Attitudes, Innuendo, and Regulators: Challenges of Interpretation

Ethnographic Research on the Use of Visually Based Regulators for Teachers and Interpreters

136 : S U S A N M . M A T H E R Ethnographic Research on the Use of Visually Based Regulators for Teachers and Interpreters Susan M. Mather Recent studies (Winston, 2001; Roy, 2000; Ramsey 1997) reported difficulties experienced by students in participating in interpreted activities , despite the fact that the provision of interpreting services is intended to make primarily aurally oriented learning environments accessible and equal for deaf students. Preliminary observations have shown that how interpreters establish gaze settings and where the interpreters are to be positioned directly affect deaf students’ abilities to participate in the classroom activity or answer a question posed by the teacher. First, this paper will address cultural differences between aurally- and visually-oriented-based environments regarding attention-getting, -focusing , and -maintaining, as well as turn-taking systems. The differences in three communicative events will be discussed. Second, the study will examine and compare seating arrangements in the two types of environments and their effects on students’ lines of sight. Finally, the paper will emphasize the importance of the interpreter’s reliance on the speaker’s behavior to achieve the cross-cultural consistency of the interpreter’s and the teacher’s roles. This information can be invaluable in the design of training and orientation for teachers and educational interpreters. LITERATURE REVIEW Turn-Taking Regulators in Signed Discourse The function and usage of eye gaze by teachers in deaf classrooms have received some attention in recent sign language studies (e.g., Mather 1987; Use of Visually Based Regulators : 137 1996; 2000). These studies show that one of the important linguistic functions of the use of eye gaze serves to regulate signed discourse. These studies, as detailed below, identify what eye gaze behaviors must be learned in order to get, focus, and maintain students’ attention efficiently and effectively. Baker (1977) found that signers generally make eye contact only at turn relevance points, when the signer with the floor checks for feedback , backchanneling and essentially offering an opportunity to change speaker/signer turns. For instance, Baker observed that a deaf person who uses a signed language for communication would not start a conversation unless the addressee is looking at the signer. Baker distinguished between two different types of eye gaze (i.e., negative eye gaze and positive eye gaze). She explained that if one wishes to continue to talk and does not want to give the other person the floor to take up the turn, then the person will avert their gaze away from the addressee, or vice versa. That is what Baker called negative eye gaze. Positive eye gaze occurs if both parties look at each other. Baker explained, “A person cannot ‘say’ something and be ‘heard’ if the other person is not watching . . . therefore this constraint makes eye gaze one of the most powerful regulators in sign language” (1977, p. 13). As Labov (1984) pointed out, peripheral systems such as the use of prosody, vocal qualifiers, and gestures often serves as the primary means for expressing social and emotional information. Even though the social or emotional information could be verbalized via grammatical mechanisms such as “I am moderately upset with you,” Labov found that the grammatical mechanism for conveying social and emotional information has lower changes of success and “listeners would not accept these words at their face value” (p. 43). As Labov stated, peripheral systems are considered linguistic features, as are eye gazes. Mather (1995) found that deaf students must be taught how to use their eye gaze effectively for various tasks in school settings. Gumperz (1981) indicated that students who were successful in school were the ones who knew how to use such regulators to secure their place in the classroom. Mehan (1979) suggests that the turn-taking mechanism for classroom discourse is almost exclusively of the “current speaker selects next speaker type”; that is, the teacher normally selects the student who will be next to take a turn, but as soon as the student finishes a turn, the floor automatically returns to the teacher. 138 : S U S A N M . M A T H E R Weiner and Devoe (1974) expanded the roles of regulators. They identified four functional regulator types: initiation, continuation, shift, and termination. Initiation regulators are used by the speaker to start an exchange, and by the addressee to evoke a response from the speaker. Continuation regulators include those used by the speaker to indicate that...