Page 157 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

142 Reading Between the Signs

less powerful position who is obliged to respond…” (119–20). The
interviewer uses his or her power to start the interaction, intro-
duce new topics, change the topic, and terminate the conversa-
tion. However, “miscommunication and negative evaluation of-
ten arise when participants do not share the same cultural and
linguistic background...” (124). The authors stress the importance
of discovering underlying patterns of expected responses. One of
the most important challenges for the interviewee is that the in-
terview questions
are mostly indirect, relying upon the interviewee’s abil-
ity to infer the type of answer wanted…. The inter-
viewee’s ability to go beyond the surface, pick the rel-
evant cues, infer the intended meaning, and effectively
negotiate an acceptable relationship between questions
and responses is an important measure of his/her suc-
cess. (127)
In the job interview scenarios described earlier in this chap-
ter, we saw that Deaf applicants, not versed in the unwritten rules
of the American job interview game, repeatedly violated the
interviewer’s cultural expectations, thereby not presenting them-
selves to their best advantage, though they may have been emi-
nently qualified for the position. I do not mean to imply, however,
that Deaf people never interview well. Of course they do, and
they also get hired for many jobs in the hearing world regardless
of the fact that they may follow a different set of cultural rules. It
is true, however, that Deaf people as a group are underemployed
(Schein and Delk 1974; Crammate 1987; Jacobs 1989). I would
posit that this results not only from discrimination, fear, and hear-
ing people’s lack of information but also from a lack of knowledge
on the part of some Deaf people about the cultural set of the job
interview. One place to alleviate this lack of information would be
in the residential school, where ideally after studying their own
Deaf culture in depth, a class in hearing culture, as a contrast
culture, should be offered, including a unit on “Cultural Assump-
tions in a Hearing American Job Interview.” I am pleased to report
that this idea seems to be catching on in several schools. Let us
hope that this enlightened trend will continue.

06 MINDESS PMKR 142 10/18/04, 12:01 PM