Page 105 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

90 Reading Between the Signs

with the expression of respect rather than disrespect” (116). The
social framework in which directness demonstrates courtesy is
one of “intimacy and solidarity.” This “way of speaking…challenges
the common assumption that all interaction is grounded in a rule
of considerateness...” (38). In other words, linguists and sociolo-
gists have assumed that face-saving behaviors are a universal way
of expressing politeness. What straight talk in Israeli culture proves
is that the concept of politeness is culturally relative. Sometimes
it is the very absence of “crooked talk” (elaborate ways of saying
or avoiding the truth) that is seen as most polite and respectful.
American Deaf culture also tends to employ a direct mode of
expression. “Hinting and vague talk in an effort to be polite are
inappropriate and even offensive” (Lane 1992, 16). Among them-
selves, Deaf people have no patience for ambiguity. As in Israeli
culture, straight talk is an expression of intimacy and solidarity
among the Deaf. As Tom Holcomb puts it, “It’s the way you would
talk to your siblings.”
Another function of straight talk in both Deaf and Israeli cul-
tures is that it is “a way of providing social information that would
be either unavailable or difficult to accept under less favorable
conditions” (Katriel 39). As many Deaf people have explained to
me, “If other Deaf people don’t tell you the truth, who will?” In
Deaf culture, with the high value placed on sharing information,
straight talk puts one’s thoughts and feelings out on the commu-
nal table, or as Katriel describes it in Israel, “…dugri speech is
seen as facilitating the circulation of social information, especially
in contexts in which this may be problematic: when negative valu-
ations are involved” (39).
Before we discuss a specific type of negative valuation in Deaf
culture, one that hearing Americans have an especially hard time
accepting, let us speculate for a moment about why there exist
these similarities between Deaf and Israeli cultures. One thing
members of Israeli and Deaf cultures have in common is that a
great number of them are from another place: from other cul-
tures all over the world (in the case of Israeli culture) and from the
majority hearing culture (in the case of Deaf culture). Both groups
are or have had the experience of being minorities, aware of their
tenuous position as outsiders to the vast majority of the world,
which leads to a feeling of solidarity within their own society. In
Israel, the almost universal experience of military service rein-
forces that solidarity, tending to homogenize differences in back-

05 MINDESS PMKR 90 10/18/04, 12:00 PM