LANGUAGE IN INDIA

LOOK INTO MY EYES: WHAT DO YOU SEE?

M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

1. BLINDNESS IN INDIA

The recent estimates indicate that there are 12 million people in India who suffer from blindness in one form or another. More number of people suffers from blindness in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharastra than in the other parts of India. Twelve million is a little over one percent of the total population of India. The central government as well as the state governments have taken steps to reduce, and if possible, eradicate blindness from the country. But the battle is still raging, and there is no end in sight. Schools for the blind are run in most Indian states, but some states, unfortunately, do not have such schools. People above the age of 65 constitute more than half of the blind population in the developed nations, but in India childhood and congenital blindness is unfortunately very high. A little over 25 percent of the total population of the blind people in the whole world seems to be found in India. This happens in a nation where darshan is a highly valued theological and social concept.

2. FOCUS OF THIS PAPER

In this short paper I would like to discuss the role of sight and eye in Indian religious thought, literature, proverbs, and social values, and to make a study of some of the linguistic characteristics of blindness in Indian language contexts.

3. EYE IN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AND PRACTICES

An excellent study of the role and function of eye in religious practices is presented by Gonda (1969). Gonda's study is text-based and it presents many insights into the practices recorded in the Vedas. It describes the nonverbal communication practices via eye, prescribed in the Vedas and followed by the Brahmin priests. Many of these practices are followed even today in the rituals performed, and have been incorporated in the day-to-day secular social conduct among various Indian communities.

Gonda's analysis covers a large number of texts, not included or treated in any chronological order. The analysis lists the practices, interprets the words, phrases and sentences involved in the framework of contexts such as words, phrases, and sentences. It brings out a long list of activities that revolved around eye and gaze at the religious or ritual realm. A worldview of the ancient man in India as found in the Vedas is the result. Gonda's study finds that, in ancient India, the language of the eyes must have more advanced.

Eye as a communicative medium is referred to in many poems and other works of literary art. The expression of emotion via eye attracts special notice in dramatic works also. At the ritual level, eyes are seen as 'a means of expressing feelings, of imposing silence, will, love or reverence, a means also of participating in the essence and nature of the person or object looked at.' Eye-glance, gaze, and any meaningful contact of the eye-plays some significant role in Vedic religion. The eye, in Vedic religion, plays or serves a variety of purposes and significance.

The act of seeing was regarded as a sign of life. Eye power represented the power of the whole person. Vedic texts reveal that ancient Indians assumed the existence of a relation between the form of the eye and a man's character. A blood-red eye signified evil and was characteristic of angry and wicked people, barbarians, demons, and awesome gods. A wide eye may point to a concentration of vitality and wakefulness. Fixation of eyes was often feared. Also the glances of people who were recognized to have some spiritual power, or mighty men who had the power to affect others injuriously were also feared. Don't we have all these behavioral values even now?

Vedic rites reveal that a conscious, directed look is an obligatory preliminary of mental contact and psychical process. The texts suggest that looking attentively or meaningfully is not only a physical but also a psychical process.

Within Hinduism, darshan (sight) is a very important institution. The darshana of the image of god has the purificatory and sanctifying power in Hindu theology. The Hindu beliefs hold that the darshana of a holy man or an eminent person has the potential to lead one to participate in the high qualities of the exalted personage. Not only highly exalted spiritual person but also the objects belonging to him or associated with him could be objects of worship through the mode of darshana. Even if one does not participate in all the steps of worship or ritual performed in a temple, the darshana of the deity, sight of the deity, is more than adequate to have a salutary effect on the devotee. But darshana is to be restricted to only worthy persons, Thus, in some temples, there is the obligation to place a screen before the image of Vishnu so that unworthy persons may not see the worship or ritual while it is being performed.

Visual restriction is found or applied in several spheres of religion. The men of high rank should not be seen eating or drinking by those in the lower social scale. There is the fear of the evil eye. The eyes of those in the lower social scale would pollute the meal that the persons of high social rank were about to consume or were consuming. The belief system holds that the objects of value should be protected against the envious or inimical looks of the evil-eyed persons.

Looking into a specific direction, looking up, and looking down are common in the Hindu religious rites. Looking into a direction is a means of coming into contact wit the powers residing there. Men believe in turning to gods or other beings to seek help in straitened circumstances. This implies looking at the images or pictures or objects representing gods. To look up is another form of bestowing respect upon those who are being looked upon. Likewise the gods are beseeched by the devotees to look down upon them from above to bestow blessings by their glances. People seeking wealth beseech the goddess Lakshmi to direct a benign look towards them.

4. EYE IN INDIAN LITERATURE

In Indian literature also, eye is given a very prominent place in interpersonal communication and social relationships and values. Literary works consider eye as a carrier and communicator of emotions. Eyes are seen engaged in revealing, hiding, and giving misleading information. They abet and are linked with other body parts in the communication process. In literary works we see a tendency to transfer the role and function of human eye from the physical and earthly interpersonal planes to the plane of high moral values, prescribed in a society, as their ultimate function. Eyes are metaphorically extended to highlight abstract moral values and skills on the one hand, and to earthly objects in terms of their size, shape, and quality, on the other (Thirumalai 1987).

5. EYE IN INDIAN PROVERBS

Proverbs used in Indian languages also reveal the high value attached to eye and communication via eye. For example, the proverbs in Tamil focus at least on ten different aspects:

1. Need for cultivating caution through a diligent use of eye for prediction of the future.
2. Just as one cannot see what is in one's own eyes, people do not find any fault in their own actions.
3. Eye is to be used as a diligent guide and instrument for one's proper mobility in the physical world as well as for proper social conduct.
4. Eye is used to hide information as well as to reveal the hidden feelings and information.
5. Eye may be compared with objects and beings to highlight the importance, the essential nature, and the leadership and guardian qualities of these objects and beings.
6. Eyes reveal anxiety, disappointment, affection, intelligence, valor, and cunning.
7. Pretension may be practiced with or without success through a manipulation of eye.
8. The ever-shifting eye symbolizes the unsteady nature of human nature.
9. Eye may function as a measure of beauty. "Beauty that cannot be contained in eyes" is one way of describing the exquisiteness of objects, events, and individuals.
10. The size and shape of an eye is compared favorably with delicate flowers, stars, fish, etc.
11. Eye reveals jealousy, greed, anxiety and anger. Eyes indeed reveal everything one has in his or her mind (Thirumalai 1987).

6. SIMILAR SENTIMENTS IN ALL INDIAN LANGUAGES

What is most revealing is that similar sentiments and ideas are found in all Indian languages, Indian religious texts, and literary works and in proverbs. These focus on the evil and good aspects of glance, social functions of human look, and the values attached to various types of looks.

With such widespread insistence on values that depend and revolve around eye and sight, it is not surprising that people without sight are traditionally looked down upon, ill treated, and assumed to be somehow inferior in status to the sighted people.

7. DEFINING BLINDNESS

How do we define blindness? There are degrees of blindness. Some are totally insensitive to light. Some can recognize their environment, whether they are in a bright light or in dark. Some may feel or recognize light but cannot say the direction or the source from which the light comes. Some can recognize people by their bearing or gait. Some have blurred vision that may not be useful at all for day-to-day needs. Blindness is measured in terms of a person's ability to perceive the details of persons and objects around him. When a person is able to read the letters in an eye chart that is placed 20 feet away from him he is considered to have a 20/20 vision. If a person can read the letters that are ten times lower in acuity (20/200) he is considered to be legally blind. Another factor that is considered is the field of vision. A person may be able to see straight ahead but not sideways. In this case, he is said to be having problem with the peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is equally important for normal transactions. A person may not be able to see the moving light and may have a blind spot in his vision field. A normal visual field is 180 degrees from side to side. If a person has less than 20 degrees of vision he is considered to be legally blind. Note also that the two eyes may differ in their acuity as well as their vision field.

8. SOME ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING BLINDNESS

The blind people may be categorized into two important groups: congenitally blind, and adventitiously blind. When children are born blind, they are treated as congenitally blind. When someone loses sight for various reasons later on they are called adventitiously blind. The language of the congenitally blind is somewhat different from the language of the adventitiously blind persons. The differences are found in the mental imagery, attitudes towards blindness, and cognitive abilities.

Vitamin A deficiency, occurrence of trachoma (eye infection in common language), and microfilariae introduced into the bloodstream through the bites of infected black flies, etc. are the major causes of adventitious blindness in India.

There is a general belief that the blind people develop a greater or super sensitivity to the environment through hearing and touch because they do not have sight. There is no higher endowment in the blind people through their hearing and touch. But their continued use of auditory and tactile stimuli help them look for such stimuli in a focused manner. It is their practice with auditory and tactile stimuli that helps them to attain greater skills in this area. They make subtle distinctions because of their focused attention to these factors. Another skill often noticed in the blind people is their ability to detect objects several meters away. This obstacle sense can be easily developed in the sighted people also with adequate practice.

The blind people use various cues such as auditory cues, draft of air, warm sunlight, interruption of warm sunlight by a shadow, smell, and vocal cues to detect the objects and to study the environment. The sighted people also use these cues.

9. LINGUISTIC STRATEGIES IN BLINDNESS

9.1. TOUCH, SPEECH, AND HEARING

A blind person does not experience color, but he can use the words that refer to colors. Objects may be described using vision as well as touch, speech, and hearing. Touch and vision come to play an important role in the sighted person's cognitive domains and experience. Some have argued that touch is the primary sense through which the experience of space and spatial arrangement of objects in the space is learned. Others have argued that vision is the primary mode for this.

A blind person learns the colors of objects they come across, from the persons around them. Since they are endowed with the capacity for language use, acquisition of the terms that primarily involve a visual experience is made in association with the concrete objects to which these terms are habitually applied in language. In other words, mastery of such words and their usage depend on two factors: how involved the persons around the blind people are in the lives of the blind, and how rich the environment to which the blind person is exposed.

9.2. THE PROCESSES OF GENERALIZATION

A blind person needs to recognize that the feature, which he cannot visually experience, is associated with a concrete object or a concrete situation, and from this recognition he would generalize the use of the term for wider contexts. The grammatical structure provides him with knowledge of word order and other grammatical functions. He receives the terms such as those referring to colors and uses them in an appropriate word order using grammatical functions in an appropriate manner. On the basis of texture or smell or both, he should even be able to make suitable guesses about the color of an unfamiliar object. Once again, the words that are used in a sentence or phrase would help him in this process of making some guesses. Redness, greenness, yellowness, whiteness, etc. come alive to him through the processes mentioned above. If the people around him are not involved in his journey to decipher what he hears, his language may have words, and he may even use those words, but none of it will have any real meaning for him.

9.3. LIMITATIONS OF TOUCH

There are objects such as mountains that a blind person cannot touch and feel. Clouds, sun, and moon are other examples of this category. The blind person has problems with experiencing the far away objects. Since these objects cannot be touched, the blind person has to process this information with the help of people around him as he is exposed to words relating to these items. Thus, touch, as a sensory modality, is not applied to many things he comes across in his language.

9.4. SHAPE OF OBJECTS

In exploring the world and its objects, the sighted persons often focus on the shape of the objects whereas the blind persons focus more on the object's composition. The sighted persons see the shape of the object, whereas the blind persons explore the object step by step and in this process the composition or the structure of the object is more focused. This difference in approach to the exploration of the world between the sighted and blind persons should guide us in preparing Indian language teaching materials for the blind persons. For example, words that focus on the parts of an object may be learned easier, and so our lessons should focus on the more difficult aspects such as the teaching of the words that deal with shapes and length, etc. There seems to be a hierarchy in perceptual processes in blind persons, and this hierarchy often depends on the fact that what makes an object distinctive to a sighted person may not be the same for the blind person.

9.5. READING BY LISTENING AND READING BY TOUCH

Reading by listening and reading by touch are the most popular methods of reading for the blind people. But these are slower than the reading by viewing adopted by the sighted people. One of the problems that an Indian language teacher faces is the lack of tangible materials such as talking books or materials for reading by listening.

Auditory reading (reading by listening) is not much different from reading by viewing. Blind persons are not at a disadvantage on this score. But there are no special arrangements offered in schools for helping the blind children to read by listening. Since the Indian school system, by and large, does not welcome and integrate the blind children in its mainstream, opportunities for fruitful interaction between the sighted and blind children are lost.

Students of linguistics in India have not shown much interest in learning the intricacies of the Braille system or the embossed letters method of reading. A close co-operation between Indian linguists, speech and hearing specialists, and those who teach, oversee and organize educational programs for the blind is presently needed. The use of Grade I and Grade II Braille systems have helped improve the reading speed of the blind people. However, it must be noted that the use of the Braille system is not widespread. It is also a fact that both these methods do not match up with the reading speed of the sighted people. The reading by listening demands that the blind person focus on the use of the listening mode to read, and the reading by touch focuses on the use of the tactile mode to read. Transfer from one modality to another in order to achieve reading is what is demanded from the blind person. It is possible that in this process the blind person needs to develop a different kind of memory as well. If it is not a different kind of memory, it certainly demands greater memory facility on the part of the blind person when he tries to read by listening or by touch. The contexts in which the words occur in an utterance such as sentence, the words that precede and the words that follow, help a sighted person in many ways to anticipate the utterance. This needs to be replicated in some manner in the books and texts that are prepared for the blind person. Do we accommodate such things in our materials for the blind?

Reading by touch is very important for the blind person in order to develop some independent living skills through labeling. Various clothes may be labeled using the Braille. The objects in and around the house, especially in the kitchen, may be labeled for easy identification. Labeling takes the blind person to a higher level of communication than actually touching, feeling and identifying the objects.

9.6. MENTAL IMAGERY

Language use is closely related to mental imagery. When we learn words in a language we also learn and incorporate a related mental imagery. These imageries may not be always personal, experiential, and concrete visualization of the object or event. The word "waterfalls" or its equivalent in Tamil, "aruvi," brings in my mind's eye an imagery that may not be readily available to a congenitally blind person. An adventitiously blind person may have got this mental imagery, but as he or she grows older in age with blindness, the mental imagery also begins to fade. If a child becomes blind in his or her young age, he may have fewer amounts of mental imageries of the meanings of the words he or she comes across. In fact, researchers say that if a child becomes blind at the age of six, he or she may lack mental imageries in a severe manner. One of the aims of our language teaching for the blind children, then, should be creation of the linguistic and non-linguistic contexts in which the children would be encouraged to develop mental imageries. Since, to a large extent, language structure and the propensity for the acquisition of language use is intact, we should use this available potential to help the child acquire adequate mental imageries. If the mother tongue curriculum is loaded with ancient, medieval and even modern literary pieces that focus more on culture learning and culture preservation, the blind people will have a lot of difficulty in mastering the use of language for functional purposes. Note, however, there may be qualitative difference between the mental imageries of the blind people and the sighted people. It is not necessary that the elements of features the mental imageries of the sighted people should be necessarily taught or incorporated in the mental imageries of the blind people. An analysis of the mental imageries carried by the words used in language may reveal the mental imageries of the sighted people. In the process of teaching the words, we will be able to arrive at a variety of elements in the mental imageries of the blind people that are quite different from those of the sighted people.

10. BLINDNESS AND OTHER IMPAIRMENTS

Blindness and deafness may be found together in many blind people. When this combination takes place in a person, his language is also severely affected. If a person is only blind, he or she has her language more or less intact. On the other hand, those in whom both blindness and deafness are found, verbal linguistic communication becomes a problem. A proper evaluation of the other sensory capacities must be made before language teaching is organized.

11. RAPID AND SLOW DEVELOPMENT OF LANGAUGE

It is noticed that blind children may have rapid development in one area but a slower development in another area. It seems that establishing a correlation between the physical, cognitive, social, and linguistic maturation milestones or processes in blind infants is rather difficult. The blind child cannot establish eye contact with others and this is a great handicap in developing communication skills. The blind child is not able to reciprocate the smiles of his or her parents. The interests and feelings of the blind child cannot be inferred from his or her eyes. The facial expressions of the blind child are also not very informative. The hands and the body language of the blind child carry more information. Hence the parents and caregivers have to be especially sensitive to these signs of body language and should be in a position to respond tactually. Attachment to the parents is very strong but the blind child begins to notice the absence of his or her parent in the room not as early as the sighted child does. Some of the behavioral patters are common between the sighted and blind children (such as the fear of the strangers), but in several other aspects the blind children show a lag.

12. SIZE, SHAPE, AND POSITION

A blind child has problems with the size, shape and position of the objects. And this problem gets reflected in his or her language acquisition. We should be prepared for this. It is not necessary that we should aim at bring the blind child up to speed with the sighted child. What is necessary is to give the child a skill to use language in an adequate manner, not as efficient as the sighted but simply adequate to meet his or her needs. Once again to attain this goal, we should really plan for an enriched environment of language communication and object experience. Taking turns in a conversation is another important area for practice through both linguistic and nonlinguistic cues. Linguistic modeling of the conversations the sighted people engage themselves in should be presented to the blind children on a continual basis. From modeling we should progress towards deliberate instruction when the child is ready for it.

In most cases, words instantaneously begin to identify the object or event they refer to and a mental imagery is created, and then stirred in the subsequent encountering of the same word. This level is not that difficult to achieve with essential words for the day-to-day interaction. However, if such identification alao involves other elements such as the direction, position, etc., the blind children will have difficulty in comprehending the meaning and the implication of the utterance. Because of visual cues a sighted child is able to even make guesses and recognize the meaning of the words that he has not heard before. But the practice for this is rather limited for the blind child.

13. PREPARE A LINGUISTIC PROFILE OF THE BLIND PERSON

It is imperative, then, for us to identify and draw the linguistic profile of the blind person and to prepare materials, which would help make good the identified linguistic deficiency. It is also important for us to prepare a linguistic profile of the interactions of the parents with their children. Many a time, the lag in the blind child's speech development may be related to the characteristics of interactions that the parents have with their blind child. In other words, we should not jump to any conclusion that suggests a deficient biological propensity for language use in blind children. Many investigators have emphasized the role of nonverbal communication in the development of speech in children. Parents must be encouraged to keenly observe and respond to the nonverbal cues of their blind children. They should not only talk to the blind about his or her activities, but they should also draw their child to the wider environment around so that the child develops an interest in the environment and begin to integrate the cues of the environment in his communication. Our language lesson perhaps, should model itself after the radio plays, with a variety of language cues that is informative about the environment. Many poets and novelists also adopt this technique when they narrate a story. They need to bring in the atmosphere of the story to the reader. But we should go beyond this because our focus is not really on the story but it is on the environment itself. Child-centered topics are good but the parents need to use these topics to take the child to a wider environment.

14. DELAYED DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE

A chief characteristic of the language acquisition processes of a blind child is that it is delayed. I do not see any reason why we should try to make good this delay. It is also seen that at the school stage both the sighted and blind children may have the same level of language performance. The initial delay disappears at this stage or even earlier. The initial delay may be due to the inaccessibility of the visual cues that often stimulate linguistic activity in children. Investigators have noted that the blind children acquire the ability to recognize that objects may exist even if they were out of reach (object permanence) later than the sighted children. Often the sighted people prefer size but the blind children may prefer to identify objects with the help of texture that they experience more easily and frequently because of their dependence on tactile cues. We must remember that the blind child's language acquisition is closely linked with his tactile skill development. Looks may be different, but if the tactile stimuli are rather "similar," then the blind child may generalize the objects under exploration as belonging to the same category, etc. In other words, the processes of generalization that we often notice in the sighted child take a different modality route.

15. SOME LINGUISTIC STRUCTURES IN INDIAN LANGAUGE CONTEXTS

I have not made any formal research into the language acquisition processes of blind children. However, during my several visits to the school for the blind in Mysore many years ago, and in schools elsewhere, I did take some notes of my observations of the interactions I had with blind children. These children seemed to be having problems with adverbs and adverbial constructions, postpositions, and gerundivial constructions that may use a variety of tense suffixes. Verbal compounds and metaphors were rather difficult for the blind students I observed. Correct sub-categorization of verbs is slow in the speech of the blind persons. Blind children make repetitive naming of the objects they recognize and come across. This habit is probably borrowed straight from their parents who repeat the names to "help" the child to recognize the objects they refer to in their speech. Don't we all repeat in order for our audience to understand us fully or even correctly? But the blind child may assume that this is the correct style of conversation. Since the blind cannot use sight to hold the attention of his parents, he may try to use both nonverbal and verbal means to hold the attention of the parents. Repetitive naming may play a role in this. Likewise, the blind child may adopt several other verbal strategies for the purpose such as imitation, parroting, repeating what he heard earlier (both in the recent and remote past), and echolalia. In addition to training parents to avoid such habits in their own speech, we should devise materials that help learn the environmental cues without resorting to these patterns of behavior. Because of delay in language acquisition we tend to overload the conversations with basic vocabulary. While basic vocabulary is important, we should find a way to introduce the blind children to the use of other words that make a speech utterance more natural. Ultimately, the blind children do achieve this in course of their growing up. If the materials produced for these children take care of the deficiencies noticed in their own speech as well as the speech addressed to them, acquisition of other skills will be greatly facilitated.

We "look" at things with our hands as well as eyes. When we try to repair a connecting pipe under our kitchen sink, only our hands "look" at the joint, etc. We are not able to see the joint because it is too low and we cannot bend or crawl under the short ceiling. Our hands "see" the joint, or, rather "feel" it and we carry out our repairs. The blind person does things by seeing things with hands. The Indian languages that I know well all have the same word "see" for both the types of "seeing" I described above. The sighted people feel guilty when they use such words that carry the "seeing" meaning!

Language abounds in idioms, metaphors, and phrases and sentences that carry a variety of social implications. And our conversations abound in open-ended questions. This is one area in which the teacher of Indian languages will come to play a very important role in teaching the Indian languages to blind children. Although the investigations have shown that the blind children have a good mastery of the social implications comparable to the sighted children of their age group, soon there seems to develop a gulf between the sighted and the blind adults. At the high school standards one notices such a disparity between the sighted and blind children. Apart from the confused use of pronouns that need to be used appropriately in relation to the social status of the addressee, even when the addressee is a stranger, blind students I talked to showed difficulty in correctly interpreting the metaphors and idioms of the ordinary language. While the development of the language in the blind person reaches the same level as that of the sighted person, the blind person still showed problems with the use of socially appropriate language use, and in correctly comprehending the meaning of social metaphors and idioms. Sarcasm, cynicism, expression of doubt, detecting insincerity in the speech of the persons around, and correctly picking up the linguistic cues for suggestion, etc., and raising open-ended questions cause some problems to the blind person at this age. What we need is a cross-sectional and longitudinal study that would focus on these aspects in Indian language contexts. It is possible that the general social isolation that blind person suffers contributes to such deficient language use. It is possible, I assume, to reduce such lack through appropriate language materials in language teaching classes. For example, all these aspects including the construction of open-ended questions can be incorporated in our language lessons, and with suitable exercises the blind children can be taught the mastery of these elements in a graded manner. I think that a constructive education is absolutely essential in order to bring the blind children up to speed with the sighted children. There is nothing inherently deficient in the linguistic competence of the blind children, unlike we find in some other categories of impaired children.

REFERENCES

Gonda, J. 1969. Eye and Gaze in the Veda. North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam.

Thirumalai, M. S. 1987. Silent Talk: Nonverbal Communication. Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore.

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