Page 82 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

Selected Topics in Intercultural Communication 67

a general accusation aimed at all whites or all men and consider
themselves innocent of the charge, will demand some kind of
qualification or apology from the accuser. Blacks, on the other
hand, use the “individual exclusion rule” or, in everyday parlance,
they think, “He ain’t talkin’ to me” and do not react. Whites ob-
serving this may misinterpret blacks’ failure to react defensively
as a tacit admission of guilt. The reverse also holds true: when
blacks see whites “issue a vigorous and defensive denial—the kind
that whites often use when they feel falsely accused—blacks con-
sider this a confirmation of guilt, since they believe that only the
truth would have been able to produce a protest of such intensity”
(92).
It is interesting to note that even though the white style of
asserting one’s innocence is characterized as “vigorous and de-
fensive” compared with the blacks’ way in the passage above, to
the (white) American hearing majority, Deaf rhetorical style could
be seen as even more vehement. Because of the intense facial
expression and strong body movements used in expressing a de-
nial of guilt in ASL, police or court personnel may be all the more
convinced that someone who “doth protest too much” is really
guilty.
What constitutes proof of guilt in Deaf culture? Not surpris-
ingly in such a visual culture, what the eye can see is of prime
significance. For example, this story was related by an interpreter
trainer who is an experienced legal interpreter. She was interpret-
ing for a Deaf man who had been accused of a serious crime.
During the trial, as expert witnesses testified to the large amount
of circumstantial evidence which seemed to connect him to the
crime, the defendant seemed unconcerned. When his lawyer later
took him aside to inform him that his case did not seem hopeful,
he was shocked. And when the lawyer reminded him of the cir-
cumstantial evidence, such as hair samples recovered from the
carpet on which the crime had been committed and microscopic
threads from the victim’s clothing found on the bottom of his
shoe, he exclaimed, “So what? No one saw me do it!”

In this chapter we have examined in depth four major topics
of study in the field of intercultural communication. As a part of
this examination, we have also identified several clear contrasts
between mainstream American culture, which is by and large in-
dividualistic, low context, monochronic, and future oriented, and

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