視障者的語言問題：視障生之言談轉接

Language Problems of the Visually Impaired: Turn-taking Behavior of the Blind Discourse

陳俊仁(Bad'i J. Chen) ； 萬明美(M. Wan) ； 洪振耀(Gabriel Hong)

《聽語會刊》 13期 (1998/06) Pp. 78-88

摘要

The main concern of this study is to investigate how turn-taking behavior of the blind in the vis-a-vis conversational triads is different from that of the sighted. Vision and hearing assumingly play the most essential roles in the human communication system. Provided that either one is impaired, respective deviant language behavior could be observed. Though issues about linguistic competence of the blind have been widely examined since Toth brought to light the phenomenon of verbalism in 1928, aspects in relation to their communicative competence had not been explored until these two decades.
As one of the most easily observed interactive behavior, the aspects of conversational turn-taking are applied to the present study. Turn-taking at talk regularly refers to the constant exchange of the speaker and listener roles in the interactive process. While exchanging speaking turns, interactive participants employ both verbal and nonverbal cues, such as eye gazes, head nods, and the like, to coordinate the exchanging process. Consequently, it is wondered if the blind may develop a distinct turn-taking behavior from that of the sighted. To explore this question, 30 subjects were selected to participate in this study. Of them, 15 subjects are congenitally blind pupils (mean age=15; 5) studying at Taipei Municipal Chi-Ming School for The Blind, while the others are sighted subjects (mean age=14; 2) at Chung Ping Junior High School, located in Taipei country. The blind and sighted groups are further divided into five conversational triads respectively. After that, the conversational process of each triads was video-taped and transcribed for examining their (1) turn-size and the total turn number and utterances, (2) pauses, and (3) overlaps.
The result shows that turn size and to the turn number of the two groups present statistically significant differences by means of 2-tail T test at .05 level. The mean turn size of our blind subjects is larger than that of the sighted; however, the mean total turn number of the blind is smaller than that of the sighted. Despite that the blind as a whole take fewer turns than that of the sighted, the evidences indicate that once they held the floor, they would produce much more utterances in it. Obviously, the absence of vision does influence swift interactive transition among conversationalists.
Finally, this study is expected to help the special education practitioners better understand the interactive behavior of the visually impaired. Meanwhile, it suggests that further investigation in this aspect is urgently needed for the future mainstreaming of the blind pupils in Taiwan.

關鍵字

言談轉接 ； 視覺障礙 ； 回歸主流 ； 溝通能力 ； 非語言要素 ； 定向行動 ； 重疊 ； 停頓 ； 特殊教育 ； 對話分析

並列摘要

The main concern of this study is to investigate how turn-taking behavior of the blind in the vis-a-vis conversational triads is different from that of the sighted. Vision and hearing assumingly play the most essential roles in the human communication system. Provided that either one is impaired, respective deviant language behavior could be observed. Though issues about linguistic competence of the blind have been widely examined since Toth brought to light the phenomenon of verbalism in 1928, aspects in relation to their communicative competence had not been explored until these two decades.
As one of the most easily observed interactive behavior, the aspects of conversational turn-taking are applied to the present study. Turn-taking at talk regularly refers to the constant exchange of the speaker and listener roles in the interactive process. While exchanging speaking turns, interactive participants employ both verbal and nonverbal cues, such as eye gazes, head nods, and the like, to coordinate the exchanging process. Consequently, it is wondered if the blind may develop a distinct turn-taking behavior from that of the sighted. To explore this question, 30 subjects were selected to participate in this study. Of them, 15 subjects are congenitally blind pupils (mean age=15; 5) studying at Taipei Municipal Chi-Ming School for The Blind, while the others are sighted subjects (mean age=14; 2) at Chung Ping Junior High School, located in Taipei country. The blind and sighted groups are further divided into five conversational triads respectively. After that, the conversational process of each triads was video-taped and transcribed for examining their (1) turn-size and the total turn number and utterances, (2) pauses, and (3) overlaps.
The result shows that turn size and to the turn number of the two groups present statistically significant differences by means of 2-tail T test at .05 level. The mean turn size of our blind subjects is larger than that of the sighted; however, the mean total turn number of the blind is smaller than that of the sighted. Despite that the blind as a whole take fewer turns than that of the sighted, the evidences indicate that once they held the floor, they would produce much more utterances in it. Obviously, the absence of vision does influence swift interactive transition among conversationalists.
Finally, this study is expected to help the special education practitioners better understand the interactive behavior of the visually impaired. Meanwhile, it suggests that further investigation in this aspect is urgently needed for the future mainstreaming of the blind pupils in Taiwan.

並列關鍵字

mainstreaming ； turn-taking ； conversational analysis ； pause ； overlap ； nonverbal communication ； special education ； O & M ； communicative competence