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3. Handicapped?
- Gallaudet University Press
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16 3 Handicapped? The farcical marriage ended and Wendy moved out, leaving Dad to sort out the numerous problems at the Strathfieldsaye property, including the selling of animals. While relieved the abusive ex-stepmother was out of my life, I was hurting for my father who was faced with a new set of insecurities and problems, including a divorce, a hefty debt from the hobby farm, and the need to find a new house. Dad eventually found a house of German design in a Bendigo suburb. He pulled down the ugly wooden backyard fence, which opened the back of the house to the adjacent bushland. The bushland was pockmarked with remnants of quartz and gold diggings from the area’s mining past. Sturdy shrubs blanketed the arid land, and young eucalyptus, ironbark, and wattle trees were beginning to strengthen in the clay soil. The ten-minute morning drive to school took my father and me along the route of one of Bendigo’s tourist attractions—the talking tram. The track began at the Joss House—a red temple established by Chinese gold prospectors—and then veered past Lake Weeroona whose idyllic surroundings are popular with rowers, walkers, and cyclists. The rail snaked through to the city’s main thoroughfare, Pall Mall, which was designed in the 1850s by the city’s founders to showcase for visitors the visual splendor of the Federation-style architecture of the post office, law courts, and Shamrock Hotel. Alexandra Fountain marked the center of the city. From there, the tramway led to the Central Deborah Goldmine, near my school. For the first few years at the new house, I had my head down for most of that trip. Dad would listen to me read out of a “special book” designed purposely for practicing the pronunciation of words. Because I didn’t hear speech with the clarity that my hearing peers did, I had to manufacture a voice and speech patterns through constant monitoring. Dad corrected me as he negotiated the early morning traffic, prompting me to make the sh sound in sheep or the ch sound in cheap. A hearing person is spared the irritating process of having to learn and re-learn how to pronounce words, especially words starting with ch and st and ending with s, because they are invisible to the speechreader’s eye and dif- ficult to hear. The word book would be an example of speech training used for late-deafened children such as myself. As a child who was cut off from most auditory stimuli, I must have learned to read even the faintest visual evidence. I learned to understand people through speechreading; however speechreading is not a natural response to deafness, as is commonly assumed, nor is it exclusive to deaf people. Hearing people operating in noisy environments also learn to “hear” their peers by developing the faculty for reading expression. Like many deafened people, I prefer to talk face-to-face, as the triple task of speechreading, hearing, and speaking is so much easier. Whatever words I hear by means of my hearing aids provide further clues and help me understand the physical messages conveyed by the talker. The speechreader’s central focus is on the mouth because lips frame words. Vowels and consonants are blown up like photographic enlargements , and every syllable reinforced by the silent vocabulary of the body can be absorbed through peripheral vision. Physical bearing, expression, a look, a play of the eye, and the movement of the hands all may qualify the emotional content of the spoken dialogue. This is body language. Gesture and expression can elaborate and qualify the speaker’s message. One word or characteristic phrase may help structure whole sentences. A conversation may revolve on a pivot, and speechreading is very much about knowing that key topic. Concentration is crucial, as is the ability to be a master at correctly guessing. I found that these abilities improved with experience. Speechreading is a multilayered intellectual exercise. It requires the ability to read people’s emotions and make quick real-time decisions. Focusing on the lips is but a part of understanding what is being said. Speechreaders must manipulate the conversation to suit the best means of acquiring audio and visual clues. They must be nimble code switchers, running quickly through the lists of probabilities and speedily piecing together snatches of spoken dialogue with visual clues. The alternatives are so many that it may take a few seconds for a...