Spoken English is Different than Written English
My good friend, Barry Siebert wrote a comment on my post #77
“Data Flow Rate…important?†and thought maybe you would be interesting in reading it too.
Comment:
I agree with John Egbert about the need for research and documentation about data flow.
Some time ago, I spoke to a group of about 200 people of which about 20 were deaf. I asked the audience to please stand up if you were a hearing person. About 180 hearing people stood up. Then I asked, “How many of you speak exactly the way you write, please remain standing”, and all of them sat down. The deaf were shocked by this revelation.
Then I went on to explain that spoken English was different than written English. Spoken English uses auditory tone changes, inflection changes, pacing changes and even body language movements as people speak to change or emphasize the meaning of their sentences and their words.
ASL does not have a written counter part . So it is decided that the deaf need to learn and read written English. It is at least a commonly shared language to use with hearing people in our own society. When ASL is used, body postures and movements, facial expressions, pacing, spacing, and sizes of the signs also changes the meaning of the sentences and words.
Now if hearing people speak exactly the way they write, they will have great difficulty expressing exactly what they mean. Many hearing people have trouble in school with reading and writing English. Written English is hard to speak and hard to understand if there is no tone changes, inflection changes, body language usage, or pacing. This is the data flow that John Egbert alluded to, hearing people won’t speak the way they write because it slows down the data flow and it slows down and hinders the undertandability of what is being said. There is more thinking on the part of the communicator to convey a message or the receiver to decipher and understand what was said.
Hearing people do not like written English because it requires a more exacting way to express what they want to say. Written English often loses its meaning that can easily be said in spoken English.
When you really think about it, spoke English and written English are actually two different languages with their own context, syntax, and usage. Much like deaf use ASL and written English which are two different languages with their own context, syntax, and usage.
For deaf people, SEE is the written English parallel. When SEE is used, exact signs have to be used and sentence structures have to be used. When SEE is used, the data flow rate changes and slows down, understandability decreases. SEE is not a visual language. It is an attempt to put some auditory discipline in a visual language.
ASL has been built up over generations and generations of our deaf ancestors over the ages. It has been refined and tried, and it still is. ASL is a living language and it changes over time. Despite the fact that there is a general disagreement about SEE, some SEE signs have made it into the ASL signs.
John Egbert talks about computer to computer communication or data flow. Within each computer there are buffers that control the rate by which data is sent to the other computer or the rate that data flow is received.
Human beings are much like that. We all have our own buffers to send and receive communication data flow. All of our buffers whether sending or receiving all have different rates and capacities by which you can understand something or transmit something. If you overwhelm your own sending buffer, your data flow to the other person doesn’t work very well. If you overwhelm your own receiving buffer, data flow in to your own head also doesn’t work all.
Data flow that John Egbert has alluded to is a very powerful concept that not only would impact deaf education but hearing education, business and international communications as well.
So, how can we do this? How do we proceed?
Barry Siebert
This is a great posting.
Comment by Carrie Gellibrand — August 26, 2007 @ 7:02 pm
It is such a RELIEF that my “Triangle of Linguistics” vlog post had a strong evidential basis! Thank you!!!
Yes, I agree!
Comment by Oscar the Observer — August 26, 2007 @ 7:08 pm
Fascinating post!
I have to confirm I know several hearing and hard of hearing people who seem to have no problem with spoken English yet they struggle with written English.
I also wonder if today’s society is less patient with extended “data flow rate” and if that’s making written English even more of a challenge than it ever was.
For example, when I was a kid we had no problem waiting for Mr. Rogers to take off his nerdy sweater and change his shoes! before he started his show. Nowadays, no one has the attention span for that. It’s flash flash scene change scene change groovy graphics pumping rock music scene change flashing lights… focus on any scene for more than two seconds and kids go all ADHD on it.
Don’t know if I’m making any sense but anyway… it’s very clear that spoken English and written English are two separate things. Thank you for clarifying this!
Drolz
Comment by Mark Drolsbaugh — August 26, 2007 @ 8:49 pm
It depends. I mean, if a hearing person was speaking to a group of professionals, most likely the spoken english would resemble written english of that speech. There is such a thing as formal english and informal english writing. Some people do write as they speak when it comes to being informal such as comments on blog or whatever…
Some people do speak as they write and some don’t..probably more so in the latter.
When you throw in a newspaper article or a paper for your thesis or term paper, then, yeah, it’s not gonna be the same as spoken English. Makes sense?
That’s just my observation based on my verbal and email communication on a personal level with my hearing friends.
Comment by C — August 26, 2007 @ 9:03 pm
C,
That would be called speaking ‘literary English’. Yeah, I heard of that expression, yes. However, that does NOT diminish the fact that spoken and written English are two different languages. Also, when professionals speak literary English, they still add pitch, tone, etc as they speak.
Comment by Oscar the Observer — August 26, 2007 @ 9:19 pm
Here’s an excerpt from page 13a of Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, WI) from August 31, 1997:
EXCERPT:
Tom Harbison, of the Wisconsin School for the Deaf [WSD], said that national studies that came out in the late 1980s showed that “total communication” had failed the majority of deaf children. Deaf children taught with the technique were reading at an average second-grade level when they graduated from high school. While WSD was having better success, it decided in 1991 to shift to teaching ASL as its students’ first language.
The Wisconsin school, the Indiana School for the Deaf and about a half dozen others are among the leaders in state schools who are switching to what is called the Bi-Bi curriculum, in which students are taught ASL first, then written English as their second language. (Bi-Bi refers to a bilingual, bicultural approach.)
Harbison, School Superintendent Alex Slappey and a group of WSD parents and teachers recently visited the Learning Center in Massachusetts, which pioneered the Bi-Bi approach and which is having excellent success, Harbison said.
Comment by Brian Riley — August 26, 2007 @ 9:19 pm
This is why many hearing people are reluctant to write on a paper as it’s unnatural compared to speaking. Often ASL users prefer signing over using a paper to write if they had a choice. A great source of information you have provided, John Egbert, and thank you!
Comment by Katherine — August 26, 2007 @ 10:57 pm
Many is the time I sat through technical meetings in my field, not understanding what my coworkers were talking about, because their truncated, jargon-filled speech is widely different from their emails and our technical papers. (Interpreters not being versed in this language is a separate problem.)
This is a serious issue with Deaf technicans and professionals in working with hearing peers. Besides being a data flow issue, it is also an issue of leaving things simply understood and not spoken, assuming that the other person has been discussing the topic for many months in the same truncated language.
This problem has several faces: one is that sign has the best data flow for visually dependent people, next to reading. Another is that for hearing dependent people, data flow in speech has a different characteristic than in sign language and different from the written word; the differences need to be explored and described further.
Comment by Dianrez — August 26, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
So, hearing people are bilingual? They speak English and write English?
Comment by C — August 26, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
I personally would argue, yes. However, I am more than happy to wait for more evidence before I assert that with scholarly authority.
Comment by Oscar the Observer — August 26, 2007 @ 11:18 pm
Hi,
I want to response to C’s comment on formal and informal English. ASL has formal and informal. In formal format, ASL has to follow discourse such as starting with what topic you’re talking about then explain the whole body then ends with topic that you mentioned. As for informal, there is no need to use discourse. It depends on where you are. if you are talking to a friend then it is an informal ASL. if you are presenting in a meeting then you need to use discourses ASL. Technically, English and ASL has the similar way of using formal and informal of expressing the thought
Comment by LoveASL — August 27, 2007 @ 6:43 am
I agree with Mark D. about the attention span on TV nowadays. Whenever I’m flipping channels quickly and see something interesting, I go back for a second look but whatever it was that caught my interest is already gone.
Comment by Tom Willard — August 27, 2007 @ 2:07 pm
#3 Mark Drolsbaugh,
You hit the nail on the head about the spoken language and the written language. Many Americans would learn French from a textbook, but, when they went to France and tried to make a conversation in French with native French speakers, they would be sneered at by French people! “What tongue are you speaking? the French would ask an American! Daddy told me that the best way for a person to learn a foreign language would be to reside with different families in different regions of a country for three years. French from a textbook is entirely different from street French!
Now to Bilingualism — ASL and English:
ASL is a signed language equivalent of Spoken English. Meaning? ASL users are bilingual, using sign language and read and write in English. That is something that the myopic AGBell does not see under his nose.
Comment by Jean Boutcher — August 27, 2007 @ 5:51 pm