It was another evening on the job for me. Nothing was out of
the ordinary; the regular paperwork and files to deal with. The biggest part of
my job is interacting with the residents of an apartment complex. I can say
with confidence that every interaction is not the same, even if the situation
and context are similar. Every situation is going to be different because the
content, context and people that make up a situation can never be replicated. The people in each scenario are always
going to guarantee a different interaction. The content, context and people may
even be the same but no interaction can be exactly replicated. With that being
said, the person who walked through the door next would throw me for a loop.
One of our residents, lets call him Mitch, came in to get a
guest parking pass. Normally, this would be a very simple transaction as far as
interpersonal communication is concerned. The procedure for getting a guest
parking pass is very simple. What’s the normal protocol you may ask? We must
look up the residents’ ledger to insure they do not have a bending balance and
then we hand them the parking pass that the resident would fill in with their
name, telephone number, apartment number and sign and date the bottom. Now you
may be wondering what could have made this next interaction so different?
Well, this particular resident is deaf. In my twenty-one
years, I had never met a deaf person. This really throws a wrench into regular
communication. The National Communication Association (NCA, 2002) defines
communication as “the process through which people use messages to generate
meanings within and across contexts, cultures, channels and media” (McCornack,
2010, p. 6). To say the least, my repertoire of knowledge about how to
communicate with the deaf was beyond minimal. I do know that some deaf people
become proficient in reading lips so I hoped with my effort to speak slowly and
pronounce my words clearly that it would be enough to get us through the
interaction. But, I can say that I
was honestly intrigued and I did not just want to get through the interaction.
I wanted to communicate as best as I could and I wanted to make Mitch feel
comfortable. The best thing I knew to do was to smile. I know that whenever I’m
interacting with other residents, I tend to ask them how their day is going or
some small pleasant conversation and at the very least I say either “thank-you”
or “you’re welcome” and “have a good day/night.” I grabbed a piece of paper and
wrote down a question for Mitch. How do you sign “thank-you” and “you’re
welcome.” He signed them both for me. Before he left, he thanked me and I
signed back ‘you’re welcome’.
After Mitch left, I felt that we had just had a rather successful
interaction. My biggest fear would be to accidently make someone feel
ostracized. McCornack (2010) wrote about how Hellen Keller became filled with
an encompassing sense of isolation because she lost the ability to connect with
others. Both Hellen Keller’s emotions and Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
resonated with me. It was not till until I thought about how I would feel if I
lost the ability to use words to express my emotions that I realized just how
significant of a role verbal communication plays in allowing us be our self and
express ourselves as opposed to just being a tool used to communicate with ours.
Father and son. The son is deaf and has gone on to become a professor at Gallaudet University.
Before that evening, I had never considered communication
seriously without the use of ‘words’. So when faced with the challenge of
having to communicate face-to-face without any words, at the risk of sounding
cliché, my eyes were opened.
Have you had a personal experience in which you had to
communicate with someone and there was some kind of barrier (i.e. deaf, blind,
a foreign language)? How did you manage to over come that barrier or were you
not able to?
References:
McCornack,
S. (2010). Reflect and relate: An
introduction to interpersonal
communication
(2nd ed.). Boston. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s
