Language and Friendship

[lillibet]

As most of you know, I record textbooks for Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic. This week I was assigned to a textbook I've read parts of in earlier sessions that deals with language deficits and impairments. I was reading the chapter about school-age children and was impressed with how it outlined the specific and complex language tasks that are part of everyday school experience (e.g. quickly switching modalities between listening/speaking/reading/writing, following a story (holding information in memory and retrieving it to make connections with new material) and answering questions about it, participating in class discussions, etc.) and the ways in which even minor language impairment can make these tasks extremely challenging.

One of the issues that it raised was a completely new thought for me, although one that was immediately obvious once raised: people with language impairment have difficulty establishing close peer relationships. I thought about it, about how hard it is to be friends with someone who doesn't understand the conversational turn-taking exchange, who may not respond or respond with entirely irrelevant statements, who may respond to direct questions without adding anything or asking follow-up questions, who may have significant trouble retrieving words in realtime. Of course that would make things difficult.

Then I started thinking about my closest friends and the ways in which our very similar levels of language proficiency play a huge part in our relationship. Being able to depend on them to understand what I say and to explain what they mean and to be willing to do both is key. That led to thinking about the many brilliant and interesting people of my acquaintance who do seem to have the kinds of language deficits under discussion in the book, but whose high intelligence has permitted them to establish coping strategies and excel in other ways, such that their deficit is not perceived, or attributed to personality quirk.

I think this line of thought may be spooling through my general pondering for quite a while. Don't be surprised if I try to talk to you about it.

Comments

[thatwesguy.livejournal.com]

Feel free to talk with me about it!

So, I think that the great tragedy in life is that we are all fundamentally alone. Someone told me that recently. ;-)

Language is the primary way we get around the issue. Those of us who can, that is.

[muffyjo]

I cannot recall whether it was a Ted Talk or an article on NPR or a book I read that talked about the theory about how we (homo sapiens) were able to evolve and survive versus our near-cousins (who were homo somethingelse) which involved the development of the ability to speak. It's far down in the memory cells that half-heimer's has eaten but if I recall, it went something like this: Behaviorally, we (as a species) tend to be much like the gorillas and other monkey clans who maintain small tribes which often communicate with social behaviors of touching. And the spending of time touching becomes part of the bonding exercises that keep the pack together. At some point the pack becomes too large to touch with significant time. This keeps the packs to a certain maximum size. This is where language comes into play. We can talk and communicate further than we touch. By communicating like this, we can reach out to others and our packs can become larger. We create "societies" where we share time and energy in larger tribes.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

This is something that Jay and I have had conversations about. He is able to have and maintain friendships with people who have severe language/comprehension impairments, while I generally am not. We can't pinpoint the mechanisms that allow one person to "get through" and communicate with a language impaired person, while others fail to do so.

[lifecollage.livejournal.com]

who may have significant trouble retrieving words in realtime

This was listed as a specific language deficit? Does it expand to concepts, or is it strictly regarding *word* retrieval? Because, in a moment of cosmic congruence, I was having a conversation with my Beloved on an extremely similar topic just last night.

Needless to say, I'd love to chat with you about this.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Yep, word retrieval problems apparently occur frequently in people with expressive language deficits. The funny thing is that the person I know who has the most problem with this is severely dyslexic, but I had never connected the two traits before.

[starphire.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That's an interesting idea. I had early proficiency with language, but still had difficulty establishing close peer relationships. The challenge for me seems to be maintaining focus on what another person is saying. My brain is so actively conjuring up new thoughts on so many other topics. It's getting harder to do this without complications, though.

There was an interesting interview on NPR last week with a woman who's written a book about a problem she'd been having with memory. Apparently it's becoming a more common complaint, particularly among baby boomers in our increasingly busy multitasked world. The loss of even a little focused attention on what others are saying means bits of information go straight out the window and there is absolutely no recall of it later on. That triggers fears of early onset alzheimer's. But it's something else: it seems the part of the brain which filters out irrelevant information gets confused or something and starts throwing out information indiscriminately.

[muffyjo]

Ooh, this is very interesting to me as I find that stress leads me to the same issue of losing the ability to focus well and therefore losing both recall and context. Any chance you remember which NPR show it was? Or the time of day? I'd be interested in listening to that one.

[starphire.livejournal.com]

I thought I remembered Terry Gross, so I'd say Fresh Air. Must have been late December or early January, but I can't find anything on the NPR website that sounds right. I am trying their search service, maybe something will come up.
Sorry, I only heard about 10 minutes of the interview while I was in the car.

[starphire.livejournal.com]

Hi, sorry this took so long.
It seems I may have the occasional memory problem myself...ahem!

The show was Here and Now, it was not an NPR production but it was on a public radio station. Anyway, here is a link to the show:

http://www.here-now.org/shows/2007/12/20071231_2.asp

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

Feel free to chat with me about it. I was reading at an adult level, and reading more than I talked to people, for most of my critical language acquisition period. It's left me with what I usually think of as language problems (particularly conversational language).

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting. I--and most of my close friends--have similar histories. Have you ever read the notes on geek-speech that were written by a linguist whose sister is a con-goer? (I'd supply a link, but my google-fu is failing me.) One of the things she noticed is that because geeks tend to have a much larger read-vocabulary than spoken-vocabulary, it is not at all uncommon to hear people correct each other's pronunciation without offense being taken (e.g. "It's indeFATigable." "Really?" "Yup." "Oh. So, as I was saying..."). When a volunteer starts at RFB&D there's a list of commonly mispronounced words that they encourage you to look up for yourself (the shocker for me was DESultory, although I was also appalled that the OED's preferred pronunciation is arCHEtypal and that Merriam-Webster accepts nucular for "nuclear").

Anyway, I tend to think of early-reading as being part of my high language proficiency and am curious as to what problems you think it has caused you.

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

the shocker for me was DESultory,

That is a shocker! As for "archetypal," the British pronunciation does indeed stress the second syllable, but my dictionary says the American pronunciation has stress on the first and third syllables. I think I would find it hard to understand what a British speaker was saying, if she were to stress the second syllable.

I mispronounced detritus for years, stressing the second syllable instead of the first (though I see my current dictionary allows either pronunciation). As my Norwegian grandmother used to say, "The stupid English language!"

Your original post reminds me of a line from, I think, George Carlin: "Don't you wish that people who have trouble communicating would just shut up?"

[moria923.livejournal.com]

I find it much easier to interact with people one-on-one than in groups. I suspect that's because, in one-on-one conversations, the two people in question adapt to each other, whereas in a group, I have to try to adapt to the group dynamic, which may be visual as well as verbal. For instance, are there "cues" that I'm missing about when to enter a conversation, or when, or how vehemently, ir's OK to interrupt someone? Or, if I'm the only one who can't seem to get a word in edgewise, is it because the others are exchanging some sort of visual regulating signals that are letting them know when it's OK to come in?

[jostajam.livejournal.com]

That sounds like my kind of text book. Could you please tell me the name and author?

My younger son has just that kind of language impairment. He's being taught conversational turn-taking, how to stay on topic in a conversation, and how to continue a conversation by asking questions of his conversational partner. I wish I had had the kind of intervention he receives, because I had to figure all that out by myself. l have to work at it, and it made my grade school years somewhat miserable.

I still have trouble retrieving words. If I'm tired, I'll come up with something similar, but not quite the same. I'm bilingual too. My brain really breaks if I'm tired and switching between languages. Translation gives me an instant headache. I once spent half an hour trying to explain to the customs official the relationship I had with my Oma. I finally told him after much puzzlement and frustration.... "She is the mother of my mother." I could not come up with either Oma or Grandmother.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

The book is Human Communication Disorders: An Introduction (http://www.amazon.com/Human-Communication-Disorders-Introduction-7th/dp/0205456227), 7th edition, by Noma B. Anderson and George H. Shames. If you'd like a copy and don't mind the editing marks pencilled in it, I can probably score this one when I've finished it.

[jostajam.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I'm happy to pick it up used on Amazon, but it is nice of you to offer!

[lifecollage.livejournal.com]

As I'd prefer to borrow this one than buy it, I'd love to snag it from you. And the editing marks are a feature, rather than a bug, as far as I'm concerned. Thanks!

[lifecollage.livejournal.com]

Heh. Just checked the BPL's records and it appears we have the 1st edition of this, complete with two 33 1/3 records for examples.

That is the *only* edition the BPL owns.

I just love my cutting-edge, ever-current institution.