Group 4 Language Blog

In chapter 4 of Um...I found the last paragraph on page 100 to be very interesting. It states that "In the United States, we often admire people for their brilliance when they're merely glib and smooth. Yet if we're interested in other qualities, such as honesty, authenticity, and charisma, then glib, uninterrupted speaking may not be what we want to hear. In fact, we might want to begin to mistrust perfect fluency." This paragraph made sense to me as there have been times when I've thought to myself 'this person is a smooth talker, are they telling me the truth?' If this is the case and perfect speech may be mistrusted why is it so strongly stressed in areas such as interviews? In this type of situation using words such as "um" and "uh" may be seen by the interviewer as one being ill-prepared and unable to think on their feet as opposed to someone who can quickly rattle off answers. However, with the paragraph on page 100 I am left to wonder if it is more important to allow yourself to say "um" and "uh" whenever you need to as opposed to having all of your answers come off too smooth and thus risk the chance of being mistrusted for what you are saying.

I found the relationship of verbal blunders and law enforcement to be quite interesting. Erard states in chapter 3 how liars will begin to blunder in the beginning of their story but make fewer mistakes or blunders the more they tell it and the more confident they become. He discusses further the typical behaviors of liars “…toss their hands, twirl their pens, scratch their heads, talk more quickly.” (pg 70). But then says we can’t we use verbal blunders and behaviors such as these to determine deception because people who aren’t lying have also been known to sound and act like the liars in that study. Why then, are we told that hand gestures, hesitating, repeating words and slips sounds genuine and trustworthy? And that speaking naturally or “smooth” sounds insincere or dishonest? I would have thought that the more a person uses the words “uh” or “um”, or any other pause or blunder would indicate lying, especially in an interrogation room. Aren’t we taught to speak fluently with few pauses limiting the use of “um” or “uh” in order to present ourselves in a respectful and intelligent manner? For example interviews…but that is another issue I will leave open for others to discuss. Still, one final question I have is: Are liars more aware of verbal blunders by rehearsing a lie, like others may rehearse and prepare for an interview?

The very beginning of chapter 3, Some Facts About Verbal Blunders, discusses verbal blunders as not only a part of life but also as mile markers (page 57). I was very surprised to hear that children's speaking may become less interrupted and fragmented as they mature, but as adults enter later life, they begin to sound more like children again. I would like to know what age roughly this starts at? I can see how older people would have longer pauses and changes in the way they speak due to memory loss or dementia, etc. I am curious to know how social class, education level and stress levels would effect a person's verbal blunders and/or language?

The author also talks about tip of the tongue or TOT experiences. It was said that the larger someone's vocabulary, the more TOT experiences they have. I'm having a really hard time believing this. I feel like if you have a large vocabulary then you would know many words with the same meanings. Therefore, I think that if you can not think of a word, then there could be a replacement so quickly that maybe you would not even notice that the original word was not used. Would this still be considered a TOT? I feel like it isn't necessarily one if this whole change happened so quickly that the person never even realized the switching of words.

In chapter 3, Erard talks about people using the phrases "um" or "uh" to fill iin gaps in communication while they are figuring out what they would like to say next. But why does that fraction of a second have to be filled? What is so wrong with just leaving a little bit of silence in the midst of the conversation instead of just inserting a sound to fill the gap? I'm wondering if maybe it is to keep the flow and fluidity of the conversation intact. In an earlier class we talked about how when speaking, we blend words together in one continous stream. Is this why we have to have a filler for the times when we are thinking what to say next? Does keeping the conversation going keep it less noticable that we're thinking of what to say?

And why the phrase "uh?" Why is this sound so universal? On page 55, Erard discusses some of the sounds that different languages use to fill the gaps in their languages. For example, in Britain they say "er" and in France they say "euh." But both of these sounds are very similar to our "uh." What about this sound makes it so universal to be used in many different languages?

According to Erard, in chaper 11, “studies have shown that over the last several years, pre-scripted disfluencies have begun to appear in advertisements, obviously in order to manipulate the listener’s trust.” He talks about telemarketers pre-recorded messages and how they have changed over time to incorporate uhs and ums. With these messages, he said that he now listens longer than he used to, even when he does not need what they are trying to sell. I would like to know why this is because our society has many implications of uhs and ums and I feel that our society looks at our leaders and expects them to have “proper speech.” Based off of our society’s implications, wouldn’t someone trying to sell you something want to seem proper, professional, and intelligent? If the person is these things, shouldn’t they be speaking without uhs and ums? I just feel that according to what our society tells me, I shouldn’t pay attention to someone who uses uhs and ums. So why then are advertisements using disfluencies?

From chapter 11 in Erard he quotes Jean Fox Tree on page 251 in saying "in our lifetime we will accept that these (pause fillers) are meaningful. Forty or fifty years from now, if not sooner, you can talk about this stuff in high school and people are going to think it's obvious." My question regarding this statement is how is this going to happen? As we have talked about in class there is still a lot of negativity around pause fillers as well as a correlation between them and a lack of intelligence. Unless everyone starts reading books like Um... and learns how prevalent pause fillers really are, how are we going to teach future generations and bring them to a point where they are going to see using them as an obvious way or life. In the future, are the stereotype we seem to have established of using "um", "uh", etc no longer going to be associated with one having poor speech or not being very smart like Tree predicts?

On page 246, Erard states "doctors add words like "well," "anyway," and "now" when giving previously published remarks at medical conferences. Even though these disfluencies are planned in order to seem more approachable, this fact still unnerves me. I guess I go along with most of the mainstream US by automatically judging people (without knowing I'm doing it) as being somewhat less intelligent. This isn't a quality I would like in my doctor. So I guess my question is where to draw the line when determining when to be professional and when to be personable? If being given a diagnosis by my doctor, I don't want to hear the words "uh" and "um" being uttered from his mouth, or I would probably seek a second opinion. But if he were to speak to me without any disfluencies, in a somewhat robotic, and unnatural way, he would seem cold, and I wouldn't like that either. I guess I'm just baffled on how we balance the two extremes.

In chapter 11, Erard talked a lot about artificial intelligence and teaching machines to understand speech errors, pause fillers, and verbal blunders. This, to me, was almost frightening. Is it really possible to teach a machine to understand? It may comprehend what we are trying to communicate; but still, is that understanding? And even if machines could understand us would we want to communicate with them? Speech errors and blunders are characteristics of human imperfection. Robots cannot replicate that, which would make for a very disconnected relationship. It is the predicting and anticipation, produced by speech errors, that we can experience from, and produce in, other people that makes human relationships attractive. Are speech errors something that we could not only teach machines to comprehend but also to use themselves; and if we could, would it be authentic enough for us to feel close to machines? Sincerity comes from being able to read and interact with the person you are communicating with. Can we ever find that with a machine or robot?

A major theme that I noticed in this reading is that other languages are thought to pose a threat to English language. Many opponents of bilingualism seem to interpret it as the major use of a language other than English, rather than the use of two languages, and they look down at those who are bilingual. What so many people don't understand is that, as research shows, learning in your native language shows rapid advantages when switching to the “standard” language. Also, knowing more languages makes you stronger in your native language, especially a language like English, one that borrows from other languages so readily. To prove the advantages of bilingualism, it is helpful to give examples of people who are actually bilingual: those who can choose one of two languages depending on the appropriateness of the situation, along with the evidence of increased test scores and enhanced self-esteem of bilingual children. Advantages include, immigrants who, as we read, are eager to learn and use English, but also want to maintain their ethnicity and own language.

In terms of testing, it is stated on page 220 that “Because many aspects of intelligence are learned or mediated through specific cultural experiences…it is impossible to devise a test of intelligence which is context-free and culture-independent.” My question here is then, how can we determine an individual’s intelligence while avoiding cultural bias for those who are bilingual? And when discussing bilingual education, why is it that foreign language education in the world’s major languages is seen as valuable while bilingual education for minority students is equated with poverty? Why should one be above the other? It seems to me that racism may be part of that answer.

In the article, Language in Society, I found the section about language differences in the classroom interesting. The powerful influence of school over its young pupils is discussed in the beginning of the article. While reading this article, I was shocked at how important a role that school has on our learning of language and the impact of language on our overall education. The section which discusses language differences in the classroom really got me thinking about how impacting a teacher’s relationship with a student could be. I find it exceedingly frustrating that many teachers choose to treat students differently, as he or she did in the example. Teachers are supposed to be fair and want to help all students learn. I feel that in many of the examples within the article, teachers haven’t been fair to all students. In many situations, a teacher has to explain things in many different ways or ask questions in different ways so that children can understand better. Why can’t teachers do that with story time? The example regarding the two communities was also frustrating to me. I feel that teachers need to be educated about the way they are teaching and asking questions and they then need to use all types of language to help all students. In my opinion, maybe doing a little bit of each “type of language” will help all students in understanding a concept or example. The teacher can work with the students in teaching them Standard English while at the same time, learning their language so that both sides can understand where the other is coming from. What other approaches can be taken to solve this problem of teachers and schools hindering children’s ability to perform well academically because of a lack of understanding Standard English?

My question was similar to that of Kate's and pertains to the language differences in the classroom. I was also quite upset to read that teachers treated children differently based on things such as their language. One of my roommates did a teaching internship this summer with underprivileged kids in Philadelphia she told me about the training that she underwent beforehand. It was stressed to her and her co-workers the importance of treating the kids equally, of not calling on one side of the room more than the other or one sex more than the other, etc etc etc. With this in mind when reading the article I am left to wonder if other teachers are not taught the same things of equality in the classroom. Are they once taught but revert back to old stereotypes after dealing with diverse groups of children? & if so how can we make sure that they don't go back to their old ways? With some children already being at a disadvantage over others for various reasons, shouldn't we be actively trying to make things as equal as possible and make sure that they stay that way?

Romaine makes it clear that our educational system needs vast improvement when it comes to teaching and accepting language. It is sad to read that the racial and ethnic problems that have plagued our country for so long are still far from being resolved. Personally, I was unaware of the extent to which language is used as a means of discrimination around the world. The only positive idea I was able to take away from the reading was that there is hope for change. So I think the most important question is how do we change things? To me, the best solution presented in the article was the “bridge” reader. It seemed to be an ideal middle ground between two of the arguments that were being made. There were two examples of letters in the New York Times in which the writers clamed that being exposed to strictly the foreign-majority language (in this case, Engligh) was ideal. One claimed “I am convinced a bilingual education would have impeded my integration into American society,” while the other wrote “The bilingual method is probably more confusing than helpful to many. Exposure to English throughout the day results in more rapid and more effective progress than dilution in a bilingual process.” These claims would lead us, at first, to believe that the bilingual approach is out of the question. Yet, what about the study on page 222 which indicated that the more non-standard speakers were corrected, the more they used non-standard language? Or the study in the inner city of Chicago that showed students taught entirely in standard English with no reference to their non-standard language resulted in an increase in usage of their non-standard language. Still, perhaps the best evidence for a middle ground is the success of the “bridge” readers. Clearly, a gradual shift from non-standard to standard language is the best approach. It is discouraging however that these readers were eventually eliminated because of negative reactions. How can this negative reaction to something that is so effective be countered? Perhaps requiring a class in the curriculum that teaches young children to understand language differences and to be accepting of those who speak differently would be the best solution. How else can we eliminate some of the negative labels on non-standard language?

In the Difference vs. Deficit heading, Romaine states that it was argued that children of low-income families did not have a language becuase they didn't speak the same as middle-class children. How is it possible to not have a language? She presented an example of the elaborative way to speak (used by middle class) and the restricted way(used by low class). But neither ways that are presented are how anyone really speaks. We don't explain every single detail when talking, but we also use enough to in order to ensure that our listeners understand. So why is one way necessarily better than the other? Especially enough for some to say that the low class lacks a language altogether?

On page 38, Agar discusses Emile Durkheim’s views on society. I found this section very interesting. Durkheim suggests that society is something that one is born into. Society sets limits on what one can do. I agree with this idea, because through our daily activities and social lives, we are required to act in a certain way. There are boundaries set up for us. Agar states, “When people cross the boundaries, go beyond the fences that social facts define, then they’re crazy or criminal or maybe both. They’re no longer members of the group. They’re locked into an institution until they are rehabilitated or, to put it another way, until they are brought back inside the fence.” I would like to know what happens when we go across the boundaries that society sets with language? What are the consequences? I understand that the way we speak and the language we use defines us as individuals, as well as part of a group. So then what happens when we use a different language to communicate? Are we kicked out of the group or viewed in a different way?

Michael Agar highlights the way in which Ferdinand de Saussure believed in language as a systematic structure serving as a link between thought and sound. He thought of language sounds as a series of linguistic signs that are purely arbitrary. It seems clear that Saussure is saying that any language is a self-contained system of signs, in which each element is meaningless by itself and meaningful only by its differentiation from the other elements in paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships. However, did Saussure overemphasize the arbitrary, symbolic relation between signs and signifiers? I ask this because how do all of the relationships discussed (iconic and indexical included) connect to one another to create something meaningful, as opposed to meaningless?

And also, focusing on the way in which Saussure studied “language” over “speech”, distinguishing the two on pg 37, it is not clear to me how using this history Agar is suggesting we can erase the Circle?

Saussure stated that there is a difference between language and speech. He said that speech is what we do with language, which is filled with variations and mistakes. "Speech is a mess," he stated. On the other hand, "pure, clean, a steel skyscraper arising from the chaos in the streets." He says that it is people who mess up langauge, but would that be the case if the language was really perfect? It seems that he blames people for the problems with communication, but if our language was actually perfect then wouldn't those problems cease to exist? Shouldn't the language itself be seen as the root of the problem of miscommunication instead of as the victim?

Agar seems to conclude that language and culture are very closely related. He even uses the term languaculture. It would be difficult to argue this proposal. Clearly there are many different languages and even different dialects within languages that are based on the conditions of a culture. I think sometimes people can’t understand this tight link; and they don’t realize that when they make fun of someone’s language they are making fun of their culture as well. Making fun of another’s culture can be extremely hurtful and maybe even borderline dangerous. So why do we do it?
I think a lot of people cop out by saying, “well I just did not understand that it was hurtful and that I was offending someone.” This may be the case some of the time, but I think most of the time we know exactly what we are doing; and now having read this we have no excuses. But will that change the way we view the next person we hear that does not talk exactly the way we do? I am sure that the next time I meet someone who speaks a language I have never heard before, I will have the tendency to think that person is less educated or at least sounds funny. Why is that? And, how do we prevent this?

In chapter 4 of Talking Hands, Fox discusses the way children acquire language. I guess I am confused about how this process works for both deaf and hearing babies. On page 65, she talks about between the ages of about six and ten months, hearing infants produce babble which we call baby talk. Then over time, as infants gain more exposure the babbling develops into adult language. She then continues to discuss how the exact same things happens with deaf infants exposed to sign as a first language. In this case, the babbling is manual. On page 68, Fox states, "For most deaf children, then, the experience of acquiring language is not at all comparable to that of hearing children." I understand that most deaf children are born of hearing parents so with this situation, sign would not be the first language. How then is language acquired for most deaf children? How is language acquired for deaf children with deaf parents? Is it very similar to hearing children with hearing parents?

Chapter 4 (page 67) states that some deaf children born to hearing families may be exposed to no signing at all until they reach school age. Therefore they are unable to learn language in a natural way through absorbing it from their environment like other children are able to do. The book continued to say that children who are born to deaf parents and began signing early on did significantly better on false-belief tasks than deaf children who belonged to hearing parents. My question is, in addition to this particular task would deaf children who don't begin signing until later not have other activities that they don't perform as well in. Wouldn't they have many different impairments due to how late they are beginning to learn and understand language, which the book said, if they were lucky would be in preschool (where they still won't be at least 4 or 5)? In particular in the area of language, would these kids who have no exposure to language before not be extremely language impaired in some aspects? I would think that not being able to communicate for your beginning years and then learning to sign later would be a very difficult and harmful on children.

Chapter 4 discusses interesting views of modern linguistics and I found myself asking quite a few questions. To begin, on page 55 Fox discusses Chomsky’s argument for how speaking children are capable of testing, rejecting and revising their use of their native language, otherwise known as hypothesis testing, to determine what is correct and was is incorrect. However, Fox points out that nearly 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, so then, how would deaf children use hypothesis testing with gestures as opposed to sounds, words and phrases; especially if they are born to hearing parents who are not fluent signers?

Another topic that was of great interest to me pertained to page 66, in which Fox discusses deaf native signers who suffer from strokes or other brain injuries. My question here pertains to differences among native deaf signers and hearing patients. Fox briefly describes that injuries to the brain have shown similarities between the dysfunctions seen in sign language and spoken-language, but provides little to no differences between the two, and that these similarities result from damage to the same part of the brain (left hemisphere). However, deaf patients sign using their hands so what would these findings imply about damage to motor areas of the brain? And how would that affect a deaf patient’s ability to communicate?

In chapter 5, it is explained that Bedouin Sign Language (and many other languages for that matter) only have two different color words. It is simply black or white. I understand grouping all the dark colors together under the name black to discern them from the light colors which are named white, but why wouldn't you want to distinguish between the differen colors. To me, blue is very different from green, even though they are both cool colors. Wouldn't having only two color words cause a lot of confusion in the language?

On another note, I've also heard that if one sense is missing, then the others become stronger. So for someone not able to hear, it is probable that they're sight is probably pretty strong. So they would probably be more likely to be able to distinguish between different hues of different colors than we are, so why wouldn't they want to name them?

On pages 54 and 55 Fox talks a little about Chomsky’s argument against language as a learned behavior. Chomsky makes a compelling case for the existence of an inborn linguistic blueprint. It seems almost impossible that language is strictly a learned behavior. Also, on page 63 Fox mentions, “no tribe of hearing people has been found in which a signed language has arisen as the primary means of communication.” To me this means that if one can hear and speak, then there is an innate tendency to develop language in the vocal-auditory channel. Yet, we cannot downplay the effect the environment will have on a developing child. So, my question is, if a child capable of speaking and hearing is born to deaf parents who communicate strictly through the manual-visual channel, will that child develop language through that same channel or will he/she use the vocal-auditory channel?

In the reading, Susan Goldin-Meadow discusses David, and other participants, in her study and how they use “homesigns.” She further discusses the types of gestures that these participants use. An example is how David signals the difference between nouns and verbs; using a twist gesture as a noun to mean jar. Susan points out that as the homesigners got older, their gesture strings grew longer and more complex which then involved multiple actors and actions.

Maybe I am confused, but I had the understanding that these children developed the way they sign on their own and not in a setting where they were taught. So in thinking about this process of learning, I personally think it would be hard for those children to then learn “standard sign.” I just feel that often times, people who have repeatedly done something that works, are then set in their ways. They might not want to change how they communicate if what they had been doing worked well. Home words for us are used around the home and family and typically do not play into our social lives. But for these children, when they go outside of the home and need to be able to communicate on a different level than “home signs,” wouldn’t that be difficult since they are only accustomed to communicating with their close friends or family? I just feel that some of the children would be dead set on keeping their word or phrase and not the one that was taught to them. What are the challenges that they would face? If they go to school and learn sign, how would that affect the homesign that they used? How would that affect the way that they spoke? Would they know two different “languages” for the same word or phrase? I just feel that this would be very difficult for them to learn over what they already know and are used to. I can say as a athlete, I have certain tendencies as I play, some as good habits and some are bad. Could this be the case where they would then need to break that bad habit?

In chapter 14, Fox mentions the question of how signed language is represented in the mind. This brings up a past question of mine that we have yet to discuss, and is of much interest to me. But first, it is mentioned on pages 219 and 220 the ways in which memory is encoded in the brain (long-term and short-term). Based on experiments, Klima and Bellugi state that for hearing people, short-term memory for words has a phonological basis, whereas “deaf signers of ASL used visual parameters of handshape, location, and movement” (p.224). With short-term memory being different for signers and hearing people, my first question is then; is long-term memory for words the same for both hearing people and deaf signers? Organized semantically? Not much was discussed about this pertaining to signers.

Next, this is where I want to bring up the big question I have had. This chapter discusses structure. Therefore, do deaf signers with brain damage have sign language deficits? And if so, do the deficits resemble either Wernike’s aphasia or Broca’s aphasia, or both? Is there a more common area of damage where deficits are seen? Another question I have pertains to the area of damage, right versus left hemisphere damage. Would right hemisphere damage disrupt signing motions and interfere with the structure of the language; maybe producing more “slips of the hand”, or spoonerisms, or generate no specific pattern at all?

Chapter 13 talks about homesigning. I am completely amazed and really confused how these deaf children were able to invent their own language. But even more, how is it possible that even though they had absolutely no exposure or knowledge about spoken language, that their homesigning still followed the same rules? Especially when they were exposed to gesturing. Why didn't their signing become similar to the gesturing of their parents? The gesturing was the only kind of communication they were exposed to, so why wasn't it incorporated into their homesign? And lastly, after they established their homesign, how did the gesturing of their parents effect them? Would it confuse them, or would they somehow be able to differentiate beetween the two? I guess I'm just confused because I don't know if they would understand the concept of our gesturing as an addition to our language, because for them, the gesturing is their language.

Fox mentions several examples of recall errors that were made by hearing people and deaf people. The errors seemed to indicate that those who could hear encode language based on phonology and that deaf people encode language in a more visual-manual manner. This makes sense. But, what about those children who are bilingual in English and ASL, who learn both languages simultaneously in the critical period? How do they ultimately encode either ASL or English? This question is especially interesting when considering someone who speaks English while signing. Are they accessing a phonological or visual lexicon, or both at the same time? Is it possible to have two lexicons? If so, can someone access them both at one time?

Chapter 14 of Talking Hands talks about how signers make errors when signing due to single formational parameters. This is the same way that people who use verbal language can mistake one word for another because of simple sound based errors. When nondeaf people mishear words this can be attributed to them not paying attention, the speaker not annunciating clearly, or their being static in the conversation and simply not being able to hear the speaker. Do these same type of behaviors occur in deaf people when they misunderstand a sign? It might be because they were not paying attention or the signer was being lazy and not fully expressing the sign, but what might other reasons be as to why they might misunderstand such as in the way that we do when we mishear someone? Are the same reasons hearing people misunderstand the same way that deaf people do to?