The Silent Garden by Paul W. Ogden

Author:Paul W. Ogden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
Published: 2016-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

Kirk: Signing Exact English

Kirk was in a SEE II-based classroom for nine years before being mainstreamed at the age of thirteen. He was never highly skilled in oral communication and preferred to use the signing, rather than the oral, aspects of SEE II. Once he entered the regular classroom, he relied heavily on interpreters. All his sign language interpreters at school used SEE II, and he didn’t know ASL at all. This he considered a real detriment.

As Kirk grew older, he found SEE II too superficial to be adequately expressive. “All during my years in public school, I had trouble telling whether somebody was joking or being sarcastic,” he told me. “SEE just doesn’t let in facial expressions, and there’s too much detail in the codes. But when I made friends with ASL signers outside of school, I realized that a lot of the signs I was using were imprecise. I really got what they were signing in a way I hadn’t all that time in school.” Kirk, like many native ASL users and fluent ASL professionals, recognized that in ASL, facial expression and body language replace voice intonation, which for a hearing person, carries much of the meaning of a message. SEE II, which does not encompass facial expression—so the argument goes—is incapable of ASL’s subtlety. Also, because SEE II word order corresponds to that of English, it is, by nature, less flexible in structure than ASL. As Kirk became more familiar with ASL, SEE II seemed too rigid by comparison to allow full communication.

Kirk’s fascination with ASL continued to grow. Eventually, he became a teacher of deaf and hard of hearing children, and then an instructor in a community college. The study of language had him in its grip. “I still think about going to graduate school for a Ph.D. in linguistics, and maybe I will someday. But I feel it is my responsibility to teach ASL to deaf and hard of hearing children, so that their communication won’t be hampered and limited the way mine was by SEE.”

Kirk resents having been educated in SEE II. Unlike Alyssa and Ashley, who value the verbal facility they gained through SEE II for showing them the beauty and richness of the English language, Kirk believes that for many years, the rigidity and inexpressiveness of SEE II cut him off from his potential to communicate fully. (Ashley and Alyssa did agree, by the way, that if their oral skills had been limited, as Kirk’s were, they probably would have felt the way he did.) Now Kirk is deeply immersed in the Deaf community, far more so than Alyssa or Ashley ever could be with their limited fluency in ASL.

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