In Her Language
If you're one of the few who haven't seen this, here's Amanada Baggs' film "In My Language". Ms. Baggs is autistic, and has made a short film (with the help of a text-to-speech program that makes her sound like a gentler version of the Radiohead song "Fitter, Happier") about her "language," as it were. This is amazing.
I traffic in language for a living: not just in the job that I do, but basic communication built around words, and around speaking, especially, is how I live my life. I need to be able to speak to people; I need to be able to make jokes; sometimes I just need to be heard and understood. But I've also had thoughts around where I could and could not live or work, for instance, based on my facility with language and I remember meeting a great looking girl, once, who my sister thought I should ask out, and thinking that it would never work, because she didn't speak English too well and would therefore never get me. Oh, as if that would have been the greatest of our problems. But I don't feel good about myself - I don't feel like I can be myself, even, without language, without a commonality of language that connects me to other people.
So what if you "speak" - see, even that word seems wrong - in a language that no one else really understands? This video is - in spite of the filmaker's declaration that it isn't - a window into the way that the autistic mind works (and there is real value in that). But more to the point, it's an argument for communication, an argument against specificity in the definition of personal and inter-personal cognitive connections, and an indication that there is just so much, so much of everything, in other people but we're limitied in our own abilites to see that.
As the director says: "The first part is in my "native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not."
I traffic in language for a living: not just in the job that I do, but basic communication built around words, and around speaking, especially, is how I live my life. I need to be able to speak to people; I need to be able to make jokes; sometimes I just need to be heard and understood. But I've also had thoughts around where I could and could not live or work, for instance, based on my facility with language and I remember meeting a great looking girl, once, who my sister thought I should ask out, and thinking that it would never work, because she didn't speak English too well and would therefore never get me. Oh, as if that would have been the greatest of our problems. But I don't feel good about myself - I don't feel like I can be myself, even, without language, without a commonality of language that connects me to other people.
So what if you "speak" - see, even that word seems wrong - in a language that no one else really understands? This video is - in spite of the filmaker's declaration that it isn't - a window into the way that the autistic mind works (and there is real value in that). But more to the point, it's an argument for communication, an argument against specificity in the definition of personal and inter-personal cognitive connections, and an indication that there is just so much, so much of everything, in other people but we're limitied in our own abilites to see that.
As the director says: "The first part is in my "native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not."
Labels: Communication
1 Comments:
thankyou for introducing me to that film. it has completely blown me away. wow. and again, wow.
I enjoyed your talk at the OLA conference....
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