I am not staring at you, really
When I talk to anyone - a pretty girl I just met, a wrinkly old man, my seriously ugly friend Rust, my beloved mum - I look at their faces all the time. I give each one equal attention in terms of eye contact. Why?
One thing people with hearing loss have in common - no matter what they call themselves, HOH, HI, Deaf etc. - is the fact that we need to look at others’ faces during dialogue. Oftentimes, this may be miscontructed as ’staring’. Hearing people in conversation generally do not look at each other all the time when they talk; in fact, it’s possible to carry on a conversation without looking at the other party’s face at all.
So then, people with hearing loss (especially the Deaf) wonder why the hearing doesn’t look at one another when they talk, and in turn, the hearing wonder why people like me are staring at them during conversations. Alas, this sets the stage for misunderstandings and more.
The simplest and most fundamental answer to your question is that hearing people use prolonged eye contact to indicate sexual attraction. Hearing people have a very complicated set of well understood but unwritten rules concerning how eye contact is made and how long it is maintained. Even a slight deviation from these rules can lead to a socially uncomfortable situation. For this reason, hearing people must break eye contact regularly throughout a conversation in order to adhere to these rules. Among hearing people, prolonged eye contact is either interpreted as sexual attraction, or it is considered weird.
Also, prolonged eye contact among hearies can also be perceived as a sign of aggression or domination. A good example is during an interrogation.
Ahh, there is a fine line between staring and looking intensely, and yet another fine line between looking intensely with lust and looking intensely with interest in the conversation. Over the years, I have refined the art of using my eyes to hear what my ears couldn’t to almost perfection. I can tell from the body language of the person I am having a conversation with whether the person feels that I am staring or feels encouraged by my interest to carry on the conversation. I rarely come across one who feels that I am staring. The secret lies with the intent.
If one has malicious or lustful intent, it just shows up and the other party will almost always perceive it immediately unless he/she is not observant. That’s why it’s true to say that the eyes are the window to one’s soul. On the other hand, if we are genuinely interested in the conversation and are not wondering about other things in secret, the conversation goes on as expected.
I guess that’s the natural law. Human beings are programmed this way, which is the reason why we always look into the eyes of a person if we want to know whether that person is telling the truth. And frankly speaking, we need to look at the entire body language, not just the eyes, in order to get the complete message and intent. In the same way, we need to watch our body language beyond our eyes when we are engaged in a conversation. Subconciously, we may be sending signals of lust, aggression, etc beyond the eyes and that’s usually why the other party may cut short the conversation. So fundamentally, check our intent. Don’t let it stray. And unless our body language is horribly broken, we should be able to carry on a decent conversation using our eyes to hear what we couldn’t with our ears.
Cheerios,
Thomas
Comment by Thomas Tan — August 9, 2006 @ 10:30 pm
Yes, very true, Thomas. It’s indeed the way we present ourselves in terms of body language, non-verbal cues and such. Subconsciously, our body language reflects our intentions.
At first, during interpreting sessions, I was rather conscious of looking at the interpreter (terp) all the time, especially if the terp is, erm, some pretty lass. But it soon worn off as I realise I was more concerned about catching and understanding her terping than anything else. (Both terping and reception of terping are hard work, requiring alot of effort and attention on the part of both sides).
In fact, I became so blased about terping that I would even doze off in front of exceptionally pretty terps, if the lecture was exceptionally boring. Ok ok, I am not proud of this, heh!
Comment by Administrator — August 10, 2006 @ 12:41 am
hmmm… now it explains CLEARLY why you always snooze in front of us. “After a day’s hard work” theory NO LONGER applies to you. Hah!
Comment by jux a terp — August 10, 2006 @ 8:38 pm