I don't know that I have something with a grand question at the end, I just thought this section was fascinating. On page 91 Fox once again reminds us that sign language is indeed just another completely legitimate and independent language. She talks about Stokoe's experience with trying to ask a question. What Stokoe seems to have done is go through the basic signs involved in asking a question but left out all the extra pieces. I don't remember what portion of our understanding comes from the actual words and their meanings that another person says, but I know it isn't very high. If Stokoe was operating without the correct intonations, facial expressions, and other cues, then of course the students weren't understanding. I suppose maybe I'm wondering how everyone else feels about the importance of cues versus word meaning. For instance, we've talked about turn taking and how important eye contact, etc is. How tough would it be to understand someone speaking in a monotone all the time? I wonder how that translates over to written language since in a way maybe it always risks being read in a monotone. Maybe that's why some people hate reading or have trouble comprehending things that they read. Then again, maybe not...
Comments (1)
I agree that it seems pretty straight forward that students would not understand when they were not receiving the correct contextual cues. While people who speak solely in monotone seem to be rather few and far between, I can think of one example that most of us run into on a daily basis: Pittsburghese. When a Pittsburgh-er asks you a question, it sometimes (often?) sounds more like an accusation because the pitch actually falls at the end of an interrogatory sentence or remains constant throughout the sentence. People using different dialects are certain to use different cues as well, and as we well know understanding these cues can be difficult, confusing, and occasionally humorous.
We spoke in class about how written language can be, and is necessarily interpreted in the mind by giving it emphasis where we would typically place emphasis. This means that two people may interpret the same text differently, especially in the case of badly-written irony. I think it would be interesting to look at comprehension of a regular text as opposed to a text with italics or perhaps exaggerated punctuation (â??â?¦â?? to show where we pause or drag on words) and see if maybe youâ??re right that we have difficulty understanding because of the lack of these social cues.
Posted by Stacy Shaffer | April 17, 2008 7:33 PM
Posted on April 17, 2008 19:33