2010-02-26 23:09![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
melluransa
melluransaHow do you formulate language in your mind without symbolic representation? What if you're blind?
For me this is unthinkable, I "see" words in my head all the time, even as people are speaking real time to me, I am seeing what they say.
Braille is fading out of use, and blind people don't understand the rules of language related to structure and writing it. Of course the meaning and message are what matters, but how do you live basically illiterate? Cognitively, how does your brain develop without any structure, only talking and listening? It has a huge role in cognition, in organizing the world, giving structure and sequence. People who can read think differently from those who can't, and it's even more different for the blind.
The phrase "listening is not literacy" to me strikes two different tones. I am for it and against it. It is true it isn't literacy. So much structure and organizational opportunities are lost. You don't know the difference between a train and to train unless context is there, and that you've learned through experience which is witch. If a blind person learned braille, the differences between words that sound alike would be more tangible; literally, more tangible to their fingers and more easy to represent in their heads.
But the meaning is still there. The article uses the example that there are "children who don’t know ... that “happily ever after” is made up of three separate words." Who cares? The meaning is the same and we treat happily ever after as one unit anyway, like one word. And they lived happilyeverafter.
In the end, this is a very thought provoking subject for me and I've love to get my fingers in this, what fun it would be to research stuff like this! The full article is here. Another interesting one about typical and atypical motor skill development and the role in schools is here, and one on touches as powerful nonverbal language is here.
For me this is unthinkable, I "see" words in my head all the time, even as people are speaking real time to me, I am seeing what they say.
Braille is fading out of use, and blind people don't understand the rules of language related to structure and writing it. Of course the meaning and message are what matters, but how do you live basically illiterate? Cognitively, how does your brain develop without any structure, only talking and listening? It has a huge role in cognition, in organizing the world, giving structure and sequence. People who can read think differently from those who can't, and it's even more different for the blind.
The phrase "listening is not literacy" to me strikes two different tones. I am for it and against it. It is true it isn't literacy. So much structure and organizational opportunities are lost. You don't know the difference between a train and to train unless context is there, and that you've learned through experience which is witch. If a blind person learned braille, the differences between words that sound alike would be more tangible; literally, more tangible to their fingers and more easy to represent in their heads.
But the meaning is still there. The article uses the example that there are "children who don’t know ... that “happily ever after” is made up of three separate words." Who cares? The meaning is the same and we treat happily ever after as one unit anyway, like one word. And they lived happilyeverafter.
In the end, this is a very thought provoking subject for me and I've love to get my fingers in this, what fun it would be to research stuff like this! The full article is here. Another interesting one about typical and atypical motor skill development and the role in schools is here, and one on touches as powerful nonverbal language is here.
