TOW #4 - IRB "Seeing Voices"

Written from the hearing perspective of Oliver Sacks,  a neurologist and author who felt the brain was the "most incredible thing in the universe", Seeing Voices is a book about deaf issues, mainly pertaining to language learning. Despite in the opening admitting that he doesn't know any sign language nor has he ever participated in Deaf Culture, Sacks writes an interesting book about his discoveries about learning language and his stories of historical figures. As a self-proclaimed impartial observer, Sacks writes to inform the public about deafness, as it was published in 1989 when the idea of the deaf was not completely understood by the public. He clearly wants people to be less ignorant about the importance of the deaf and how learning about the deaf can change one's perspective. He went to multiple researchers, books, and schools to understand the topic and accurately present the facts. Despite the "cold-hard facts", Sacks frequently presents he also uses anecdotes to appeal to pathos. He tells the tale of David Wright, an Englishman who thought he knew what language sounded like until he was seven. Sacks wrote about how Wright's, who had lost his hearing gradually in early childhood and became stone deaf at the age of seven, vocabulary had been affected. Readers easily are able to connect that hearing and learning go hand-in-hand because the words we constantly hear we tend to incorporate into our own vocabulary. As communication and language is so essential for humans, learning about deaf culture truly changes one's perspective. "We see through our eyes and feel through our fingers because we have been conditioned to do so." Sacks' observations about language are quite profound and important, as he bolsters the argument for sign language being taught to the deaf. He makes very valid and interesting points not in particular to deaf people or culture, but about language learning, and I cannot wait to continue reading.