Reflexivity

What a blast! I was the solo interpreter at a mixed (deaf/hearing) community event and spent most of the time with three ASL-users and one non-signing deaf person, simultaneously encouraging and interpreting their interaction. It’d get tricky when I had to also interpret for hearing people – going back and forth among spoken English, ASL, and mouthed English for lipreading. One can’t work in any kind of formal interpreter role in this setting – lots of facilitating and group management. I probably wouldn’t be so bold in a setting where I didn’t know the people so well, but these are people who LOOK at each other practically every day and never get to converse. So the social scene allowed for connections that never become possible any other way. So I deliberately interpreted all those comments directed at me and got them talking with each other. When I noticed one or another of them watching hearing people, I’d pop over to the hearies and ask if they minded, then I’d interpret and get the hearies and deafies talking with each other. I have to say there was a fair amount of actual interaction! Lots of teasing, too.
Social events are among the hardest to work, I think, because even in same-language groups folks are often awkward and uncomfortable. In a mixed language setting, no one is “in charge” or telling folks what they ought to do or whom they should speak with, so the inevitable drifting into segregated groups occurs usually quite rapidly. The unique demographic tonight was the oral deaf with the signing deaf and their curiousity about each other which is rarely (if ever) bridged. Once they were talking with each other, I was working, and it was much easier to extend that work to include the hearies. I had plenty of the 1:1 stuff that feels so good, but not at the expense of cross-cultural interaction.
Anyway, I laughed A LOT, and that is always a good thing.

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I articulated something today that has been on my mind a lot but I hadn’t quite put into words. I’ve been doing this thing where, while I’m interpreting, I mirror the instructor’s movement in the class – sit when she sits, stand when she stands – and I think it is actually helping the flow of the interaction.
Here’s my idea. When we (interpreters) sit down and establish a position, we become an anchor for the talk. Whatever people are saying – in all its flexibility and inherent movement – is “rigiditized” (yes, I just invented this term!) because it has to come to the interpreter in order to go through us. In other words, our stationary position actually impedes the flow instead of facilitating it. Our training (to be unobtrusive) is counterproductive in this way, because in our effort not to be “too present” we establish a physical presence that requires the communication flow to accommodate to us.
What’s been happening as I move with the instructor now, is that the students are hardly aware of me and yet I’m So there! But they’ve adjusted to my physical movement as part-and-parcel of the communicative movement and it is unremarkable. Instead, they focus on the issue under discussion, and everyone is included. The Deaf student comments freely and openly, the hearing students look at the Deaf student regularly, and the instructor always notices when he wants to say something. In fact, today one student started speaking at the same time that the Deaf student rustled some papers and the hearing student stopped himself instantly, “Am I interrupting?” No, he wasn’t – but he was so sensitive to the fact that he might have been! There is a really quite nice flow going on here.
I think its not only attributable to my physically moving around. (I also move to a different location when the instructor sets up “debates.” Her intention is to get the students interacting with each other, so I move to the “side” opposite whichever “side” the Deaf student is on, so that the focal point is no longer the front of the classroom and the instructor, but the discursive action taking place among the students and the two sides of the debate.) Another factor is that I was highly “visible” by being directive – just once! – in the very beginning of the class. Folks might suggest that I acted without tact, but I reminded the instructor – in front of the students! – that she needed to look at the Deaf student when speaking with them. Not only has she never forgotten since, but all the students also know to look at the Deaf student – and they do! My hypothesis is that my degree of involvement in the beginning (which made my presence so palpably obvious) contributed to some clarity about the communication process which has lead to more inclusive dynamics. And now, even though I am doing my thing in full view/plain sight, I’m not the center of attention because everyone’s clear on what part it is that I am doing.

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“[Informant] Thomas Speigal['s] warning about judging the past from the perspective of the present, about the simultaneous solidification of boundaries and blurring of distinctions between victims and perpetrators” (p. 217).
This quote continues her analysis of the commemoration parade, in a chapter she calls “Dis-membered Border”. This seems (to me, smile) to parallel my relational struggle – we are contesting who was/is “victim” and who was/is “perpetrator.” I see the ways in which both of us did both, AND my “20/20 hindsight” perceives the discursive evidence (what was said and what was not said) in much sharper relief than I heard at the time. I need to learn to hear/interpret differently (or at least with other possibilities in mind) and I think this is the crux of acting into a new discursive future when one recognizes a PM.
Berdahl’s work doesn’t ground the discursive “collision” in any specific microsocial instant of real interaction – she juxtaposes what people said in one context with what they say in another context. This is what I hope to do with the critical discourse analysis paper that I intend to write analysing the key new finding (a discovery!) from the workshop in Alaska. At any rate, I’m also wondering if there is something here that might lend itself to James’ and my history paper. I’ve been struggling with the Churchill/Bush examples and need to work out more clearly why I don’t think they will work….or at least, that they represent a very different strategy/approach than anything we’ve done previously.

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Well, I arrived for the second day of a class, having missed the introductory stuff of the first day because I’d already booked another job when this one came around. Didn’t take but 5 minutes for me to stir things up. It’s a small class, five students, the instructor, two interpreters, and I realized I ought to know people’s names – so I asked right then and there. I also used the same “interruption” to remind the instructor to look at the deaf student (not the interpreter) when addressing him. There was some tension, yes….but everyone now looks at the deaf student when speaking to him, so my action seemed to set a certain normative behavior into motion.
There’s a definite mood of ignoring the interpreters (or at least attempting to do so), but so far clarifications have gone fine and we’ve been free to move around and situate ourselves for the best possible visual angles, so that part is working well. There’s a definite disparity in communication – the hearing students are more participatory, but it might be personality and amount of background in the subject matter moreso than exclusionary communication practices (at least at this point). So far, the deaf student has made comments and interacted when he’s felt he had something to say (at least, as far as I can tell). There have been a few side comments between the deaf student and the interpreters…some of these I interpreted, including his teasing me about my attire. [Background: Yesterday we spoke about the possibility of me using the class as a site for my research and got into a conversation about professional norms and his preferences, what he thinks is important or insignificant. One of the things he brought up was the wearing of solid colors, he explained that it didn't matter to him, that whatever people wore was everyday and his interactions with deaf people wearing wild clothes didn't make a difference so why should it matter with an interpreter? The only situation he thought attire (in terms of simplicity and color) would matter is a large lecture or audience situation in which the interpreter might be further away in distance.] So…today I wore a patterned shirt. He teased me about it and when I responded in kind I also noticed that several students were looking at us. So I said, “Ralph (a pseudonym) is teasing the interpreter about my shirt, he thinks it’s too loud.” The instructor laughed and said, “I like it.” Class went on.

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Doing all these graduations (that most Deaf folk are only marginally interested in) inspired one of my teammates to share this new model of interpreting with me:
Make Stuff Up.
Of course we joke about it with hearing people who compliment us (and have no idea whether we really did “do a good job” or not), and Deaf folk complain about it (aka “fill-in-the-blank interpreting”), and occasionally there is no doubt it really happens….I’d suggest it is a very compelling site for the study of dynamics and discourses about these dynamics. Why do we “make stuff up” instead of asking for clarification? Could be to save face. Could be to avoid Deaf criticism. Could be an appropriate decision about some other communicative issue taking precedence over what was ‘missed’ and filled in for the sake of continuity. Hmmmmm. !

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Graduations are the fingerspelling curse of the world (unless one is into the Rochester Method).
Since the lone deaf audience member that my team and I were there for was only interested in his friend’s actual reception of her diploma, we spent the time talking about cultural differences, whiteness, and science fiction. He recommended Wilbur Smith; I recommended Octavia Butler, particularly the Xenogenesis series. He recommended George R.R. Martin; I recommended Alastair Reynolds.

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I attended the first official meeting of the World Symposium of the Deaf before DeafWay II in DC…two years ago? Hannah and her Oma came for a couple of days too and had a grand time. The three of us had a fun day at the Zoo, too. Anyway, there was a second meeting at the World Congress for the Deaf in Montreal last summer, which I missed. The next event is in South Africa. I’m considering…!

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I talked with a couple of Deaf Swedes while I was at the Critical Link conference. I have to admit they made most of the accommodations – adjusting their signing to fit my level of comprehension. Both of them knew some ASL, but not tons. I did get to experiment with a fair bit of gesturing. My first real cross-cultural sign language encounter!
Here’s a website in Swedish(!) about SSL. It shows some interpreters at work, at near the end of the clip are the fancy new-fangled cellphones that transmit visual imagery of sign clearly enough to be easily understood! I saw one in action, pretty nifty!

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I read all the Day 1 surveys today and started to identify illustrative quotes, figure out patterns, and basically get started on the analysis. I present in my Comparitive Inquiry coure tomorrow, so that is pushing me to at least get started. I’m also mailing back the copies tomorrow – I noticed that only half of the participants wanted copies back – that means something. What? That the process was “enough” and the writing was really “extra” for folks – they would have learned/benefitted as much without the writing? Or that the kinds of questions I asked didn’t generate responses that they were interested in reviewing again? I’m just wondering if there is a way to make it feel more useful to individuals – so its not a matter of doing it “just” for the research process, but also for personal/professional benefit. If any of you want to post a comment explaining your experience of the writing and suggestions for how I could improve on that, I’d be grateful!
Here’s the raw numbers I’m working with:
Day 1

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