Deaf Culture, Tacit Culture & Ethnic Relations

DEAF CULTURE, TACIT CULTURE & ETHNIC RELATIONS Edward T. Hall When invited to address The Deaf Way Conference,' I was more than happy to oblige. While I am not, and could not in any way be considered, knowledgeable in the subtleties and innuendos of Deaf Culture, I have long familiarity with being different and struggling to make myself understood in a low-context word world. However, I accepted for other reasons. They were: (a) because my specialty for over forty years has been in the field of nonverbal communication, and (b) because Deaf culture is a classic case of the strength of nonverbal culture. Viewed from the perspective of those who are not Deaf, everything except the elimination of the auditory channel seems quite the same. Supposedly only the language is different. Yet the culture,as Carol Padden and Tom Humphries 2 so elegantly state, is significantly different. When examined by a specialist in nonverbal culture, these differences become blatant. Our topic will shed new light on the problems faced by other minorities as they interact with each other on the world stage. With each passing year the need for the ethnic groups and minorities of the world to evolve effective means of communication without tearing each other to bits becomes more pressing. There is much to be thankful for in this world, including the insights of such individuals as the great and perceptive ethologist Conrad Lorenz3 and his many contributions to the understanding of 1 The paper here is a version of the address given at The Deaf Way on July 12, 1989. 2 Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture. 1988. Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard Univ Press. 3 King Solomon's Ring. New York: Crowell, 1952. @1989, E.T.Hall & Linstok Press, Inc. See note inside front cover ISSN 0302-1475 animal life, one of which was the concept of imprinting. Imprinting is an innate process that causes the young of some birds, like geese, to follow not only their mother when young but any moving object, including a human being. The imprinted image becomes embedded in a preexisting set of responses. As maturation of the young male goose proceeds, he will choose whoever and whatever he was imprinted with as a gosling as an object of his affections. This does not mean that the maturing goose cannot learn and adapt to changing conditions, only that the imprinted part of his "personality" continues to play a prominent role in his life. Clearly we humans are not geese, nor mice, nor Sitka deer who die off from overcrowding. But there is an important aspect of human culture that is similar in its manifestations, if not a direct spin-off, to a process like imprinting in animals. And the gap between the imprinted part and the conscious, manifest part is causing no end of mischief. What I am leading up to is that there are two states of culture: manifest-prescriptive and personal-tacit 4 (MP & PT). At present the gap separating the two might as well be likened to that between the earth and the moon: A Manifest-Prescriptiveculture is what people talk about and use in the course of the politics of everyday life, their "designs for living," including myths, beliefs, values, dogmas, ideologies, religious beliefs, and any other criteria for getting others to conform. These include: 1 All the things that people think of as external to themselves, that they can verbalize. Also the use of these for prescriptive (laid down rules) purposes. 2 Within the culture where the rules are known and shared, stereotypes about outsiders are common; hence the judgmental character of individuals in the prescriptive mode. 4 The "tacit" dimension of culture is very close to "informal culture" first introduced in the context of formal, informal & technicalculture, in The Silent Language (fn 4). The term comes from Michael Polanyi (The Tacit Dimension, Doubleday, 1966). Polanyi was a physical chemist; so while the patterns he describes are quite similar to mine overall, his approach is that of a hard scientist.The term tacitissomewhat more precise than informal and is used here accordingly. SLS 65 E. T. Hall Deaf Culture &Tacit Culture 3 Imposed or "received" culture, where there...