[nabs-l] Body language and facial expressions

[Ashley Bramlett]

Bridgit,
Very well said! Sighted people in a culture learn body language and facial
expressions
from observing others; our culture emphasises personal space, shaking hands
to greet, and eye contact just as some examples. Blind and low vision people
won’t see it, but if someone works with us, its still
a learned behavior; we just learn in a different way.

I think behaviors such as eye contact and shaking hands  are natural since I
learned early on as did sighted peers.
Once practiced, it became more automatic.
I also like your comment that we should try to extinguish behaviors
associated with mental and cognitive behaviors. Rocking is one of them.


Yet, I think it would be unnatural to learn something now; I could do it,
but it would probably be stiffer and not as natural like if I learned
gestures. What I do though in a presentation is look around the room from
left to right; speakers to do this to get attention and establish themselves
before talking to a group; I do it even though I cannot see a lot,
especially toward the back of the room.

I can also say yes or no with my head because I was taught early on.
But other nonverbals such as winking, shrugging shoulders, and becconing 
with the hand were not taught and I think I'd be a little stiffer and 
unnatural doing them.
Still it would be good to try and learn.

Ashley

-----Original Message----- 
From: Bridgit Pollpeter
Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2011 2:30 PM
To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Subject: [nabs-l] Body language and facial expressions

This is such a dodgy issue. It is a fine balance, and while I understand
we shouldn't use and act in ways completely unnatural to us, we also
should try to follow behavior that's not indicative of other
disabilities associated with mental and cognitive issues.

Most body language and facial expressions are learned behavior. Since
most of the population is sighted, we learn facial expressions and body
language from observing others.

Babies and little children often mimic what they see others doing. As we
grow older, we tend to adopt body and facial expressions natural to us
as individuals, but often associated, whether conscious or unconscious,
through learned behavior.

It stands to reason that if a person is trying to adopt behavior
nonvisually, one would work with another person to adopt, and
understand, certain facial and body expressions. Just because we learn
the behavior, A. K. A. facial expressions and body language, through a
nonvisual medium, does not necessarily imply that the facial and body
expressions a blind person replaces with either more stoic and rigid
expressions or movement, or rocking or inappropriate movements, is
inorganic, or unnatural, to that individual. If you learn, though
nonvisually, a different way to move and express yourself, why does it
have to be unnatural and arbitrary? Like sighted people, we're adopting
behavior, just in a different way; it's learned behavior though learned
in a nonvisual manner.

And as I've stated earlier, I believe asking u to cover, hide, something
like our eyes is equal to bleaching skin or straightening hair or
covering accents/dialects; I don't, however, think that changing certain
behaviors, such as rocking, can be equated to this.

First, all people have physical movements often unique to them as an
individual whether noticeable or not. It's often instinctive and
unconscious. However, some movements are associated with mental,
cognitive or psychological disabilities/concerns. In particular, rocking
is often associated with developmental disabilities or abuse victims.
Certain facial expressions are also associated with developmental
disabilities and other psychological issues. Obviously people who are
blind, while many do have multiple disabilities, don't have
developmental disabilities, but because some of the "blindisms" are also
linked to such disabilities, I don't think it's a problem to expect
people who are blind to correct such behavior. I don't see this similar
to changing, or concealing, body parts or internal attributes associated
with race or ethnicity, or in the case of disabilities that can't be
controlled such as the functioning of eyes or missing limbs.

In a nutshell, which I have problems fitting things into, smile, my
point is that body language and many facial expressions are picked up
through learned behavior. Whether we learn this behavior visually or
nonvisually, it doesn't mean we're just going through the motions-
acting as it were. It's the same process just done nonvisually. Just as
we learn to read and write Braille or use adaptive technology with
computers. We're doing the same things, just in a different way.

I also don't think we can compare certain changes nade , physically or
internally, indicative of race or ethnicity, to correcting social
behavior such as body language or facial expressions either linked to
other disabilities or inappropriate to a given situation.

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/

"History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan

Message: 7
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:26:31 -0700
From: Marc Workman <mworkman.lists at gmail.com>
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Blindness versus other minority groups
Message-ID: <039F2609-C62A-4985-83E1-FBC50C239F70 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Carly wrote,
How can facial expressions and other body language convey meaning if
they are not naturally, ocuring? For this reason I don't see a reason to
sort of put on nonverbal, expression if, behind it there is little,
meaning?

I want to take Carly's point further and suggest that pressuring blind
people to look and act like others is in itself wrong.  I'm not
suggesting there is no value to it, nor am I saying it should never be
done, but it makes me uncomfortable.

The subject of this thread is comparing blindness to other minorities.
I think there's a parallel between pressuring blind people to look and
act like everyone else and things that some minorities used to do and
still do for similar reasons.  In the past, among African Americans,
there existed the practice of skin bleaching and hair straightening for
the purpose of appearing less black and/or more white.  I can't give
evidence to show how common this was, but Malcolm X talked about trying
to remove the kink from his hair himself and finding it a physically and
emotionally painful process.  There are also surgeries performed to give
people of East Asian descent more "white looking" eyes and Jews more
"white looking" noses.  These are just a couple of examples.  Pressuring
minorities to adopt the dominant group's style of dress, gate, diction,
body language, etc also often happens.

I hope we can agree that this is at the very least unfortunate.  There
may be psychological and other explanations for why this occurs, but
feeling pressured to get a nose job or to bleach your skin so that you
look more like one particular group in society is problematic to say the
least.  So what's the difference between these cases and pressuring a
blind person to adopt the behavioural habits, facial expressions, body
language etc of some sighted people?

You might say that we live in a sighted world and so we have to adapt.
There is something to this, but I wonder if it would be equally
acceptable to say we live in a white-dominated world so non-whites have
to adapt.  It may be the case that blind people who don't "look blind"
are more successful and integrate better, and it also may be that
non-whites who look and act white are more successful and integrate
better, but in neither case is it just that the minorities need to
assume the dominant groups characteristics in order to be successful.

What ultimately needs to happen is not that blind people begin to look
and act like sighted people, but that we all become more accepting of
differences that are arbitrary and irrelevant.  Most, if not all, so
called blindisms are irrelevant, and I see no more reason to stamp them
out than I do for trying to eliminate various differences in behaviour
and appearance possessed by other minority groups.

Cheers,


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