The Subject Always Comes First

Day 147 - 11:37am, 28 May 2019

I listen to Michael Rosen interview the poet Raymond Antrobus on Radio 4. During the programme, he speaks of his journeying between deaf and hearing culture, his blackness and Jamaican heritage, ans from sign language to the written and spoken word. I missed the start of the interview and so it took me a while to appreciate that Antrobus was deaf. He uses two powerful digital hearing aids and has had extensive speech therapy, which enables him to hear some sounds and to talk. Though as he demonstrates, words such as "criticism" are really difficult for him to say because they are all high-pitched sounds, which he cannot hear. 

They discuss sign language and Antrobus describes it as communicating within a box of air, and that box of air in which they speak may be the size of the speaker's body or just in front of their head. Not only does sign language look different from person to person, there are also local dialects within it, where a sign can mean different things across the country. I think I assumed that BSL (British sign language) was just an acted-out clone of English, but Antrobus confirms that the syntax is different and you always have to say the subject first so that you are both clear from the get-go what you are talking about, before you can move onto to what is happening.

I love the immediacy of it. The fact that everything is up front, in clear sight.