Extra blogging

I really thought that last Monday's class was very good. When Eric came to give a presentation to us it was very informative and I really learned a lot about different uses of language. It caused me to rethink everything I thought I knew about language and look at it from Eric's perspective. For instance, when he gave the story about his early childhood and how his parents didn't know he was deaf until he was about 2 years old it made me realize that there is so much in life that we take for granted. Being able to speak ASL might be considered a good thing for someone who isn't deaf but might be considered an even greater gift for someone who is deaf. In other words, those who are deaf and learn ASL have a way of being recognized in the community. That's not to say that they are underprivileged, but rather as Eric says he had a really hard time with math and it wasn't until he began to learn how to read lips and sign that he really started to feel better about who he was and progress. Luckily, for him, his parents were very encouraging and supportive. For me, and maybe everyone else, I think that his story is capable of relating to our outlook on life. I can't help but think of the film "Mr. Hollands Opus," where there is a music teacher who has a son and wants nothing more than for his son to love music and learn its language. He soon finds out that his son is deaf. He then begins an emotional dismemberment between him and his son because he doesn't care to learn about or get to know his son, he just sees him as being deaf. It's sad to think that people do this but it's true in most cases, in my opinion. Later in the movie Father and son have an argument where Mr. Holland realizes that his son can do more than he thinks and they begin to become better friends. Another interesting example Eric gave was when his parents discussed sending him to the residential school for the deaf, at ST. Josephs school for the Deaf and Dumb Boys. The term Dumb was shocking to Eric witnessed by his remark to his mother, "Mom, Mom, I'm not dumb I promise!" She explained to him "that dumb meant the inability to speak." Interesting how important it is not to judge someone or something based on a first impression, but that is not always easy for people to do, is it?

Specifically, I really liked how he gave examples between ASL and Irish Sign Language. I guess that makes him Bilingual. There are a lot of similar instances in other languages where there is a proper way of speaking and there is a totally off the wall dialect. For example, in Italian the proper way of saying "How are you: Come Stai?" in Siciliano (Dialect, H is silent): "Chi Stu' Ca?" So as we can see there are many different ways of saying the same thing. COOL!!!!