spoken with d/Deaf people who are obviously fluent. They might have a deaf voice / deaf accent, and yet they are still perfectly fluent in using the language.

I know d/Deaf people who describe themselves as fluent in ASL. I can't judge that, because I'm not yet fluent, but I sure believe them. They may be easily distinguishable from a native-born signer, but still perfectly fluent in using the language.

My close friend is an amazing writer. He has terrible arthritis and has been experimenting with software programs to transcribe his drafts, he's tried using shorthand-style notations, voice programs, he often types entire pages with a single finger (I'm a two finger typist, too:) ). His handwriting is horrible and unintelligible. He's still a fluent writer: his language flows fluently despite the alternative means by which he completes his work.
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GrendelQ said:
I could try to make a distinction between the two uses here, linguistic articulation (which refers to the production of precise sounds) and expressing oneself articulately (which refers to the clear use of language), but they are close enough -- I'll give you this one. Yes, someone needs to be able to express himself articulately to be fluent.

Now, you can have a deaf voice/accent, slur, and still express yourself articulately, still be fluent using spoken language. You can have arthritis and still express yourself articulately, still be fluent using written language. You can have tennis elbow and still be fluent in ASL.
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GrendelQ said:
OK, since fluency is largely a matter of how comfortable you are with using language -- the ease component, I can see how your memories of how your speech therapist defined fluency would play into whether or not you feel able to use spoken language with fluency. I think it's more than a matter of splitting hairs semantically, we just look at things very differently: from your description of articulation and resonance, I think you see fluency as the mechanics of producing speech on the lips and I see it as thoughts flowing with ease out of the brain in the form of language via whatever channel available, without barriers, resonance and articulation be damned.
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GrendelQ said:
Being comfortable leads to ease, if you aren't comfortable with your grasp of language, you are halting, slow. Not fluent.

Communicating effectively doesn't require that you sound like a BBC broadcaster. Have you ever heard Daniel Schorr or Barbara Walters speak? Do they sound like they have "perfect diction" or like your typical hearie? No, and yet they are most certainly fluent.
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GrendelQ said:
I understand, and I'm not in any way arguing that any one language is better than the other or that it's an either / or situation. I get what you are saying about your parents being more comfortable in one or the other. About you finding that even if you prefer to use spoken over ASL, you find that the ASL is more accessible to others (or at least, your ASL interpreted into English is more accessible in the case of court:) ).

You are absolutely right in that no matter how fluent you might be -- whether spoken, written, or signed -- if your expression of that language is unintelligible, it's not going to matter much. Let's say you are a writer with broken wrist that makes a mess of your handwriting or you are facing a large room of people and can't project your written words large enough for them to read; you have pulled a muscle and must sign with one hand or it's dark and can't get across your thoughts to a companion via ASL; you have laryngitis and can't speak, you have a powerful regional accent that your audience can't follow, you do speak, but the room is so loud no one can hear you or the microphone you use distorts your voice. You may be perfectly fluent (your language comes effortlessly, freely to you -- you've got flow, ease, speed) and you know exactly what you will express without thinking about the mechanics of forming each word ... and yet, that's not all there is to perfect communication if the other person can't read you. Fluency is not all there is to it.
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As per your request, here are the first few posts I found to be flip flopping back and forth and very unclear as to your position on whether "effortless" should be a criterion for fluency.
 
deafskeptic said:
I'm afraid you'll need to learn deaf history.
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Sorry, I'm not going to be subjected by this BS that black civil rights is the same thing as disability rights (per the links Banjo posted). If you want certain rights, stand on your own merit. Don't de-legitimize the the genocidal, homicidal, racist, backwards shit that Anglo Americans put West Africans through a few hundred years ago.
 
deafskeptic said:
While I certainly have never faced discrimination due to my skin color, I can not begin to count the times I've been discriminated because of my deafness.

When I told Native Americans about my oral background, they could see parrals to their own experience. They or their parents had been taken away from their nations and forced to use English only just as ASL was forbidden to me when I was growing up.
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And I've been discriminated against for being Jewish. I'm not going to compare it to Jim Crow of the South. No Fucking Way.

I'm also not going to liken my discrimination to that of pogoms in 1900s Europe...what I have been through is nothing like what my grandmother went through. I'm not going to cheapen her experience.
 
jillio said:
As per your request, here are the first few posts I found to be flip flopping back and forth and very unclear as to your position on whether "effortless" should be a criterion for fluency.
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She is not flip flopping. You are trying to catch her in a semantics debate. Stop. If you don't want to respect any of her thoughts, just say so outright instead of wasting her time.
 
DeafCaroline said:
So funny that two hearing people are getting into a heated debate over what constitutes fluency for deaf speech. :)
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You don't have special claim to the field of linguistics, DeafCaroline. Sorry.
There was a survey done by a product designer in which she would ask women to anonymously give their feedback on a recording of a deaf person speaking. Majority admitted that had they not already known the person was deaf, they would have thought she was "retarded" or "slow".
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You know who else people consider 'slow'? Those who sound like they are from Minnesota or Georgia, or African Americans who use AAVE, or Spanish-speaking or Asian individuals with heavy accents.

The ignorance is not just limited to communications with deaf people. Like it or not, good English grammar is a mark of a university education. Many people think that deaf = dumb and that's rather unfortunate, but no one will rise above that if they don't have proper English grammar. That's how it is in America (and all over the world). Our 'Standard English' is like the Germanic 'high German' or England's 'Queen's British' or the Irish distaste of things north of Dublin.
 
TheOracle said:
Sorry, I'm not going to be subjected by this BS that black civil rights is the same thing as disability rights (per the links Banjo posted). If you want certain rights, stand on your own merit. Don't de-legitimize the the genocidal, homicidal, racist, backwards shit that Anglo Americans put West Africans through a few hundred years ago.
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What a shame that you cannot see the connections.
 
TheOracle said:
And I've been discriminated against for being Jewish. I'm not going to compare it to Jim Crow of the South. No Fucking Way.

I'm also not going to liken my discrimination to that of pogoms in 1900s Europe...what I have been through is nothing like what my grandmother went through. I'm not going to cheapen her experience.
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And I have been discriminated against for being a Black Jew, and I see the connection to what I have experienced and what the Deaf have experienced, as well as similarities in the historical perspectives.
 
jillio said:
Yes. You would think that anyone who has experienced oppression in any form could see the connection to the oppression in another group.
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You would think a history teacher would know about the deaf people being exterminated in the Holocaust or experimented upon. tsk.
 
People of any particular group adopt the heirarchy of the dominant group, except they more their own group to the top of the list. This means that subgroups will discriminate against each other. It results in "divide and conquer."
 
sallylou said:
People of any particular group adopt the heirarchy of the dominant group, except they more their own group to the top of the list. This means that subgroups will discriminate against each other. It results in "divide and conquer."
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In group and out group.
 
jillio said:
As per your request, here are the first few posts I found to be flip flopping back and forth and very unclear as to your position on whether "effortless" should be a criterion for fluency.
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Wow, a whole bunch of my posts making points that reach the same conclusion: that fluency -- what you see in the dictionary definitions: the ease (effortlessness, without difficulty), flow (smoothness), and speed with which you use language, expressing yourself and understanding -- is possible for a d/Deaf/HOH person. That I disagree with the position Beclak has repeatedly stated (she said that no d/Deaf person can ever be fluent in a spoken language). I've listened to counter arguments, I agreed with Jiro that it does matter whether or not what you express is intelligible, although that's separate from fluency, but I haven't changed my position. Which is, if anyone is still not clear, that I disagree with Beclak's argument that no d/Deaf/HOH person could ever be fluent in spoken language. I believe it is certainly possible.

Ahh, you do realize that they don't all feature exactly the same words because 1. did I really need to repeat the definition over and over again? maybe put it in my sig? and 2. I didn't cut and paste and repeat one post and was generally responding to how fluency could apply to different issues. I could string together all of your posts, anyone's posts, and guess what, they would have different points. I hope. Otherwise (yawn). Unless we're talking about PFH, and then yes, it's probably the same post with a YT link again and again :laugh2:.

Again, please point out the inconsistency among these posts, is there some point you see in conflict?
 
GrendelQ said:
Wow, a whole bunch of my posts making points that reach the same conclusion: that fluency is what you see in the dictionary definitions: the ease (effortlessness, without difficulty), flow (smoothness), and speed with which you use language, expressing yourself and understanding. That I disagree with the position Beclak has repeatedly taken: that no d/Deaf person can ever be fluent in a spoken language. I continue to disagree. I've listened to counter arguments, I agreed with Jiro that it does matter whether or not what you express is intelligible, although that's separate from fluency, but I haven't changed my position. Which is, if anyone is still not clear, is that I disagree with Beclak's argument that no d/Deaf/HOH person could ever be fluent in spoken language. I believe it is certainly possible.

Ahh, you do realize that they don't all feature exactly the same words because 1. did I really need to repeat the definition over and over again? maybe put it in my sig and 2. I didn't cut and paste and repeat one post and was generally responding to how fluency could apply to different issues. I could string together all of your posts, anyone's posts, and guess what, they would have different points. I hope. Otherwise (yawn). Unless we're talking about PFH, and then yes, it's probably the same post with a YT link again and again :laugh2:.

Again, please point out the inconsistency among these posts, is there some point you see in conflict?
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Nope, a whole bunch of posts that vacillate back and forth so that your position is completely unclear.

I took the time to look up your posts in consecutive order to demonstrate the vacillation. Now you ask for more. You are really reaching here. Can't you just accept that the majority of posters contributing to this thread could not determine what your position was from your posts, and that for all purposes, it appeared that you were simply being argumentative? No, I guess you can't. Oh, well.
 
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