In My Language

Thursday 6 October 2011

I've just come across this video by Amanda Briggs, a non-verbal autistic woman whose video sheds some real insight into her world.  Wow, we live in some amazing times.  The first part of the video, she says:
... is in my "native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not.
Here's to an expansion in all ways of what gets considered and appreciated as personhood. Here's to multi-linguality :)


6 comments

  1. what a powerful video
    reading some of the comments under it on youtube are even more interesting

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  2. She is most eloquent, Sue. And as for being in a 'world of her own', that's how it is of every sentient being, only some are more aware of that than others.:)

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  3. Yeah, the comments are fascinating, aren't they?  

    Aside:  How weird, too.  I was just reading some more of the comments just before and had one of those synchronous moments where someone made a reference to labelling anything we don't understand as weird - whether it's a different human, or whether it's a dolphin.  It was one of those times that the words jumped out at me, having just published that more recent post before about the dolphin and the journo.Those synchronicity moments are happening a lot today.  It's so strange - they're nowhere to be found for days or weeks and I start wilting.  And then in one day they pop up everywhere.  They're like eating food.  Honestly, if I could eat them and be sustained nutritionally, I'd maybe give up food altogether ;)

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  4. That's true.

    And yet, the flipside of the same coin ... we can be completely alone in the world, and yet there is the golden thread that weaves through everything and connects everything at the very same time.  I love that sense of connection far more than I do being stuck in the middle of the madd(en)ing crowd :)

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  5. You find some wonderful stuff, Sue. It's the whole body that 'thinks' and responds, as the same chemicals that we refer to as of the brain are produced by every cell in the body. We are not mind and body but bodymind, expressing the wonder of being.

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  6. Hi Harry.  I love the way she expresses bodymind :)

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