This post was inspired by Bruno Kahn’s article “Lessons of Silence.”
ASL is a beautiful and fluid language
Some years ago, I took a few courses in American Sign Language and Deaf culture. Language learning is one of my passions. I loved tackling the particular grammar and syntax in ASL and was fascinated by how it felt to communicate visually and physically.
ASL isn’t about using you hands. It’s about using your whole body, including distinct facial expressions for certain questions and statements. It is highly energetic and intuitive. When I conversed with ASL, I felt as if I were exercising a whole new part of my brain.
Growing up, I was known as “the quiet one.” I was debilitatingly shy and much preferred to listen than to speak. Adults frequently asked me to repeat myself of to “speak up.” A grade school teacher once wrote on my report card that “Amy is very bright but she doesn’t talk to anybody.” This reserved way of being in the world has always been with me to some degree, though I’ve grown a great deal in confidence and voice.
What surprised me about learning ASL was how naturally and dramatically my communication style changed when I signed. I releaxed. I could feel my heart open. I felt engaged with the “listener” in a way I didn’t when I used my voice. The anxiety I usually had when I spoke disappeared. I found it easy to learn the facial expressions and visual styles of ASL.
Once when I was conversing with my Deaf teacher, she blinked, held up her hands, and shook her head.
What? I signed.
Show your feelings
Sometimes I forget you’re a hearing person, she signed. You communicate like a Deaf person. Then she waved her hands on front of her face in a gesture I read as “It kinda freaks me out a little.”
I took this as a great complement. I knew she wasn’t referring to my technical skill, since I was just a beginner. But I had, at least a little, absorbed the essence of the Deaf way of communicating. I learned new, authentic ways of engaging in conversation that I still use today when I speak with someone:
Don’t hide what you feel.
The Deaf are generally not afraid to show their emotions. This makes communication so much clearer. The hearing are so accustomed to using vocal inflections to communicate feeling, we sometimes forget how much more grounding–and enjoyable–it is to to use the whole body to do this, through expressions, gestures, and posture.
Use your face.
Maintain eye contact. Use the expressive capabilities of your eyes. Remember the power of a smile when something is happy and a frown when something is troubling. Nod. Shake your head. Use your eyebrows.
Speak from your heart.
I mean this physically as well as emotionally. Imagine your voice growing from your heart and filling your body when you speak. Let your throat relax. Let your voice resonate within your whole self. This is tremendously grounding and allows for a natural, mindful pace in conversation.
Hug People.
Hugs are healthy and fun
The Deaf hug. A lot. And they hug each other with their whole bodies. They are comfortable withtheir physical selves. Their physicality helps to create strong bonds and lasting relationships.
Have you had an experience with another community or culture that taught you betters wasy of speaking or listening? How has your communication grown and evolved as you have grown and evolved?
Please take a moment to read Bruno Kahn’s article in strategy+business. Thanks again to Tammy Lenski’s site to leading me to this post.
I am bilingual in Spanish and English. As a handicapped adult I decided to amplify my Spanish by becoming a court interpreter. not an easy task at my age. Spanish speaking people hug, like deaf ones do. Deaf friends I haven’t seen for a week, let alone for a year, shake hands, get tears in their eyes, hug. grab a fiend to share the joy of seeing me. I am not an important person, but I feel they are so warm and understanding of many things. Just not the legal ones! The natural gestures of the Hispanic peoples are interesting also. In Bolivia you hold your hand out, palm down, sweep the air toward your body to signal “come”; you raise your right hand, fingers splayed, and rotate the wrist to say “there isn’t any”, and it can take an hour to walk a block in a small town where you are widely known. Everyone has to say “Hello, how’s it going? Did you find lhe (fill the blank) you were looking for? Look at my kid, he finallly got an (A, or 4)in math! If you see some ____in the market today, could you bring it back on the way home? we’re short…” You walk five feet and it starts all over again–the handshake, the shoulder hug, the return hand shake, the “interrogation”. They talk with their entire body and it takes a long time to learn, but you can learn if you try. Now I’m trying to learn Mexican gestures, as well as Mexican/American. There are so many meanings to the words “you know” and language is increased by vision. My sister-in-law has said many times, “Wait a sec., I can’t hear without my glasses!” Languages enrich our concepts. We might say he is as blind as a bat; in one court recorded session the witness said, “Of course I had my glasses on, without them I can’t see a cow in the bathroom.”
Hi Marilyn!
Thank you for your thoughtful insights! This is totally fascinating. As I was reading your descriptions of the signs for “come here” and “there isn’t any,” I couldn’t help but try them. Just doing that makes me miss sign language so much!
My Deaf teachers said that it took an hour to leave someone’s house because you have to hug and say goodbye and basically have a whole “goodbye” conversation with everyone before you leave. And more hugs. A Deaf person’s energy seems so accessible to me, right on the top of their being, without the covering-up that so many hearing people use to get through the day. It’s definitely a true cultural difference.
As a more or less reserved person, I find it delightful to be around people who are expressive. It’s good for me. I like knowing that there are people who are so free
and comfortable with their emotional lives.
Thanks again!
This post reminds me of a recent article I heard (I think on NPR) about a study into how much people read from the face versus the body. They came to the fascinating conclusion that body language more often than not conveys much more than the face. In fact, they actually transposed the face of happy people on to the bodies of those that were upset, and people still interpreted the mood as upset rather than happy. Just goes to show you just how important body language is in communication. Thanks for the post!
Hi Chris!
I agree, this is fascinating! I remember taking this online quiz that displayed short videos of people smiling. You had to choose if the smile was genuine or if the person was faking it. I got only one wrong, and the “smilers” were filmed only from the neck up! There is so much to interpret just from the face, and it is so much more complicated and subconscious than we think. If you use body language, it’s amazing we need spoken language at all.
Which makes me wonder–how much does spoken language clarify meaning, and how much does it obfuscate meaning?