From: Schaller, Susan. 1995. A Man Without Words. University of California Press.

Forward by Dr. Oliver Sacks

Forward: Sacks raises several questions: What is life like for a languageless man? What would be the quality of his thoughts and feelings? How could he comprehend or be a part of human culture and society? Would it be possible for him, an adult—under ideal conditions—to acquire what he had failed to acquire as a child? Sacks says these are questions very few have asked, even the most thoughtful educators and psychologists. And yet they are questions of the most fundamental sort. He praises Schaller for keeping these questions on the forefront.

Introduction: Susan Schaller, who is neither deaf nor a linguist, fell in love with American Sign Language (ASL) when at age 17 and bored, she wandered into the drama department at California State University at Northridge. Many of the students were signing. The class was called Visual Poetry and Schaller was amazed at the poetic way people were expressing themselves with their eyes, faces, and bodies. Lou Fant, a hearing actor and drama professor, was the instructor. Intrigued, Schaller "skipped" school every Tuesday and Thursday to study with Fant for one year and eventually became conversationally fluent. Upon this recognition, she was asked to become an interpreter.

Chapter 1: The morning after Schaller registered with the local interpreters for the deaf in Los Angeles, she was hired by a community college. When she walked into the classroom, she was taken aback by what she saw: six-foot high partitions dividing the room, instead of rows of chairs, and there was confusion everywhere. People were clustered about aimlessly without any noticeable direction. Some were signing and some were isolated and doing nothing. One man in particular, Idelfonso, was alone and rocking back and forth. His arms were tightly folded against his chest. There was bewilderment and fear in his look. The sheer number of students and their various communicative levels overwhelmed the teacher in the classroom. Schaller immediately started asking questions about Idelfonso since he wouldn’t (or couldn’t) respond to her signing. No one seemed to know much about him, except that he was languageless, Mexican, and around 27 years old. Schaller was frustrated by what she saw and thought this whole situation was ridiculous. Why did they hire a sign-language interpreter, for an all-deaf class with a signing teacher? She thought about not coming back, but she was so interested in Idelfonso and wondered about the trapped intelligence in his brain. How had he managed all these years? How did this man think without language?

Chapter 2: The next day Schaller asked questions about others in the class, but had a particular interest in Idelfonso. She wasn’t sure how she could help him so she asked the teacher for lesson plans or assignments. The teacher said, "There are no books, no materials, no curriculum, no guidelines." What she offered Schaller were those materials she developed herself. The teacher said to "play it by ear" until she could test the students. Schaller focused her attention on Idelfonso, much to the dismay of some of the students, but she was curious how she was going to explore the "alien mind and life of a wordless man." To understand him, she decided she had to walk outside of language because how could her lessons be effective if he had lived for decades without names, and without having a name he had no sense of?

Chapters 3-5: Schaller realized that her first lessons were unabsorbed. Idelfonso was like a mimeograph machine. He would copy her signing movements and motions, but there was no sense that he understood what those movements and motions meant. She was losing patience. Her instructor had mentioned working with numbers. So Schaller took some paper and wrote 1 2 3. She gathered some pennies and as each number was pointed to, she pulled the penny towards her. She also counted 1 2 3 with the other hand in a signing motion. She had her student do the same. He looked as though he was understanding the counting concept; and he eventually mastered numbers 1 through 9 without any problems, except he mixed up numbers 6 and 9.

After the day’s lesson ended, Schaller still wondered how Idelfonso experienced everything in the world—touch, taste, feeling, and observation—in total isolation. The next day, Idelfonso was a bit more relaxed, his rocking subsided some, and he seemed interested in his learning environment. He had taken his numbers lesson home and had practiced writing them, especially delineating the distinctions between 6 and the 9! Schaller wondered why numbers carried meaning for him when signs only confused him? Was counting more intuitive than naming? Interestingly enough, she taught Idelfonso counting, addition, multiplication, and division!

Still, Schaller wanted to communicate using signs. Pointing to and naming objects failed to communicate anything. They had perfect rhythm but no music because he mimicked everything she did. Finally an epiphany—would pictures convey what their miming did not? She started with C-A-T. She pointed to the picture. She then signed C-A-T. Idelfonso inaccurately copied the sign, so she adjusted his fingers; but did he understand what it meant? They practiced sign and picture association for days, hoping that Idelfonso would make an unconscious connection between the cat and the sign. One day he sat up in his chair as if struck by a bolt of lightning! He got it! He understood the connection! Then he started pointing to objects in the classroom, hoping to get some understanding of what they were. Schaller showed him the connection by signing, pointing to objects, and writing down names. For now, grammar could wait.

Idelfonso became an eager student and wanted to branch into other concepts. He pointed to a brown student in class and pointed to himself, then pointed to the vocabulary introduced to him while wearing a question on his face. Schaller was amazed at what he was asking. He wanted to know if the words Schaller gave him were the words his family used. He could not distinguish one language from another. Just how did he come up with the idea of two languages? Later Schaller was informed that Idelfonso probably showed the list to his uncle, and his uncle hadn’t understood them. To help Idelfonso, Schaller wrote the Spanish equivalents to the English words. Idelfonso wept that day. In less than a week, he had learned about ASL, English, and Spanish and this revelation was simply overwhelming. Did this connection and association frighten him?

Schaller wondered about Idelfonso. Was she helping him toward a language or setting him up for an experiment in frustration? She looked for help. Surely someone must have taught a languageless adult before. Most of the people she contacted hadn’t. One linguist at the Salk Institute gave her some suggestions.

Eventually both student and teacher branched off into new concepts, such as descriptive adjectives. At the mention of the color ‘green,’ Idelfonso shut down. Schaller tried teaching verbs, but failed miserably. It seemed that every time a verb (such as sit, stand, write) was demonstrated, Idelfonso took them as an order! He could not grasp the symbols for their independent actions.

Gradually, Idelfonso knew of something beyond languageless, he still didn’t have enough symbols to convey what he thought. He asked a lot of questions, but 98 percent of the message he still mimed. So Schaller tried harder to teach him verbs. But he still understood them as commands. He never seemed to combine a verb with a noun. They apparently weren’t as automatic as names to him. However, his lessons on arithmetic were highly successful; and he could ‘get’ the concept without his teacher using specific and direct language!

The one catch in teaching Idelfonso was that he deferred to Schaller only. Everything she said was an accepted truth. If she couldn’t explain something, the student felt that his question was dumb or that he was too dumb to understand. Schaller hated this reaction; but without words to counter his understanding, she couldn’t address it.

Chapters 6-10: For four months, both teacher and student worked together. Schaller claims they eventually became friends. She said their work "included discovery of self, the other, and possibilities—the stuff of all friendship." They were empowered by each other’s interest.

One day the student showed up with a sign that was not taught to him. He signed, "Dumb me." Where did he pick up that sign? Schaller was very sorry that he learned an insult and used it against himself.

One of Schaller’s former professors at Cal State Northridge (he taught a course on Sociological Aspects of Deafness) visited the center. The professor met Idelfonso and conversed with him in such a natural way. Within five minutes this professor had asked, and Idelfonso had answered, more questions than in one morning’s lesson. Schaller deduced that these two beings saw the world as visualized abstractions and thought with their eyes with a speed and clarity her hearing brain could not approach. Her gestures and facial expressions were translations from her native sound-dependent thinking. Schaller more so than ever realized she had to carry more subtle meaning on her face. Deaf people are visual thinkers.

Schaller realized this truth when she nervously rode home with a deaf driver after getting over the shock that deaf people were allowed to drive. All of a sudden the driver pulled over. Then she heard a siren. The driver had seen and reacted to the ambulance’s red light before she heard it! Deaf people develop visual skills and visual thinking far beyond the capacity of the hearing mind.

Schaller no longer worried about designing lesson plans to meet her student’s needs. Idelfonso demanded his own life lessons. He was full of questions and wanted explanations about a lot of things. So she and student worked on the vocabulary that he needed to survive. Additionally, Schaller kept encouraging Idelfonso to learn phrases and combining signs. One day they revisited the color ‘green.’ This time Schaller picked up bits and pieces of his ‘green story.’ Then she got it. Idelfonso associated the color green with the Border Patrol! The Border Patrol had green uniforms, green cars, and green trailers and busses. Since he was an illegal resident, the Border Patrol must have picked him up when he was a farmworker. Although Idelfonso knew nothing of political boundaries, he understood that the scribbling on a green piece of paper could mean freedom for him! This one sign was so important to him that he could not understand why Schaller failed to comprehend it. The problem was that Schaller was insistent on treating green as only a color, when in reality, there were so many more experiences inherent in the symbol for Idelfonso.

From the ‘green story’ perspective Schaller taught him about borders, boundaries, and cultures within borders and boundaries. She began by drawing rudimentary maps and showing how people interact within those borders. She quotes Luria, from his book, The Man With a Shattered World, "what is distinctly human [is] the ability to use language. I cannot conceive of human life without a language; and therefore, I cannot imagine humanness without language." Yet, Schaller notes, from the first day she met Idelfonso, she never doubted his human nature. Although his attempts to communicate reminded her of a mimicking chimpanzee, she knew he had human intelligence, a human personality, and an awareness of himself as human. She further stated that her lack of understanding does not subtract from Idelfonso’s humanness.

Schaller claims that Idelfonso could relate to friends, family, and nature; but he could not understand group and social relationships, especially those that come with modern technology, politics, and easy mobility. To help her student, Schaller encouraged group and social interactions with other deaf students in class, but Idelfonso resisted. Schaller suspected he feared rejection. Although it was hard getting Idelfonso to participate, he did observe other signs being used. Most of the time, he would bring back at least two new signs for deciphering. Once he brought in the sign ‘monthly’ and wanted an explanation. Since he didn’t yet understand how time was measured, and how clocks worked, the question was put on hold.

Often student and teacher would take lunches together away from the center as a way to expose Idelfonso to social interactivity. One day they purchased burritos and when Schaller pulled out her money, Idelfonso signed his first complete ASL sentence: "No, burrito buy I." She signed for him to put the money back in his pocket for "later" but realized he didn’t understand temporals. So Idelfonso bought lunch that day!

Chapters 11-17: Schaller added prepositions to the linguistic syntax and other forms of speech. She eventually re-introduced the concept of time in spite of her doubts. After a few lessons referencing time, Schaller gave Idelfonso his first ever birthday party to help him associate and grasp the time concept. His birthday present was a watch!

In hindsight, Schaller realized that Idelfonso shared none of our language categories, whether parts of speech or divisions of time. His inability to understand the lessons on verbs and nouns and now on time did not derive from ignorance but from an entirely different view of reality. She claims Benjamin Whorf, one of the first modern linguists, asserts that language creates illusions and false categories, including our idea of action words. Thus she realized that the division between nouns and verbs was not as obvious as once thought.

Idelfonso eventually reached the level of signing one third of his narratives. The rest of his communiqué was through miming. The incredible thing is that this learning took place over a span of four months! The ending is intriguing…

From: Schaller, Susan. 1995. A Man Without Words. University of California Press.

Forward by Dr. Oliver Sacks

"At this level of sheer pleasure in reading, A Man Without Words is as gripping as a novel, eliciting great sympathy for both protagonist and author, and telling a story that is genuinely touching. The question that drives it—what is it like to be without language?—should be of interest to any reflexive person, and it is one of the great scientific questions of all times." – Steven Pinker, author of The Language Instinct

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