Effective Communication: Cell Phones or AIM?

Helen Keller said, “Blindness cuts me off from things; deafness cuts me off from people.” What do you think about this statement?

In the introduction to his chapter on the ear and auditory system, Blake writes that “Hearing provides the basis for many forms of social communication, particularly speech. Without the ability to hear voices, an individual must struggle heroically to remain in touch with the flow of social discourse” (353). And as noted above, Helen Keller felt that hearing loss was more socially detrimental than vision loss. Why is the sound of speech key to social interaction, and why might it be more so than vision?

First of all, conversation has countless nuances that would disappear once translated into purely visual messages. Word choice would become more limited, inflection and tone and volume would disappear, only one voice could be “heard” at a time. Laughter would seem completely absurd. Anything said by someone out of one’s line of sight would be lost.

One could argue that sight can substitute for hearing. Sign language and visual messages can be used to communicate, and visual cues such as facial expression can provide context for a statement. However, imagine talking to someone in a completely flat tone – over AOL for example. Even when one gives in to the use of emoticons, it is often still hard to tell exactly what the other person feels, especially when those feelings are more complex. A telephone conversation is much easier to understand, where sight of the person is lost and communication depends solely on hearing each other’s voices.

The one example that I can think of in which visual communication expresses sentiment accurately is through stories or books. However, most of us aren’t prize novelists, and (I imagine) find it easier to connect to a person over the telephone than through a written letter.

Therefore, while deaf people may come to use vision resourcefully to communicate with others, I understand the social significance of hearing and sympathize with Keller’s loss of her own.