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The Stir
false advice for speakers and writers, and immoral advice for humans
most always in pressed khakis white shirt blue tie deaf of deaf meaning deaf son deaf parents meaning one of the elite if you're a deaf culture person
he sat down at far left edge next to the woman with I ♥ GARY Gary erased into her notebook cover Helen his signer facing him from my left facing the whole class always smiling
first day when I broke them into pairs for interviewing purposes he chose Tatiana right off the boat from the Ukraine or she chose him both of them looking at Helen rather than each other I only drifted by them once they were on task zoon politicon on ice
his first writing for me cryptic 'n' glyptic Tatiana's crypsos or his I didn't know
his second: when I was small I loved wood carpentering I will give an example I made wooden house for the backyard to play in very happy at the thing I had built now I know it was probably not good carpentry wood stool inside that I would sit on
And I know language can be said as well by hands and face
"a language equally suitable for making love or speeches" but to have as dialect of his nurture a language with no written form Helen the signer: maybe 60 years that smile I had to once upbraid her lightly for only signing to George the things that I the teacher was saying Much later she said the "we're not supposed to learn things ourselves in these classes -- just convey --" As late as 1749 the French Academy of Sciences appointed a commission to determine whether deaf people were "capable of reasoning." But simply a linguistic subculture no more in need of a cure than Hispanics or Creoles
cheer on discovering their baby is deaf" Whether George's parents cheered I don't know I am trying to structure good English language since I took English 098... Thinking of what it must be like the tinnitus in my own head amplified Borges says the blind do not see darkness: "I move in a field of blue mist" but George hears darkness not ringing my father after he swallowed his pride I asked how his new hearingaids worked "Do you know the sound of a match flaring up?" he said Would the deafness that rounded on my father like a slow summer dusk and may one evening close on me completely -- nor would even that block out my lifetime of hearing language to have had to figure out those mysterious movements of those people's lips were language The dialects of their nurture Since your apparent strength in writing lies in vision, I'd like you think about how to make your sentences look like the sentences you read, OK? – sentence boundaries chunks of missing syntax – OK, I can read some major instruction from your book. I may improve my some sentences for what Project 1 is expected. So, I can develop some better sentences such as verbs and articles for Project 2. I am concerned about Project 2 that I will get some more problems. It seems to me like your grammar is a good bit more clear NOW. Perhaps some of problems you had were due to nervousness and the feeling that, for an English paper, you "had to sound impressive." Many hearing students have the same problem. OK OK my continual hedge – There's a lot more I think you know about this that we need to know OK? Just like Tatiana has to explain some things she takes for granted The upside of this is that your audience will be curious about it and interested to see what you have to say OK? And he starts giving it back to me OK this rewriting assignment will be due Monday night OK I will rewrite it this weekend universal American signifier OKOK meaning not everything's fine but get off my nuts When I am at deaf club we watch basketball on TV instead of clapping like hearing people wave hands also dancing although we are deaf and billiards I am the club champion in shooting pool When I am at deaf club I am with friends completely happy We do all, I think, the hearing people might do 11:00 Thursday night the Outlook Inn loud satisfactory clout of cueball on elevenball not even caring if it goes in loud cowpoke tunes on the jukebox end of another workingweek so just thwack the bastard nineball fourteenball One Saturday morning shortly after Lynn had begun school Spradley and his wife Louise found her outdoors waiting for the bus for weeks she repeated the same futile wait every Saturday Sunday until her parents finally managed to convey the concept
and "shoes" were easy; abstract relationships, though... Spradley knew Lynn loved her grandparents, for instance, but he had no idea if she knew who those devoted elderly people were....
knows the biology of black noise litanies of silence of the edges of the triune gods the three Rs relativism rationalism reiteration the four chunks of Ameslan
why not: help me with this please weekend weekday wood carpentering curious audience interested goodbye Maybe because of the Congress of Milan 1880 affirming "the incontestible superiority of speech over sign" Writing is craft not art, George. Think of being a carpenter we don't want to make a five-foot table four feet 'cause then it would be missing a couple legs And I still believe that but
hard slap on the back of his wrist as he signed grunted breath as he signed I will come by Thursday morning if that is OK Language the youngest child of the human mind so never getting all the attention she wants: alternately overly friendly and brooding calling continuously I'm down here – Wait for me – always having to pay for her older sisters' mistakes.... .... always playing that game with your older brother where you hold your palmsup under his palmsdown touching and try to rotate your hands over his and slap and miss and it's his turn he doesn't miss for several hours the ricochet of brotherly language on the reddened backs of your wrists as you puff out in articulate frustrate breath Yes, I need to explain about my personally experienced some more Blindness cuts off people from things Deafness cuts off people from people Helen Keller says As soon as you had help me with my paper I felt better how relievable I am in your aid I wanted him to write about his relationship with a hearing woman other than glancingly I wanted Tatiana to write about her mother the Ukrainian TV producer she didn't think it interesting Real-life examples where people slaughter their ethos: I know I'm real ugly but can I buy you a drink? The Mafia needs a new bagman so one smart paisano sez, Hey, why don't we get a deaf guy, deaf mute guy, then he can't squeal. So they do. This deaf guy goes picks up 30 grand, more money than he's seen anywhere in his life, & he thinks, hmmmmm. So he goes back to the Mafia & writes down I didn't get it, whoever it was didn't show. They don't believe him, so they go find a translator, one of those signers, you know.
I don't know what you're talking about & the translator translates. So the heavy cocks the gun the deaf guy signs OK OK it's in this vacant lot on 16th Street buried under the tree & the heavy says to the translator what'd he say? & the translator says, he still don't know what you're talking
got the grapes to pull the trigger OK gang, argumentation time. Now. Remember what I said from this guy Kenneth Burke,
we're not trying to slaughter the opponent
The TTY [[a keyboard that allows the deaf
And here we are A native of the planet Anthraxia comes to earth. It is eager to communicate with you, but you share no common language. How do you start to teach it English? (Keep in mind that the Anthraxians have no concepts of sex, personal identity, death, or time.) – a prompt for the last class nobody took me up on My father knocks the bowl of his pipe against the chainsaw blade a look of unconscious simple happiness I will remember burnt grains of tobacco fall into the sawdust and the chainsaw starts its doublethroated throatclearing again hearingaids left on the brick steps The lyricism of silence
Wells's time traveler at the end of the world: the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleeding of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of the insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives – all that was over. The stir that makes dusk fall above us the sound of the sun translated into the cluttered fall of insects birds infinitesimal font of our breathing slowing
under an umbrella cloudspittle falling intermittently on my bare head all of 15 feet away not seeing me
Quotations not otherwise identified are from either Edward Dolnick's "Deafness as Culture" (Atlantic Monthly, September 1993), Jolanta Lapiak's "Deaf World Web" site, or the College Composition and Communication Conference's position statement "Students' Right to Their Own Language." |