Distorted Communicative Situations as a Function of Role Conceptions in Deaf-Hearing Communication

SLS 20 (1978), 219-250 ) Linstok Press, Inc. DISTORTED COMMUNICATIVE SITUATIONS AS A FUNCTION OF ROLE CONCEPTIONS IN DEAF - HEARING COMMUNICATION Jeffrey E. Nash & Anedith Nash The importance of the total context of social interaction for competence in communication has been emphasized in recent literature; e.g. by Cicourel (1974), Cook-Gumperz (1975), Habermas (1970), Meltzer et al. (1975). These and other studies picture communicative acts as enactments grounded in role conceptions that persons interacting perform according to their judgments and sense-making procedural processes (Lyman & Scott 1971). Part of the communication of meaning as a product of social interaction rests upon role conceptions referred to as idealizations by Schutz (1971). These idealizations may be characterized as the organization of knowledge about self and knowledge about other people into typical understandings. These typical understandings, in turn, function to impart meaning to interactive exchanges insofar as they are put to use by those who possess them. In this paper the role conceptions possessed by the deafwith respect to hearing persons with whom they interact on a routine basis-will be characterized and the effect of these will be identified for the purpose of demonstrating situationally disposed instances of distorted communication, as distorted communication is described by Habermas (1970). Sign Language Studies 20 Recent literature on From the works of competence in communication. ethnomethodologists and symbolic interactionists have come several pieces of empirical research leading to the conclusion that social interaction must be conceived as an outcome of the interplay among individually acquired competences. Speier (1970), for instance, analyzes children's conversations to trace their acquisition of "conversational resources", which he refers to-oniefly as a class of referential procedures, after Sacks (1972). He proceeds to describe in general terms how children categorize, select identifications for themselves and others, and how interaction may be characterized as a problem of categorization: The child for the occasion and situation at hand must place himself and others according to the use of such procedures as "a membership categorization device" (Sacks 1972). Speier conceives of the child as an active participant in the cqnstruction of the meaning of an exchange; in short (1970: 202), the child's ways of judging "membershipping" must be dealt with by either an adult or other children in the conversational exchange. Hence, the particular competence possessed and enacted by the child comprises a portion of the backgrounded features that analysts must appreciate in order to understand the meaning of a given conversational exchange. The child's idealizations make up part of the scene of interaction. In a similar vein Denzin (1972) and Cook-Gumperz (1975) move towards a specifization of the nature of childhood communicative competence. Denzin reports that, contrary to the expectations derived from the classical theories of Cooley, Mead, and Piaget, very young children do in fact engage each other in interactional exchanges reflective of relatively high qualities of "taking on the roles of others. " They develop the imaginative capabilities to see themselves as others, and as others see them, much earlier than was previously believed. Whereas the classical symbolic interactionist tended to see interactional competence as an outgrowth of linguistic competence , Denzin contends that social competence must be conceptualized in a different fashion. Children, like adults, must be appreciated as "complex social objects" and as "skilled interactants" (1972:312). It is in this connection that Cook-Gumperz enlightens us on the relation between social and linguistic competence. Nash & Nash She demonstrates that for children language functions as a social principle. She writes, "The thesis of this study is that it is initially language itself that is intrinsically a 'social principle' for the child. With the acquisition of syntax the child for the first and major time becomes aware of the normativeness of the world of others" (1975:143). Her data and her reinterpretation of others' data lead to her assertion that the use of language rests squarely upon a sense of social competence that the child develops slowly and in stages. She then describes the forms of reciprocity thinking that are distinctively child-like: We can describe the child's interpretation of speech as iconographic: that is, the setting, shared history of the participants as well as presently occurring events...