Reflexivity

Time and Timing: Preparation is Key

The list of ideas and suggestions offered in the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop (described in yesterday’s entry) ranged from the general:

• emphasize the visual
• always use ASL

to the specific:

• use an FM Loop to mark off the area where sign-to-voice interpretation will be provided
• fine people a dollar for speaking instead of signing
• draw a blue line to mark Signing Zones from Speaking Zones

As I watched, two things came together in my head, one being that we all know what needs to be done. The other was an idea inspired by the way MJ Bienvenu made her points about audism by flipping the subject or object of particular sentences from an identity/logic center based on being “hearing” (not Deaf) to its mirror image presented from a Deaf-centric worldview.

I mentioned laziness concerning the ASL Zone on the third day of the conference, and have to confess that the admission did not serve to improve my commitment to only signing. I appreciated the man in the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop who talked about being naturally drawn to hearing-and-speaking, but I cringed a bit at the guy who used the example of carrying a beverage in one hand and a suitcase in another – as if that is the common instance which Deaf people are concerned by. Not. I rehearsed my reasons for not always signing:

• I was in Europe and away from ASL for nearly a year,
• my ideas are often not clear (even to myself, shhh!) until I try to articulate them,
• spoken English is my native language so I can say what I mean more easily than I can sign what I mean,
• my eyes get tired and my brain shuts down,
• etcetera.

No matter how hard I seek to justify them, these are all just excuses for continuing to exercise privilege. Betty Colonomos mentioned the United States being “such a monolingual country.” I agree with her: insisting on spoken English when Deaf people are present is the cultural celebration of English (only). The ease with which we slide into speech, and the raft of rationales we create to protect our own linguistic comfort are indicators of resistance to equality.

But here’s the rub. While many of us knew (or sensed, or learned along the way) that we ought to be signing, the formal marketing of the conference does not make this requirement clear. So what happens is that people arrive with expectations (conscious and latent) that are either contradicted or fulfilled and then they react based on how well the actual interactions “fit” with those expectations (which they may not have even realized were ‘there’ until something triggers them into awareness). Suddenly, disappointment and disapproval become evident, and people are thrust into the position of needing to process the fact that their expectations have somehow/suddenly come into conflict with others’ expectations. Affinity groups form along ideological lines, such as the culturally Deaf and their Allies “versus” the Hearing people whose comfort level in ASL is markedly less than their comfort level in English and their friends. Other identity-based groups usually also solidify around their respective centers, and solo outliers who don’t perceive any place where they belong either observe, reserving their insights for themselves, or choose not to participate at all.
In contrast with what I’ve observed (and participated in) previously, these divisions arose rather gently at the end of this conference. I consider this a tribute to two temporal factors: one immediate and one developmental. As frustrated as Deaf people were with the less-than-ideal communication environment, the atmosphere did not become hostile. As defensive as Hearing people were about being called out for speaking instead of signing, they also did not resort to blaming or other forms of reactionary guilt. I suggest that this particular climate was created by President Moose and the Board’s leadership in establishing their own principled protocol to communicate in ASL. As leaders, they set and held the bar in the Here-and-Now.

Stages of Group Development

In human interaction, there are always many things happening at the same time. This is the reason why the most popular answer of interpreter-trainers to the questions, “What would you do?” or “What does it mean?” is: “It depends.” The “it” could hinge on which interlocutor’s perspective you take, which outcome you hope to achieve, the significance of affect in the specific utterance, how this situation fits within the shared history of interlocutors, whether the interlocutors will interact again in the future or not, and so on. The point is simply that no communication ever occurs in a vacuum – every utterance and act of silence is situated in space (here or there) and time (past, present, future).
Imagine RID as a group (of the type called an organization) constituted by criteria distinguishing who is a member and who is not. Lou Fant explained how the history of the organization shows two clear phases divided by the moment, when membership shifted from cultural insiders and close friends of the Deaf to a larger population requiring acculturation and accommodation. Looked at historically (over the long term), these two phases correspond, roughly, with the first two stages of group development as identified by U.S. and British social science researchers in the 1940s and ’50s. Much later, simple labels were applied as a shorthand way of referring to patterns of behavior and issues evident in each stage:

• forming (when people come together and begin to get organized as a group), and
• storming (when the various interests and ambitions of members emerge).

It was helpful for me to realize that I entered the profession (in 1993) well into the era of the storm. And MJ’s experience – arriving on the scene a decade earlier – probably was one of the first public markers that the first forming stage was really over: under other circumstances (a different space) and another time, her interventions would not have generated so much passion on either ’side.’ As it was, asking for recognition of ASL and, later, for an end to a particular performance took on iconic status as events around which people’s interests became plain (whether they wanted them to be so apparent or not).

A possibility began dancing in my mind as I’ve sought to synthesize ‘all the things going on during the conference week’: specifically, the clash of generations (older-younger), the effects & potentials of communications technology, and what I know about the next stage of group development: norming.
I wonder if we might actually be ready for a paradigm shift . . .

Popularity: 3% [?]

It was a well-chosen theme for the 24th national conference of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, although one requires knowledge of the organization’s history in order to be able to fully appreciate the dual challenge of embracing change and honoring tradition. Depending upon point-of-view and experiences, any given change can be viewed negatively or positively, and tradition can be variously described. President Cheryl Moose (pictured, watching (”listening”) during the DEAF FRIENDLY workshop) interpreted the motto for us in her speech at the Opening Ceremony, using an ASL sign for “embrace” that indicates taking a thing from outside of yourself and tucking it into the front pocket of your heart. The ASL sign that she preferred for “honor” is the sign usually glossed as CHERISH. The thing is, if you are relatively new to the field or have only attended a few conferences or less, then you have no way to assess what is traditional or what constitutes change.
The history lessons came at the end of the conference, during a workshop by MJ Bienvenu (The Heart of RID), the Closing Ceremony (RID – The Musical), and a strategy session on making the organization – and particularly the next conference – more DEAF-FRIENDLY. These three events exposed longterm (historical) dynamics, which (especially if taken together) drew out current group tensions. Beyond the quantitative indicators of growth, there are qualitative indicators of change – and resistance to change! – showing which tensions are shaping group development now. If one can get some intellectual distance, our own topics of conversation and modes of interacting provide us with the means to measure how much we have grown (individually and collectively) in dealing with them.
Stuck in the Past?
Maria Ruiz-Williams and Amie Seiberlich presented a “musically inspired ASL storytelling” (see Sherry Hicks) performance of Lou Fant’s Silver Threads: a personal look at the first 25 years of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. I do not know if it was by plan or coincidence that MJ Bienvenu’s history from 1983-1991 fit so closely with Fant’s timeframe (1964-1989), but the selections presented by Ruiz-Williams and Seiberlich in their interpretation provide a contextualization that could serve as organizational background in which to understand how and why MJ was so shocked by the organization’s resistance (in 1983) to her initiative requesting official recognition of ASL. She was not born radical, she was made to appear radical by the intransigence of people reluctant to share power.
The change to celebrate is that MJ was personally invited by the President of RID, key board members, and Deaf advisors to deconstruct any lingering audism evident in the organization. MJ delivered with surgical precision, using RID’s official webpages to hold up a mirror to the deep audist roots still evident to anyone who knows how to recognize them. An equivalent would be if, for instance, the Interpreting Directorate at the European Parliament invited advocates for linguistic equality from the new languages to publicly critique inadequacies in the delivery of interpreting services for the institution as a whole. Another change evident this year at RID is the standing ovation MJ received for the information and her courage, returning to Philadelphia (the scene of a media-sensationalized event in the early ’90s concerning interpreted music), and persisting in her educational efforts to engage a large population of very slow learners.
What has not changed is the resistance to being an ASL-based organization. This is a kind of “tradition” that we could probably do without, if us hearing people could come to recognize the many ways we play into the linguistic hegemony of spoken English. What I wonder, though, is the extent to which hearing (non-deaf) resistance to immersion in visual communication is coupled – dynamically – with a kind of Deaf kneejerk reaction against even the hint of music? I agree it was too much to have the Opening Reception and the Closing Ceremony both rely on interpreted song, but – especially for the Closing Ceremony – the point was the history, the music was incidental. I wonder two things about the displays of anger and disappointment that I witnessed among some audience members during the RID Musical performance that were repeated during the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop. “No one stopped it,” one person said, “but they should have.” First, it seems important to ask, how much is this resistance simply generational? Is the older Deaf activist core passing on a prejudice? I realize that Sean Forbes’ capital-D Deaf cred may be questioned, but I would be stunned if anyone doubts Rosa Lee’s. I am not aware of any young Deaf people who were upset by either performance at RID (which doesn’t mean that they weren’t, but I did not witness it). The second hypothesis involves a variation of struggle between the culturally Deaf and the Hard-of-Hearing (which, audiologically, includes both capital-D, culturally Deaf, like children of Deaf parents who learned ASL as their native language, and the audiologically deaf, for whatever reason and from non-deaf as well as deaf origins).
At any rate, the new potentials of communications technology open up so many possibilities that it does seem like it would not beyond conception to generate forms of entertainment that are visually-based and reflective of traditional internal Deaf cultural aesthetics.
RID Conferences as A Professional Development Experience:
Janis Cole and Lewis Merkin facilitated the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop, which I participated in with a mix of pride and dismay. I’m old enough, and been around long enough, to be able to recognize my younger self in some of the new interpreters. Of the more than sixty people who stayed, I recognized somewhat less than a third, a comforting familiarity (we’re still in this together), but because the numbers were skewed to newer/younger members the discussion went that way, too. The beautifully-orchestrated beginning to a short de-briefing of the conference experience transformed quickly into a venue for diagnosis and performance for a specific demographic: white hearing women. As I watched one after another raise their hand to be called upon, I resolved to keep my butt in my chair no matter how inspired I was to say something.
What happened then – because I *did* sit on my idea! – was being perhaps too eager to share it in my own small group. They really wanted to define DEAF-FRIENDLY, but I wanted to jump to envisioning implementation. The experience was frustrating, but I did feel as if I understood what was happening. We were given a list of questions to choose among and discuss, someone immediately asked about defining DEAF-FRIENDLY but I jumped in, asking, “Can I jump to another topic? I have an idea about setting up the next conference….” I shared it, they watched me (we were all signing), and when I finished another member in the group asked, “Why do you think it is that we always talk about students’ learning when the topic is about being DEAF-FRIENDLY?” At the time, I could perceive absolutely no relationship between what she said and what I had said. This did not seem to be a turn in a conversation, not listening, but waiting for the next gap in which to speak.
Hmmm. I observed how the rest of the discussion went in our small group. The next speaker went into a lengthy discussion of how “we always talk about using ASL, making it policy, over and over…” He admitted, being hearing, to having a natural tendency to follow verbal speech, and then shared a litany of personal experiences. I was reminded of a comment Betty Colonomos made at the beginning of the Business Meeting when we were discussing the Standing Rules: that people have no voice out there in the world, but we have one here and people need to use it. So everyone got their chance to speak but we did not actually converse. Why is that? I think (in this case) it had to do with time and timing. Because this event came at the end of the conference, people really needed to debrief. The immediate felt need was to process this experience in relation to the past. People with more practice reflecting on these kinds of dynamics were able to bring their awareness more into the present, but the move to imagining the future was premature. The ground was not prepared either prior to or during the conference, and we did not have enough time in this venue to wade through the individual processing until everyone was at a sufficiently-sated stage of self-disclosure and internal satisfaction to shift, collectively, to action planning.
In the end, I think what we generated as a group in this workshop was a venue for hearing interpreters to vent. One of the first Deaf speakers said, forthrightly, that she felt that most of us “cannot walk and sign at the same time.” Another Deaf person commented on the lack of tolerance most hearing people have (at least in this context) “for missing a little bit once in awhile.” That observation reminded me of my experience with other languages in Europe, which I described in a blogpost at the time as “cotton ’round the brain.” In a discussion following that blog entry, I tried to describe how awareness of perceptible stimuli simply shifts depending on the language one knows – or does not know. The main message I gleaned from the way the DEAF-FRIENDLY discussion unfolded in our small group is that it seems we assume being DEAF-FRIENDLY means being non-deaf/hearing unfriendly: as if the two are

a) extreme opposites and

b) in competition with each other.

I do not believe this needs to be the case.

Popularity: 7% [?]

“Where does he get this?” I heard another workshop participant exclaim after David N. Evans’ flash animation eye blink slide illustrating the natural coordination of the reading mind with the biological moistening mechanisms that lubricate the eyeball.

“Stern and Dunham (1990) … noted task demands affect when one blinks (referred to as blink location). For example, readers tend to place their blinks at ’semantically appropriate places in the text,’ such as the end of a sentence, paragraph, or page” (italics in original, bold added)

Coordination between when (timing) and where (location, the “places”) is the focal point of most of my research. The two examples of eye blinking during reading (English text) and as grammar and prosody during signed utterances (ASL specific) inspire a hypothesis about Mikhael Bakhtin’s original, conceptual use of the term “utterance” in his analyses of discourse in novels and the uptake of the term by researchers of spontaneous spoken language in real (nonfictional) face-to-face interaction. Could Bakhtin have, intuitively or subconsciously, noted a physiological coordination of eye blinks with the spoken production? Or felt his own blinking while he read?

David swears he did not color coordinate his wardrobe with the background, but he did follow Deaf norms and tell us (hundreds of participants) that someone had informed him of the match. That’s a concrete example of the kind of co-incidence of space (place/location) and time (during the moment of his presentation) that we all could learn to follow. (A Facebook group, perhaps, tracking David’s presentation wardrobe until the next RID conference in Atlanta, 2011?!) During and after his workshop, I have been remembering various sources of information about the eyes and vision. For instance, Eye Movement Desensitization and Response, which is a treatment for trauma.
The way I understand EMDR (simply) is, “Memories are linked in networks that contain related thoughts, images, emotions, and sensations.” If I recall the explanations of EMDR when it was first introduced to me, the network of memories can include particular (specific, repeated) eye movement, which can be deliberately altered through practice, disrupting parts of the linkage that re-create the emotions of the trauma. “Learning occurs when new associations are forged with material already stored in memory.” I also thought about a recent lesson from a yoga teacher, about using the opposite side eye ‘to lead’ when turning, because it provides the perceptual system with different input than leading with the same eye on the same side (i.e., when turning to the right, the right eye tends to go there first, leading the rest of the body into that future time and space). By disrupting the habitual routine, we train ourselves to be more open to the unexpected, instead of relying on typical expectations.
Also fresh in mind is my friend Anuj’s recent phd defense on the topic of Risk Perception and Awareness Training for young/new drivers, in which eye gaze is tracked and discussed with students, improving their awareness and thus reducing the risk of accidental death. I was struck by how unaware driver’s are of

1. the significance of looking,
2. of knowing where to look, and
3. being deliberate about what one is looking for.

I frequently witness a similar unconsciousness with hearing (non-deaf) people when they “see” a Deaf person (or an interpreter) signing but do not realize this is language! Most people know it is rude to interrupt another person while they are talking, but this very basic etiquette often vanishes when the mode of communication is visual instead of auditory. Part of the rudeness stems, I suspect, not just from different conceptions of time (the hurry-hurry of hearing life, the long-goodbyes of deaf life) but also from different perceptual experiences of time. You could say that an ASL brain is processing in one dimension, while a spoken English brain is processing in another dimension. When persons used to using only one of the two languages communicate with each other (with or without an interpreter), a phase accommodation must be made – by one or both. When an interpreter is involved, the process of dimensional juggling or phase shifting is made blatantly obvious. There are repeat patterns of the co-incidence of time/timing and space/place during interpretation that compose sites of cultural co-creation, as well as opportunities for repeating oppression, practicing empowerment, and experimenting with cooperation.
Notes:
* re: “Hymnal” for the conference handouts booklet: “I told the interpreters to use that word,” David explained in ASL. The interpreter voiced this into English, adding (deadpan), “it would not have been the word choice the interpreter would otherwise have used.”

Popularity: 2% [?]

Business Meeting, Redux
The process of the RID Business Meeting has a similar feel to many of the sessions held by Members of the European Parliament – this is TRUE BUSINESS, serious slogwork the ramifications of which are potentially huge. We have had no problem reaching and maintaining quorum, although retaining those members who do come to experience it for the first time is a challenge. Ken, one of the stagehands hired from a local company to run the cameras, was entertained by the hour we took to amend the standing rules on the presence of breastfeeding mothers during the Business Meeting. I know – it may seem ludicrous, yet this attention to detail reveals something essential about how we approach our work as interpreters. Inclusivity and acceptance of difference are core values. Diversity, agency, and empowerment permeate the heart of this organization – even when we fail, we recognize the failure on the basis of ideals we are striving to achieve.
Increasing the participation of RID members who do not seem to pay attention to the organization’s business is a major challenge. Ken, as an outsider to our organization, was simply comparing our group theatre to the performances he usually films (and, let me tell you, he indicated we are far from the extremes he has witnessed! Apologies if anyone is disappointed, grin. Ken elaborates: “This can be compared to our union meetings, we have peaks and valleys too!”) An RID member who has attended several conferences but never been to a business meeting before yesterday told me, “I was there for the breastfeeding session; that was enough for me.” She got the impression (it seemed to me) that that particular “session” is “all” that we do. Nothing could be further from the truth.
One needs some endurance to ride this ship, because the destination is distant and the path arduous. But we do make progress; the growth is measurable and substantive. The Certification Maintenance Program was instituted as a policy goal in 1993 and achieved full implementation (including the degree requirement for all new certifications) in 2009. For a service organization experiencing exponential growth in membership, fifteen years is a respectable time frame to grow an integrated infrastructure that can sustain our profession through the coming century. We live in an era of unprecedented contact with peoples who used to occupy only the remotest fringes of awareness. The totality of the earth’s interconnected human systems of commerce and well-being become more apparent every year: events like the financial crisis, evidence of climate change, and ongoing threats of war as a “solution” to local and global challenges of competition and limited resources serve to emphasize the real extent of interdependence.
As a democratic organization, RID represents U.S. style democracy. The major issue during the second half of the business meeting involved ways to increase participation of members in voting (a right often considered as an optional privilege instead of as an obligatory responsibility). The debate was long and involved, with the original motion evolving, through amendments, from the narrow tactic of granting proxies to a broader strategy of investigating the potentials of technology for increasing both accessibility and voting.
Part of what we need is a sexy internal marketing program that inspires interest in the nuts and bolts work of the organization. If members are curious, entertained, or otherwise realize personal/professional benefits of involvement, then they will come. I can imagine, for instance, a short video-commercial featuring Vice-President Robert Balaam’s flirtatious proclamation,

Or, a series of clips showing Dave Calvert, patiently explaining (yet again), “There are no Points of Clarification, only Points of Order,” followed by the member who later introducing her turn with, “I have a point of something.” Or yet again, a series of the numerous instructions about introducing oneself, and apologies for forgetting, including the member who introduced herself as Oprah Winfrey.

Looking Back
I missed the conference in San Francisco (although I was gratified that Dan, Mr Politeness himself, insisted that he personally missed me, haha), but I did blog from San Antonio (July 2005, listed in chronological order):

• at Angela’s table
• Legal Interpreting
• debriefing RID presentation
• impartiality

There have been a few other reminders from the past: presenting at Alaska’s State Conference (where the group relations concept of “self-authorization” was in full swing, and you can tell that I was really excited about it, smile, from the number of preliminary/anticipatory blogposts, in chronological order, 2004, listed here mainly for my benefit, lots of anecdotes about events/experiences during my own interpreting, and for anyone who wants proof that blogging improves with practice):

In the meantime, I met one of the interpreters involved in a situation I wrote up (for the Views – oh if I could but remember!) about an impressive instance of interpreter decision-making, and someone who reminded me blogging about a job (which I do, periodically, obscuring identificatory details): it might have been one of those I’ve written about the interpreter moving instead of sitting still, such as time, sightlines and the concept of visibility.

Popularity: 1% [?]

ASL Zone

As we came down the hall from the elevators to the lobby on the first day of the conference, Cat reminded me: “We’re entering an ASL Zone.” There is always tension at these conferences whether to sign ASL or speak English. The easy (lazy?) choice is English (and I am guilty more often than I care to admit). I was impressed by the announcement that all Board Members will only use ASL, even if addressed in spoken English. Creating a conference environment that is accessible and welcoming to Deaf participants is not only respectful, but I think it is also crucial to distinguishing our field’s unique practice of intercultural communication. We are dealing not only with different languages, but also with different sensory modalities (vision & gesture) than spoken language. Being comfortable in environments where the substance of information is predominately visual, rather than auditory, is absolutely necessary to competence. The sensory experience of watching Bill Moody’s keynote presentation in ASL without voice interpretation is a pleasure hard to describe, as if the ears relax and sound fades to mere background murmur. Carla Mather’s workshop was like this, too…all communication was in ASL except for some of the group work where people chose to use their first language, English, rather than struggle with articulating new and complex concepts in (what is for most) their second language.

The unification factor of ASL is also hard to overemphasize. All signers do not look the same! By percentage, here in the U.S., a large percentage appears Caucasian (a demographic that has been visibly changing over the last several conferences, but ethnicity has never been the common denominator. Women still outnumber men in the profession but there are a lot of guys here. Lesbians compose a significant percentage of our ranks, but sexual orientation is simply another facet of inherent heterogeneity. In the case of the Deaf community, language links people across difference rather than unifying an already established ethnic, religious, or national basis of identification. It is not so much that we know the language, but that when we sign together, we are a community. It is quite beautiful to see hundreds of conversations flashing on hands up close and personal, closing distance across the room or the street, occurring even through windows. Boundaries between ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ diminish when so many people who look so un-alike talk with each other, animated and engaged.
Measured Debate (from B to V (voting)
In addition to the specialized training and continuing education opportunities provided by this conference, the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf holds an extensive Business Meeting. Eight hours are scheduled for the organization’s business this year, which is conducted according to Robert’s Rules of Order. Anyone interested in the sophisticated and expert application of this arcane decision-making system in a contemporary context would enjoy observing the precise use of discussion, points of order and points of information, referrals, and calls to question utilized by organization members. It did take us nearly an hour and a half to work through amendments to the Standing Rules before we began the actual business agenda, but the warm-up served several functional purposes, including shifting the tone from the pedagogical discourse of teaching and learning, acclimating members to the use of the procedures, and introducing some of the cast of characters who contribute to navigating this massive ship through stormy waters.
Being interpreters, we are concerned with getting the language of motions and amendments exactly right, so the debates can go on for quite some time. The patience and tenacity of members to stick with every tiny development, considering the ramifications, evaluating the fit within the pre-established organizational structure, imagining the outcomes of implementation and then presenting reasoned arguments for or against, and utilizing Robert’s Rules to intervene or re-direct, are testimony to deeply-rooted professionalism.
The tenor of debate and discussion was uniform for all motions, so if you were unaware that a power struggle between the Membership and the Board of Directors was being played out you probably would not have identified it. I do not mean to imply that the Board has tried to resist or limit member oversight – in fact, I would say that the evidence shows the Board being responsive. But, the fact is that an unpopular decision was taken without adequate member input. There is separation (imposed by historical factors) between sign language interpreters who work with adults in nearly any setting, and sign language interpreters who work with school-age children in educational settings. Educational interpreters want and need the status of certification and membership in an organization such as RID, but the mechanisms for how to accomplish their inclusion on a basis that legitimizes them without compromising already established professional standards is proving to be a challenge. At any rate, the Membership did successfully vote into place an amendment to the Bylaws limiting the Board’s ability to take action on aspects relating to membership, certification, and testing without involvement and authorization from the members (my paraphrase, not the exact wording).
Demand-Control Schema
I am sure that there is a way to translate that institutional level of intergroup dynamics into the logic of Dean and Pollard’s Demand-Control Schema (DC-S), which is the most pervasive model in the field of sign language interpreting for managing the dilemmas that arise inevitably from the dynamics involved in processes of simultaneous interpretation. After the Business Meeting closed for the day, Eileen Forestal presented this model to Deaf interpreters, giving some fifty workshop participants plenty of opportunity to engage with and consider the effectiveness of the DC-S for their own work in the field. There is a parallel to be drawn, by the way, between Certified Deaf Interpreters and spoken language interpreters working from a relay in the European Parliament. That parallel is one-dimensional, however, as spoken language interpreters in the Parliament are always the last link in the chain (because they work only into one target language, not back and forth between alternating source/target languages), whereas the CDI may be conceived of as “last” but also transforms into the first link in the return chain.