This last Friday I was at my monthly Deaf Advocacy Committee meeting and noticed something interesting. While one of the hearing people was speaking I found myself watching the sign language interpreter. I do this a lot since I will always pick up some new sign, and I find the choices each interpreter makes to be fascinating.
This particular interpreter is brand new and the poor girl had to work for over two hours straight, signing what ten hearing people were saying and then saying what the deaf people were saying. She did wonderfully and didn't seem to tire. Her word choices were very insightful, choosing to sign the single word "goal" for the entire phrase "heading toward something better". Sure she may have lost a tiny nuance by omitting the word "better" but the meaning remained mostly intact.
What was so different this time is that I actually found myself tuning out the speakers and focusing on the interpreter. I was actually much more precise and clear. English speakers tend to throw in a ton of emotional baggage, judgments, humor and completely useless information into our sentences. The interpreter cuts most of this out and concentrates on the core sentence meaning.
A while ago I met the director of the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center, Sue Bungard at Spaces Gallery to pick out some artwork for the Center, which since its construction has been virtually art-less. Sue is deaf but can read lips and speak excellently. She faced me and said "hello" and then as I began to tell her how my morning had been going, she turned her back to look at some of the colorful paintings on the gallery wall. I found myself standing there with my mouth open. I wondered for a moment if I should tap her on the shoulder so she could turn toward me and "hear" what I was telling her. Then I realized nothing I was saying was actually important in any way. It was just noise, or to Sue it was just a bunch of lip flapping. My guess is, since much of what people say is filler, she takes in the person's intent and then shuts her active-listening-mind off, essentially turning her back on the person.
I do sometimes wish people would be more succinct in their speech. Time and again I have been plagued with a student asking a 26-part question that requires a telling of personal history in order to "put it into context". Yes, this is an exaggeration, but not by any huge degree.
One can be too succinct. My partner Robert hates to listen to my stories which admittedly can tend to have too much information, asides, commentary and references. However, I like to tell stories in chronological order with the built-up payoff at the end. Robert on the other hand tells the punchline of the story first and then proceeds to fill in all the details afterward. Once I've heard the denouement, there's very little reason to listen to the rest of the story because there's no build-up.
An example of one of my stories may start out with "it was very cold yesterday", meander through "just like the Columbus Day storm of 1964", and finish with "her car slid out of control and hit the embankment!"
Conversely an example of one of Robert's stories may start out with "Did you hear that she was in a terrible accident yesterday?", which leads to, "it was only 19 degrees outside" and finally end with "she had just finished paying off that car too."
I wonder how the interpreter would phrase these stories? I'll bet she'd be very succinct.
Bud, this was delightful. You're not giving yourself enough credit when you say your stories are overburdened with extras.
ReplyDeleteIs it generally true, in your experience, that ESL is more spare and to-the-point than spoken English? I've always thought that part of any channel of communication inevitably gets used to transmit meanings that aren't part of the superficial message.