Deaf Collectivist Culture and "Checking In"

I could only stay for the first half hour of the talk today, but I was so struck by Teresa Blankmeyer Burke's framing of language, particularly her choice to use English rather than ASL, at the talk's beginning. The detail that most captured my attention was the fact that she checked in with the interpreter about pacing, and with the audience about sound, noting this to be a part of Deaf and signing culture as a whole. I am struck by the ways in which this both reflects a utilitarian need to stay in sync in the context of a presentation as well as an overall concern for the well being and understanding of others in the room. 

This practice reminded me almost instantly of a moment in Dirksen, Bauman, and Murray's exploration of the cultural dimensions of Deaf-Gain in which they explain the practice of ASL speakers, when walking alongside each other, making eye contact and facing each other, both out of a need to communicate visually as well as an overall value of connection and contact between people. They write, "Signers take care of each other, whether strangers or intimate friends, when engaged in peripatetic conversation. Future studies should inquire into expanding the notion of the Deaf walk to larguer cultural ways of being that may have lessons or an increasingly isolated society" (254). In both cases, the checking in of whether everyone was following along with the talk as well as the cultural practice of Deaf walk, a visible effort is made to make sure everyone is doing okay, and one person's well-being is understood as connected to the well being of others.

Moving forward, and the Dirksen's article touches on this, I'd love to keep thinking about the subtle cultural signals sent in non-Deaf culture or non-signing culture that lead us down a more isolationist and less collectivist path, and the cues non-Deaf culture might be able to take from Deaf culture to really check in with each other.