Thruogh Deaf Eyes/ Abel Chapter 7 Essay

The use of Oralism and Sign Language in the Deaf community greatly impacts the Deaf view of reality. The difference in these two methods of communication creates a different view of the world for Deaf people practicing them. These methods direct and can even limit the way Deaf people think. They greatly affect their view of reality.
When it comes to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the idea that a language affects the way a person behaves and interacts with the world, it can be easily applied to Oralism and Sign Language in the Deaf community. Signing impacts a person’s view of the world because it relies on visual interpretation of rather than the interpretation of sounds like in most languages. As said in the documentary “Through Deaf Eyes” this visual form of communication causes Deaf people using it to see it like a movie being played out in front of them as they communicate with others and vise versa. Oralism also has an impact on the Deaf view of reality because it relies more on the ability to produce sound and understand the movement of lips, so it is much less visual. This causes a person to think more in sound and ignore the idea of communication through pictures.
Oralism and Signing also impact the Deaf view of the world by affecting the way in which they comprehend the world and their experiences in it, and both have their values and limitations in doing this. Signing causes a person to become more physically connected with the world around them because their method of communication with that world involves making very physical gestures to convey ideas. This is a strength in one sense because it can create a strong connection and understanding between Deaf people and their world, but it can also be a limitation because it creates a lack of understanding between Deaf people and people who don’t sign in the way each of them view the world. As said in “Through Deaf Eyes” hearing people or Deaf people who practice Oralism have a hard time understanding the way signing works, to them it is very strange. Oralism is the opposite of signing in this case, it does not have as much expression as signing and this can be a limitation because for Deaf people who practice Oralism it can be hard to truly convey emotion through their words without being able to hear different tones of the voice which could clue them on to certain emotions that a the face does not always show. Oralism does not have the gift of emotion that signing does where feelings can be physically expressed. On the other hand, Oralism has great value for Deaf people because it can allow them to communicate with the large majority of their world that is hearing and through this they can connect to their world though it is not the same connection signers make.
In Able’s “Man is the Measure”, Able discusses the idea of a person’s sense of something, which he defines as their understanding of that something. This idea can be applied to the affect of Oralism and Signing on the Deaf view of life by the way in which they understand words or what their “sense” of a word is. Able says that “though meanings require words, they are not identical to words”. What he menas by this is that meanings and words are different because words in language (including Oral and Signing) are just symbols which organize ideas and the way in which they are communicated, but meanings are what is being communicated through this system, they are the purpose behind the ideas being conveyed, hence why Able says that we use “linguistic symbols (words) to organize experience”.