Jazzberry
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I went to an HLAA meeting tonight and chatted afterwards with someone fairly new to hearing loss.
One of the things we talked about was how differently Hearing and HH people hear and communicate. For me, life-long HH person, this is based on a lot of speculation. For her, life-long hearing person new to hearing loss, this is something she seems to be very aware of.
I told her my impression was that at many HH meetings (including committee meetings), that it seemed that so much energy is often spent on trying to hear each other, that people tend to speak very plainly to each other. Depending upon the topic, while that can help us understand each other -- it can sometimes lead to people getting more easily upset with each other also. Because it leaves very little room for negotiations or to spare feelings.
She said she got what I was saying. She had noticed at the whole meeting that she had never been with so many people where the conversation was so flat, in both word choice and tone. She said that among hearing people there are many tools besides just the words themselves -- voice tone, jokes, innuendo, dry humor, sarcasm, etc. (Obviously HH people tell each other jokes, but when you're straining to hear you don't often hear it the first time. And the other "tools" work better when you can hear very well also.) *
So, I was left thinking here is another thing that we, the d/HH, give up when we don't get access to sign. Subtle conversation and all the associated social skills that come with learning how to communicate that way while growing up.
* Note: We spent a lot of time talking about this. It's hard to capture the content of the conversation in a short post. This 10-minute video gets into a little bit of what I'm trying to say:
[yt]3-son3EJTrU[/yt]
It has captions that are mostly accurate. It's also shot like an animated whiteboard so that helps clear up the few captioning errors.
One of the things we talked about was how differently Hearing and HH people hear and communicate. For me, life-long HH person, this is based on a lot of speculation. For her, life-long hearing person new to hearing loss, this is something she seems to be very aware of.
I told her my impression was that at many HH meetings (including committee meetings), that it seemed that so much energy is often spent on trying to hear each other, that people tend to speak very plainly to each other. Depending upon the topic, while that can help us understand each other -- it can sometimes lead to people getting more easily upset with each other also. Because it leaves very little room for negotiations or to spare feelings.
She said she got what I was saying. She had noticed at the whole meeting that she had never been with so many people where the conversation was so flat, in both word choice and tone. She said that among hearing people there are many tools besides just the words themselves -- voice tone, jokes, innuendo, dry humor, sarcasm, etc. (Obviously HH people tell each other jokes, but when you're straining to hear you don't often hear it the first time. And the other "tools" work better when you can hear very well also.) *
So, I was left thinking here is another thing that we, the d/HH, give up when we don't get access to sign. Subtle conversation and all the associated social skills that come with learning how to communicate that way while growing up.
* Note: We spent a lot of time talking about this. It's hard to capture the content of the conversation in a short post. This 10-minute video gets into a little bit of what I'm trying to say:
[yt]3-son3EJTrU[/yt]
It has captions that are mostly accurate. It's also shot like an animated whiteboard so that helps clear up the few captioning errors.
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