[nfb-db] Deafblind Group Communication

[John Lee Clark]

Mussie:

I think you have deeply misunderstood me.

First of all, I never said anything about forcing anyone to learn sign
language.  It is always the other person's choice.  I can't force anyone to
do anything.

What I did say is that learning sign language happens naturally as a part of
building a good relationship.

A good relationship has many elements in it.  It has give and take.  It has
respect.  It has trust.  It has its rituals and shared activities.
Emotional, intellectual, material, and in some cases sexual exchanges are
made.  And there's communication.

My point is that if someone chooses NOT to learn sign language, it is
detrimental to the relationship as a whole.  There are many other ways to
harm the development of a good relationship--such as if your girlfriend
beats you up and chooses not to treat you nice.  Are you going to say,
"Well, I can't force her to treat me well as a precondition to our having a
good relationship"?  No, you wouldn't say that.  Why not?  because a good
relationship ALREADY has to be one in which you are treated nice.  Otherise,
the relationship is not good, no matter how good the sex is, how much money
she has, and how intellectually stimulating your conversations are--her
beating you up is simply not good and therefore the relationship is not as
good as it should be.

Please understand that all the people who learned sign language first and
foremost chose to have a good relationship with me.  The groundwork of the
relationship is always already there even before they become fluent signers.
I never held sign language as a hostage, like "If you don't learn, I'll
never talk with you again."  No.  They just naturally learned sign language
because they wanted to communicate more and better with me, because it is a
part of contributing to a good relationship with me, which also involves
other elements.  We both always work on the communication.  It's not that
person doing all the work.  

It so happens the simple fact is that spoken English is inaccessible to me.
Sign language, on the other hand, is accessible to the other person.  So
sign language is naturally the language of choice--that is, the language of
choice FOR the relationship itself, not for the other person, not for me,
but for the relationship itself.

Now, take my father-in-law.  It's not that he hasn't chosen to learn more
sign language; it's that he has chosen not to have a good relationship.
After all, there are OTHER ways to communicate, such as writing via the
Screen Braille Communicator.  While he can communicate perfectly well, in
terms of using the same language, with my wife's sister, who is hearing,
THEY don't have a great relationship.  They can understand each other
perfectly, but they don't have a good relationship.  Yes, it is easy for my
wife to look at his not signing as a sore point, but there's a larger issue
involved.

Everyone who has not learned sign language in my experience don't learn for
two reasons: One is that they wouldn't have contributed to a good
relationship anyway--meaning that we wouldn't have a good relationship EVEN
if we already used the same language.  All of the others who DO want to make
the relationship work well have learned sign language, but they have also
done all of the OTHER things necessary for their part in the relationship.  

Now, the second reason is that, in some cases, the relationship doesn't
require a high level intimate communication thing.  There are, after all,
all sorts of relationships, from superifical ones to deeper ones.  On one
end of the spectrum might be a cashier at the store.  You two may know
nothing about each other, but you two still have a relationship because you
two exchange money for products and also may show respect and maybe some
friendly gestures.  On the other end of the spectrum would be a relationship
of such intimacy that you two share everything and can almost read each
other's minds.

The store clerk, well, the relationship simply does not demand that we find
a common language so we can have intellectual, emotional, and intimate
conversations.  But the soul mate, well, you two better have a communication
method in place that works smoothly, as Haben has put it--SMOOTHLY.  

Then the relationships in between the two extremes, I guess after a certain
point in this range of types of relationships, it begins to become more and
more necessary a common smooth language is for maintaining a healthy
relationship.  The level of communication my father-in-law has would make
him a cool neighbor, but is quite lacking for his role as my wife's father.


I am sure that your girlfriend's parents and you have a great relationship.
As long as you all can communicate some, and satisfy what you all expect
from your relationship, that's cool.  You may feel there's nothing amiss,
nothing disrespectful.  So that's great, and their learning more sign
language is not really crucial to the health of the relationship.  People
have varying degrees of closeness with the "in laws."  So I will not judge
whether or not what you have with your girlfriend's parents is good or not
as it should be.

But if we are talking about my wife, I would be seriously compromised in the
relationship if she did not know sign language.  The relationship would not
be good.  But since we both want a good relationship, we both have made a
lot of effort to learn many, many things, develop new skills, adapt and
adapt again.  

Anyway, the interesting thing is that I have many, many relationships in
which I think sign language isn't that important but the other person learns
it ANYWAY.  The relationship doesn't really call for that, but they jump
ahead anyway and are eager to learn.  I'm like, "Okay, if you want to."  For
example, a new bar and grill opened recently not far from here.  The first
time I walked in there, at the beginning the waitress didn't know how to
communicate with me.  I did my SBC thing.  But by the end of the evening,
she was already spelling out messages.  The next time, she was a master
fingerspeller and asked me to teach her some signs.  Now she knows many
signs related to the bar and grill and some other stuff.  I recently learned
that the first day I was there, she went to the back, Googled the manual
alphabet, and printed it out and tacked it on the wall.  We could have had a
perfectly good waiteress-customer relationship without her doing any of
that.  But she wanted to.  Please understand that this is quite common, and
not a rarity at all.

So I guess it all boils down to that old saying, "It depends."  Smile.

John