Mind Your Language!

Because I have recently discovered writing as a hobby, I have found myself increasingly fascinated by language and how to use it. I’m currently working on a poem for my writing group and constantly revisit it, wondering if there are better words I could use, or if I could be a bit more clever in my imagery. 

Wicked and pernicious - who knew?

On Sunday my son was drinking a beer made with what the brewery described as ‘pernicious’ hops. I immediately jumped on the word and determined that I was going to get it into my poem!

Another thing that has always interested me is how we use idioms to enrich our language. The Guardian recently ran a quiz to find out if idioms can be recognised once translated from their language of origin. 

I have the proverbial cockroach...

I managed to get 8 out of 10, but some of them were hilarious. For example, in South Korea, if something is extremely amusing they say they laugh ‘until their navel falls out’, and if you ‘have the cockroach’ in France, you are well and truly fed up! The point of the quiz was to illustrate how difficult it can be to translate novels into English from other languages. I imagine it is equally tricky to do the opposite and translate English works into German, Swedish, Japanese. Do ‘letting the cat out of the bag’, ‘sitting on the fence’ and ‘hitting the sack’ really mean the same to people in other countries?

I fear the cat is out of the bag!

The main reason I began to think about how we use idioms and other linguistic tools was because of how people with autism respond to them. In general, idioms, similes and metaphors go right over their head, and if we are to communicate effectively we really need to analyse our language and how we use it. Years ago I was trying to encourage one of my pupils to ask for help. As he stood at the door, unable to reach the top handle, I asked him what he needed. ‘A ladder’ came the entirely reasonable reply. The point is, we understood his literal take on the question. 

Just what he needed!

That we couldn’t respond for laughing is another, probably unprofessional, thing, but we weren’t cross or annoyed. In a mainstream setting it may have been a different matter, and the child in question could easily have been perceived as being cheeky or rude. 

I spent a lot of time in my last few years of teaching working with mainstream schools to support children with autism. Whilst key changes like the use of visual support and structure were relatively simple to implement, changes around language were much more complicated. 

Visual support is the easy bit...

Our language is embedded in us at an early age, and we pick up phrases and words that have always stood us in good stead. Teachers, especially in primary settings, want their pupils to be comfortable and happy, and language is their biggest tool - explaining what is going to happen, what the children need to do and how the class rules work. The trouble is that, for children who struggle to process language, it is all too much. There were times in my classroom when it felt as though I was talking to a dog rather than a child, but ‘sit’ is far more easily processed than ‘time to sit down now to do our work’. ‘Work’ is another open ended term that can mean just about anything in school - sums, writing, reading, catching a ball in PE, digging a garden in science. 

Oh, this kind of work...

Surely specifying a task makes it accessible to every child in class - truly inclusive!

Another thing that teachers, parents, grandparents fall into is focussing on telling children what we don’t want them to do, rather than what we do want them to do: Stop shouting; Don’t break the pencil; Stop pinching. It’s not much of a seachange to say: Quiet; Put the pencil down; Hands down. Sorry to say, but I have no truck with ‘Kind hands’ - how can hands be kind for goodness sake? - surely far better to say keep your hands still, or put your hands in your lap. I can’t help thinking life would be so much less complicated if we focussed on telling people what we want them to do. 

He does it...eventually!

If I said, ‘Could you mow the lawn please?’ to my husband instead of saying ‘God the garden’s in a state’ things might get done a little bit quicker! 

It is not always easy. I never did find a positive way of asking a child to stop biting me - ‘keep your teeth still’ never quite cut it! But I did work with children who had very many complex needs alongside their autism. I firmly believe that, with the right support, many children with autism can learn in a mainstream setting, but part of what needs to change for this to be successful is how we use language in the classroom.

Entirely logical!

A couple of weeks ago The Salted Tail and I were helping our friend Sam to plant some strawberries. When we asked him for something to ‘open’ the grow bag. He came back with a tin opener. We laughed until our navels fell out. I rest my case…