Communication is the word that has been receiving the most attention these days. The popularity of social media has been rising more than ever since its advent, and diverse communication projects, such as TV reality shows about solving conflicts through a deep conversation, have been frequently held, gaining much support. It is hard to deny the fact that most of the troubles or conflicts that people go through arise from the lack of communication—misunderstanding, unfulfilling vows, and libel are just a few examples. Communication is without doubt important, for it is a means to deliver one’s feelings, thoughts, and intentions.

 

 

 

There exist many ways to communicate, but the most fundamental and basic of all is through a language. There is no direct evidence showing when and how language first appeared, but historians assume it was about 50 million years ago. They claim so because they believe that the sophisticated stoneware of early humans could not have been created in the same way without some forms of communication between the people. Also, as anthropoids came to walk erect, they did not have to carry objects with their mouths like other animals, thus leading them to have a mouth structure suitable for talking.

 

Language itself is a broad concept—it can be roughly divided into two categories. The first is what people mostly think of—verbal language. Meanwhile, the other category, consisting of nonverbal language such as written inscriptions, eye contact, facial expressions, and body language, was previously taken for granted. Nowadays, however, as presentation and speech skills have become important factors in expressing oneself, this category has been receiving more attention.

 

To those with speech disorders, though, nonverbal language has a bigger meaning. To have a speech disorder means one cannot clearly pronounce, or understand speech. Instead of using verbal language communication, the people with speech disorders mostly utilize non-verbal languages to express their feelings. However, it is an undeniable fact that the general public lack knowledge about the types of non-verbal speech which patients with speech disorders convey their messages in.

 

 

 

Auditory sense is a primary means for humans to learn how to speak language. Thus, people who have auditory difficulties inevitably experience speech impediments. “Since birth, people learn to speak their mother tongue while hearing the speech both consciously and unconsciously,” said Kim Sun Hee, the sign language interpreter of Seoul Korean Sign Language Professional Institute— Sdeafsign. Children with innate or acquired auditory difficulties, however, experience the limits of their speech development because they have little chance to hear the speech. The former would not be able to speak at all, and the latter would remain at the stage where they have lost their auditory abilities.

 

Therefore, instead of spoken language, they use sign language to communicate with others. They cannot articulate what they want to say, but instead they deliver their messages by making certain body gestures. In this sense, sign language education is one of the most essential parts of their lives. In most cases, people who have auditory difficulties learn to use sign language in national schools for the deaf. Students learn to use sign language by memorizing words and practicing to combine those words.

 

According to Kim, some of the students learn how to lip-read, to watch people’s mouths to read their words when they talk, in oral schools. Thus, they have little knowledge about the sign language, and have difficulties communicating with other deaf people. In other words, they are left in the real world without having any means to interact with it. At the same time, many people have casted doubt on the efficiency of existing education methods. That is, there have been many questions raised about wordbased use of sign language. Sdeafsign is having a try at an innovative way of teaching. “We teach sign language, not word by word, but through a series of sentences. We also teach students to use non-verbal language, such as facial expressions or exaggerated motions,” said Kim.

 

In Sdeafsign every sign language class is conducted by deaf instructors. For deaf people, deaf instructors are just like native teachers if they are likened to second language learners. Since 2009, Sdeafsign has carried forward to foster deaf instructors, and now many of those students are working as professional sign language instructors. Recently, the number of non-deaf people who are willing to learn sign language has also increased. When asked who usually learns sign language, she replied, “They vary from people who learn for volunteer work to those who want to communicate with their family members who have auditory disabilities.”

 

At the same time, many sign language interpreters, whose importance is no less than that of the instructors, are also fostered at Sdeafsign. Kim said, “For deaf people, sign language interpreters are their all powerful problem solver and sometimes become their alter ego. We have to solve every kind of problem the deaf people have, and sometimes I had to swear at someone on behalf of them.” In most cases, however, the deaf people are dissatisfied, because they cannot deliver their thoughts and emotions fully by asking the other person to express them. Indeed, Kim also perceived the limits that the interpreters unavoidably have, saying in a worried voice, “I think we will be limited until we can replace their ears and mouth.”

 

“Sometimes what we cannot see is what is the most important,” she continued. She said that people who have auditory difficulties often tend to be marginalized, even more so compared to those with visual and physical disabilities. It is often unobservable that the deaf have problems with communication. Simply because they cannot hear and speak, people sometimes misunderstand them, without trying to look inside and read their thoughts.

 

 

 

Another sensory organ that contributes in communication through language is vision, and thus it is one of the major determinants of the ability to read and write. To categorize broadly there exist two types of visual impairment. Low vision, is often used to describe people who need mechanical equipment, such as glasses, to use vision as a means to perceive. Those who cannot use visual sense at all, are often referred to as the blind. Considering the fact that the language people communicate in involves much reading and writing, it is not hard to imagine the language obstacles that the blind face. However, certain programs and innovative products are used to prevent them from being marginalized.

 

Braille characters are the letters the blind use to read—not with their eyes, but with their fingers. Consisting of a total of six dots, Braille can symbolize a total of 64 different letters including spaces, vowels, and punctuation marks. The implementation of Korean Braille first started in 1898 when an American missionary taught blind girls Korean Braille. As time passed and the Korean language itself developed, the Braille that first appeared slowly transformed too.

 

Often referred to as Hunmaengjungeum, the Korean Braille became capable of representing diphthongs and abbreviations. Furthermore, Braille for mathematics, science, computers, and music were unveiled, making communication easier for the blind. Certain machines and software that produce Braille reading materials have developed as well. Those blind from birth receive Braille education from kindergarten and those who lose vision at latter stages of life can receive Braille specified education at the rehabilitation center for the blind.

 

Innovations in other fields are happening as well to strengthen the communication line that exists between the world and the blind. Dot, a smart-watch for the blind designed by a Korean inventor, was unveiled to the world in June and has been in the spotlight. Text messages, push notifications, and all sorts of data can be transformed into Braille, and appear on the small screen of the watch. The little buttons which serve as Braille move around in different forms to create new letters. As this is an innovative idea that is expected to lessen the information gap between the blind and the sighted, much attention is being paid to its release.

 

Another trend that is rising is the spread of Braille libraries. Located nationwide, these libraries give access to various reading and visual materials, including books, magazines, theses, and documentaries, to those who are often deprived of them. Braille libraries not only contain Braille books, but also two-way books, tactile books, tape recorded books, screen narration television programs, and much more. Other programs are conducted by these libraries to help bring these materials to the blind more easily. For instance, the Korean Braille Library has a Chaek Narae service which delivers reading, or visual materials by post to those who are incapable of visiting the library. Some other special events are book reciting services and radio library programs.

 

 

 

Language learning starts from birth—as soon as babies are born, they are surrounded by all sorts of verbal language going back and forth. Their ability to understand language—receptive language—and capability of expressing themselves—expressive language—gradually develops. However for some, this development is slow and eventually stops at the stage when others are still developing. Such developmental limits are attributed to their lower-than-average Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and difficulties in conducting adaptive behavior. These people are sometimes diagnosed with intellectual disabilities (ID). Meanwhile, Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) mostly accompany ID. People who are diagnosed with ASD would represent more serious social interaction defects.

 

“The symptoms that appear when suffering from ID can be generally divided into language disorders and speech disorders,” said Lee Hyun Jung (Department of Speech-Language Pathology, Honam University). The former is derived from brain impediment or incomplete development and the latter is from the impairment of oral organs such as lips, tongue, nasal cavity, larynx, and respiratory organs. “Children with ID have a hard time dealing with linguistic challenges like grammar and complex sentence structures, while children with ASD show defects in processing emotions and information that have social meanings,” said Lee.

 

However, Lee said, “Language behavior evaluation and mediating programs should not be introduced immediately even though a diagnosis is made.” She continued that sometimes patients show completely different linguistic disorders even though they have been diagnosed with the same disease. “Thus, instead of relying on one’s final diagnosis, it is important to find each individual child’s developmental level for each linguistic level—semantics, syntax, pragmatics— and discover the essence of each linguistic disorder through analyzing their strength and weakness in language,” Lee added.

 

It is an undeniable fact that those undergoing ASD have difficulties in communicating with the rest of the world, but some have special ways of staying connected with society— through extraordinary talents. Many may be familiar with Dustin Hoffman from the movie Rain Man (1988). The character he plays is based on a true person named Kim Peek who was able to read one page of a book in eight to ten seconds, and memorized 9000 books by heart. “This is called Savant syndrome, which is having extraordinary abilities in calculation, math, spatial skills, and so on,” Lee said. “This syndrome occurs within a small number of people among those diagnosed with ASD or ID.” Although developing these abilities does not always mean full adaption to society, utilizing them is one way patients of ASD or ID communicate with the world.

 

Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), a device that can express what the user wishes to say not through the mouths of the users but through computers etc., is also used. “You know Stephen Hawking, right? Suffering from Lou Gherig’s Disease, he used AAC to communicate,” explained Lee. AAC is helpful when applied to children with ASD or ID; it can complement children’s limited range of vocabulary and assist in expressing their ideas. “Because those with severe conditions use a lot of nonverbal language, and vaguely express their wants and needs, many people tend to misunderstand them,” said Lee when talking about how AAC can mean so much for these people. With recent developments in communication technology, users can get access to cheap, high quality AAC applications through their smartphones also.

 

Approximately five to ten percent of the whole population of Korea is known to have difficulties in communicating with others because of language disabilities. “These kinds of communicative disorders can get ameliorated and prevented from regressing through systematic language therapy,” said Lee. “What is more important is that language therapy must be made in a team approach—along with the cooperation of the patient, families, expertise from education, psychology, linguistics, social rehabilitation, computer science and so much more,” added Lee. She also stressed the importance of language therapy; indeed as language therapy is the field with the greatest demand among special education services, there is no doubt that speech-language pathology is a study that will continue to receive much attention.

 

 

 

Among the many types of different languages that exist, there is one last form of language that can rarely be known and heard by most people—silence. Language ability is known to be innate. Babies start babbling words such as “Mama” and “Papa.” As they are exposed to language and acquire more information about the world they are surrounded with, babies naturally develop language ability through the left hemisphere of their brains. However, there are cases when these naturally developing language abilities regress due to external factors— that is, when aphasia occurs.

 

Aphasia, a neurological disease, happens when the left hemisphere of the brain is damaged and the ability to functionalize language ability is lost. This results in suffering difficulties in communication. Some of the most common causes of aphasia are due to external factors such as cerebral infarction, which is the blockage of blood vessels in the brain; cerebral hemorrhage, which refers to veins burst in the brain; and Alzheimer’s.

 

Although categorized as one big illness, aphasia can be divided into a total of eight types depending on the severity, the cause, and the location of the injury. The most severe among the aphasias is global aphasia in which a person loses both the ability to understand and express language, whereas the most minor one is anomic aphasia, which refers to associating the wrong vocabulary with objects.

 

“The aphasia we see in TV dramas—where the main character stops talking because of some traumatic shock—is actually depicted wrongly. Psychological factors cannot solely lead to aphasia,” said Professor Pyun Sung-Bom (College of Medicine). It is true that people commonly associate scenes of movies or dramas when hearing the word aphasia and think of it as a symptom that is far-fetched from reality, when it really is not.

 

The problem with suffering from aphasia is that one gets separated from society. Aphasia patients, unable to fully utilize language, use the maximum amount of language—if any— they are able to utilize, to communicate with very few people. The biggest difficulty is that these patients cannot use the ability to read and write, making it impossible to utilize Braille or sign languages.

 

“It is easier to think of it this way,” said Pyun when asked about the challenges aphasia patients suffer. “Imagine you go to a country that speaks a language you do not know of; you have to keep living there but find yourself in a situation where you do not seem to keep getting better at the language and the gestures the people there use,” he continued, “but still you are compelled to follow the lifestyles of everyone else and that keeps repeating.” Losing the ability to utilize the language function at once, is without doubt, a devastating situation.

 

Aphasia patients undergo inclusive rehabilitation therapies to recover from the illness. They often get trained to use Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC), which includes the utilization of picture cards and computer software to communicate but it is not easy. Other treatments given to those who suffer from being deprived of language is pharmacotherapy—using drugs for treatment—and repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS)—stimulating some parts of the brain.

 

“The most important treatment of all is speech and language therapy in order to improve the symptoms and boost communicative skills,” said Pyun. In the past, it was widely believed that after three to six months of the occurrence of aphasia, chances of the patient recovering were close to zero. However, recent studies have proved otherwise—positive influences can be made on the brain, catalyzing enhanced communicative skills. What is crucial in carrying out the therapy though, is to endure patience. Patients must undergo therapy for at least six months and the cure may take as long as one to two years. It should be taken intensively and persistently right after the breakout of the illness.

 

One factor that should not be neglected is that more often, aphasia patients undergo severe depression and stress. Feeling disconnected from the world and everyone around them, they sometimes refuse to be cured. Not only that, but their guardians also suffer mental stress as well. “It is crucial to parallel psychological treatments of depression and stress along with language therapies. Also, psychological comfort and support for the patients’ guardians should be provided,” said Pyun.

 

The language of those suffering from aphasia is silence. Instead of the verbal language people mostly use to communicate, those with aphasia talk through the sound of their hearts. Reading their facial expressions, understanding their gestures, and reading the look their eyes give may seem difficult—however, with a little bit of care communicating through silence is not impossible. It is the language of mind that is truly important.

 

 

 

It is an undeniable fact that Korean society has developed into a place where people with language impairments can live more easily when compared to the past. However, this does not mean that Korea should neglect the fact that much is left for improvement. The biggest obstacle that Korea faces is that while demand for language therapists, including sign language translators, soars, supply stays low.

 

According to recent statistics, it was found that a single sign language translator in Incheon had to handle cases of approximately 1200 deaf people, whereas in Ulsan there were only eight translators available. In the rehabilitation centers for the disabled throughout Gangwondo, there are only one or two language therapists per city which makes it difficult to access language therapy.

 

This is a problem that cannot be solved in a day—it requires the attention of everyone in a long term sense. The first step into making Korea a better place for everyone—voiceless or not—is to improve people’s awareness about disability. A far as narrowing down the limits to language disabilities, disability is no more disability. That is, many people who live in today’s world are likely to have abnormal conditions that are related to their linguistic abilities.

 

For example, it is not difficult to find people who stammer and speak in strangely high speed when speaking in front of a crowd. They do not have problem communicating with others in daily life. However, when they are placed in situations where they feel pressured, they cannot present their normal linguistic abilities, and obviously this should be regarded as one kind of linguistic disability.

 

Another fact that people should acknowledge has to do with the essence of language. It is an undeniable fact that languages are all so much different. Through the so many different factors that exist. However, people should reach out to perceive the fact that the contents the languages convey are all the same.

 

“The language of friendship is not words but meanings,” said Henry David Thoreau. The language that those with speech disorders use may seem so much apart from the typical verbal language people usually think of. However, looking deeply inside, it is not hard to discover that they are all fundamentally the same—all of them convey love, anger, willingness, and so many more emotions and expressions. It is time for people to realize that it is not the form languages use to deliver the message that is important, but rather what is actually being conveyed and delivered. No matter what is utilized to express one’s thoughts, sincerity is what matters the most.