|
|
|
|
Language in the workplaceThere are many instances of conflicts and misunderstandings arising between deaf and hearing people. Much of the time this is, in effect, a battle between hearingness and deafness (or deafhood). Perhaps the area where we see the conflict at its greatest is in the area of language. It would be going too far to say that the difference between deaf and hearing people lies in their preferred language. However, the language situation shows very clearly how hearing people can affect deaf people’s lives and identities. Language plays an essential role in determining who we are and the way we live our lives. For many centuries, the majority of deaf people will not have had a full language as we know it now. Only in the largest of cities would have had big enough populations of deaf people to allow a development of a deaf community large enough to have a developed sign language. However, these deaf communities did use sign languages. The first hearing people in Britain to get involved in the education of deaf children did so to try to teach them to speak. William Holder and John Wallis both worked in the mid-17th century to teach deaf boys to speak. Clearly the agenda of the hearing people was one of “hearingness”. If you look at Wallis’ suggestion for teaching a deaf child “language” you will see that it is all about teaching the boy English. When the Abbe de L’Epee started his school in France in the mid-18th century, he took the radical and less hearing step of using the language of the “deaf-mutes” living in Paris at the time. However, as a hearing person he felt that their language was not as good as French, so he added vocabulary based on the French morphological system, and added markers for French grammar. In effect, he taught “Signed French”. His primary aim was to teach deaf children enough to be able to take communion (not a hearing agenda item in itself) but the way he felt it could be done was to get the deaf children he taught to be able to translate signs into written French. The importance of signed French was paramount at all times. De L’Epee’s successor, Sicard had a different approach, recognising that Signed French was unworkable, but even he tried to teach sign language using grammatical rules based on spoken languages. The enlightened Thomas Gallaudet, who knew next to nothing about deaf people, set up a deaf school in America using the Signed French that he has seen in Sicard’s school. He did not consider using the sign language that was clearly being used in America at the time. Once again, a hearing person dictated the agenda. The infamous “Congress of Milan” (“The Second Universal Congress To Improve The Lot Of The Blind And The Deaf”) in 1880 decided to educate deaf children in the spoken language as a means to “restore the deaf person to society”. There were 164 delegates there. All were hearing. Through time, hearing people have also tried to introduce different “sign systems”. In order to help deaf people. Such systems include all sorts of versions of signed spoken languages. There is also fingerspelling, Cued Speech and the Paget-Gorman Sign System, all of which were devised or introduced to deaf people by hearing people. We should note, though, that some systems were devised by deaf people, too. There is no reason why someone with a “depressed audiogram” can’t demonstrate hearingness. It doesn’t matter how enlightened we think we are now, there is still an agenda of hearingness in relation to BSL and other sign languages. The recent textbook on sign linguistics was written by two hearing people. It’s published as a book. Hearing people who know nothing about deafness run the publishing house. There is no doubt that the main market for the book is hearing people. Maybe even writing the book was a “hearing” thing to do. Teachers who have deaf children in their class are hearing and use BSL at different levels of skill. Parents who have a deaf child need to choose if they are going to learn BSL. The issue of who controls the language is a difficult one. However, another important area to consider is the range of situations in which BSL in used. How is BSL used in the workplace? What effect does the use of BSL (or English) have on the deaf and hearing staff at work? Researchers at Bristol University, Alys Young and Jennifer Ackerman carried out important research into the use of sign language in the workplace. They recognised that BSL users today are not only service users but are also service providers. Deaf people work in deaf schools and psychiatric units for deaf people, for example. It is easy for hearingness to slip by almost unnoticed when only hearing people provide the service, but the employment of deaf people changes the power structure in the organisation, often threatening the “professional expertise” of the hearing profesionals. The researchers looked at two specialist psychiatric units for deaf people and a school for deaf children. The organisations all faced the problem that the deaf staff has lower grade jobs than the hearing staff and yet the delivery of service would have been much worse without the deaf staff. Nearly 90% of the deaf staff were employed at an unqualified grade and nearly 90% of the hearing staff were employed at qualified grades. The organisations weren’t deliberately keeping out deaf qualified employees, but the deaf people’s education (being in the wrong language, some would argue) has not prepared them for the qualifications. In some areas the hearing world deaf people are actively barred from qualifications on linguistic grounds (eg nursing, because the RCN has said that if the nurse cannot communicate in the patient’s spoken language then they cannot fulfil their professional duties). Despite having no formal qualifications, however, the deaf people had skills and qualities that made them essential service providers.
This led to a tension caused by deaf people having a low status but a high value. The problem was essentially that the “system” did not have a category to put the deaf assistants in. When the system is set up entirely by hearing people, it does not even consider the importance of being able to communicate effectively with deaf people. It allows for skills like designing lesson plans or formulating patient care plans but never mentions the very skills that the deaf people have. As far as the system is concerned the deaf staff can only fulfil the basic washing and cleaning tasks in the list of things to do. One solution to this problem was to make sure the deaf staff received as much in-service training as possible. The psychiatric unit tried to lay emphasis on the competence of the person, not the qualification (apart from times when the law required a person with a certain qualification to be involved). This gave deaf people much more involvement in situations where they could use their skills and allowed hearing people to chance to admit they were not the best person for a job (not always an easy thing to admit!). In order for deaf staff to have full access to information at work the language environment had to be a signing environment. That meant that all hearing staff would have to sign at all times when a deaf person was present or might be present. Young and Ackerman found out that there was a big difference in the way that deaf and hearing people viewed the signing environment. For deaf people the signing environment meant they could be themselves and do their job. Four recurring themes in all the deaf people’s comments emerged.
Importantly, the deaf staff did not focus on the standard of their colleague’s signing. The willingness to sign was more important than the fluency. For the hearing staff, different themes emerged. ·
Signing caused worries about linguistic competence. ·
Hearing people did not feel confident signing. ·
Hearing people sometimes felt that the pressure to
keep signing was sometimes too much. If they
were tired, forgot, got distracted, were under pressure or simply found it hard enough
doing their job in their first language, let alone a new one, they gave up and spoke. A deliberate signing policy, good training and a supportive environment encouraged hearing people to sign. Young and Ackerman created what they considered to be a model of good deaf/hearing working practice. |
|
The course is copyright
Back to
Social Issues Homepage |
