Asshole Cell phone owners

The BBQ Pit
101

Color me confused.

  • Assuming that the “deaf” part is perfectly OK: while “colored” implies a deviation from the norm or ideal, “mute” is a neutral-sounding adjective that simply describes what it sees.

  • What else would you call someone who understands a language but can’t produce it orally? (She writes poetry and has someone else read it on Open Mic night.) Am I to say “That hard-of-hearing individual who may be suffering from Broca’s aphasia”? (May not actually be Broca’s–it’s been a while since I’ve taken Psych and I don’t remember.) It’s a valid distinction and the fact that this article offers no alternatives raises a red flag to me.

  • I’ve never in my life heard the term used as an insult. It sounds to me like some ambitious Wiki editor backformed the offensive meaning from the word “dumb” and the Catcher in the Rye–which is the only example it offers. If “deaf mute” were widely understood as an insult, surely there would be some example, somewhere, of an actual person saying it and an actual person taking offense rather than an inventive literary device.

  • I’m not one to toss around derogatory words knowingly, and I try pretty hard to stay on top of the changing field of acceptable and offensive terms. Why wouldn’t I have heard of this being offensive? I’ve known enough deaf people to have heard about this by now. I mean, if someone can show me evidence that it’s actually considered an offensive term, I’ll be glad to find an alternative.

  • Why you would take umbrage at my completely innocent use of a term that (apparently) nobody except you and a couple rogue Wikipedia authors think is offensive, is beyond me.

IOW, I call BS on your umbrage. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now and use “deaf” unless/until I’m proven right.

Just because you can make sound doesn’t mean you can speak.

Not in and of themselves, but it’s disturbing that she has so much trouble accepting her lot in life. And it’s just as sad to see a deaf person pretending to have a conversation on her phone to show people she can talk, as it is to see a middle manager pretending to have a conversation on his phone to show people he’s important. The latter is a persistent meme, and there are a number of people here on these Boards who assume or deduce by some imaginary criteria that certain people they ride the bus with, cross paths with on the street, etc. are pretending to have phone conversations. Despite the fact that it doesn’t seem possible to tell the difference between a speaking person who has someone on the other end and one who doesn’t, the whole Board rallies around the contempt directed at these imaginary people.

I believe you, but she can’t talk, if “talk” means “use oral language”.

OK–then I misunderstood and misused the term. Forgive me. Is there an alternative for someone who can make sounds but can’t produce words?

I haven’t asked her, because whenever I’ve tried to talk to her before she pretends she can’t read my lips and refuses to acknowledge my existence. I’ve seen her have conversations with people who were talking to her, so she’s pulling one over on either them or me. If she doesn’t have time to acknowledge my existence, I don’t have time to save her from embarrassing herself. She’s lucky our coffee shop lets her (and a number of other regulars who either can’t afford our products or choose not to buy them) come in every day and lounge around eating handfuls of free samples. It doesn’t bother me–I couldn’t afford to eat there either if I didn’t have an employee discount, so I’m glad people in that financial situation have somewhere to go. But if she doesn’t acknowledge the unusual service we’re doing for her, I think she should.

That’s not how I feel about her, although I can see where it would sound that way, especially to someone who grapples with the subject matter every day in their own personal life.

It grabs your attention as an abnormality, something that to your animal brain just doesn’t seem right at first glance. You have to subconsciously pay more attention to make sense of it. Or what featherlou said.

OK, thanks–but does that mean “cannot communicate at all” or “cannot communicate orally”? Because I’ve seen this particular customer communicate with people through sign language and writing.

102

[a href=“http://www.nad.org/site/pp.asp?c=foINKQMBF&b=103786”]National Association of the Deaf[/a] on the subject.

Definition of ‘mute’ From the OED:

  • A. adj.

    1. a. Of a person: lacking the power of speech; unable to speak owing to a congenital or pathological condition; dumb. (In quot. c1400 functioning as a noun.)
      mute by visitation of God (in Law): physically unable to plead to an indictment.

In just about every dictionary out there, ‘deaf-mute’ is considered offensive. The NAD cite explains the rationale behind it.

There’s also the Wikipedia cite which contains some information about the history of the term.

Thinking about it, mute is more pejorative when it’s used to refer to a person as a permanent state of affairs. For deaf people, they tend to not talk because they’re deaf, but they could. Nothing stopping them except the fact that they wouldn’t be understood by hearing people. They can definitely yell stuff like “HEY!” to get people’s attention.

Do you call someone with laryngitis mute?

I just thought of a similar case: In the UK, people still call epileptic seizures ‘fits’, but we don’t call them fits much anymore here in the US because of the negative connotation.

NB: There’re a few posts out there where some members of the deaf community are discussing reclaiming the term for various reasons. Personally, I’m pretty skeptical, but the sentiment is out there. They wouldn’t feel a need to reclaim it if it didn’t already have the negative connotation in place.

If all of that still doesn’t explain it for you, then I’m not sure what to say.

103

Huh. OK, I guess I thought that deaf people who couldn’t effectively communicate through oral language were stricken by both deafness and some kind of physical/mental speech disorder. The NAD’s argument is sound, but if this is the case, how come some deaf people can speak a language and sound just like the majority of hearing folks?

104

Thank you!

105

Nope.

What it takes is a hell of a lot of speech therapy + genetic talent. It’s like learning to play a song with earplugs in and limited to seeing only the guitar tabs, with your teacher yelling at you that you’re holding the E string too long and you fucked up that second chord from the start, for example. You modulate based on what other people are telling you. So you’d wind up playing it over and over again until you get within acceptable tolerances and you’ve had that specific song beaten into your body memory. You have to do that all over again if you want to learn a new song, although you might be able to remember how a specific chord goes.

You can’t tell when you’re tired and you’re hitting sour notes, and you can’t tell when the guitar’s out of tune. You can tell if you snap a string, and maybe if you’re lucky, you can use the vibrations in the guitar to make gross determinations. If you’re playing it on a bus or train where there’s a lot of other vibration, you’re probably going to be out of luck if you try to do that, though.

It’s up to other people to tell you your guitar’s fucked up. And a lot of the time, they don’t for whatever reason – they think you’ll be offended or you just can’t achieve the dexterity needed to get results acceptable to the other people.

If willpower was all it took, anybody’d be able to, say, beat Venus Williams on the tennis court by a dozen points.

106

Remember, lo those many years ago, when homes had one phone and it was often in an out of the way area so you wouldn’t rudely force others to listen to half of a conversation?

That’s how I think people should use cell phones. That’s how I use mine and how I’ve finally trained my grown children to use theirs. If you are on the phone, mobile or landline, take your conversation someplace I won’t hear it. Simple and everyone should do it.

Using these rules, tashabot, you are being rude forcing me to listen to your one-side conversation with your friend while I’m trying to find the Cheetos. Of course, that’s IMO and you are welcome to do what you want. Just be aware that you may overhear me talking to someone about your rudeness. :wink:

107

We can call a deaf person deaf or hard of hearing, and that’s okay, but what do we call someone who can’t hear or speak if deaf-mute is the granddaddy of all insults? Deaf and hard of speaking? I get your point that most deaf people can vocallize sounds, but some can’t.

108

I have some problems with what you wrote. First, it seems like the people at the National Association of the Deaf don’t know what they are talking about with some of these word origins. They have Aristotle using the term “Deaf and Dumb” because he thought people without hearing were stupid. They have a source for that idea, but I don’t see how they could believe it. First, because I don’t think Aristotle would have been using English, and second because the mute definition of dumb preceded the stupid definition by a great amount of time (supported by The American Heritage Dictionary among others).

They also say that mute means silent which, though one of its definitions, also means incapable of speech or refraining from speech.

While you are right in that deaf-mute is sometimes listed as offensive, I have not seen mute itself listed that way.

I was not aware that mute us usually used to describe a permanent condition, but that may just be my own ignorance. I would call a person with laryngitis so bad that they can no longer talk at all mute.

Since a major deaf advocacy group seems to have the etymology of “dumb” wrong, it makes me wonder if they are taking offense at words that are not inherently offensive, like black people being offended by “niggardly”.
Hmm, I seem to have come off as overly confrontational here. I assure that is not my intention. I was just surprised to hear what I thought to be a perfectly serviceable word with no good replacement as having been deemed offensive. To clarify something I may have wrong here, is mute by itself offensive, or only when combined in the phrase deaf-mute?

109

“Hello?”

“Gotcha ya!”

110

My phone lives in my car, rarely removed, so I don’t think I annoy people with it. And no, I don’t cruise down the road holding it against my ear with my shoulder. Mostly it’s a call from the parking lot saying “I’m getting ready to leave - do you need me to stop and pick up anything?” or making long distance calls from home, since I’ve got a gazillion rolled-over minutes on my account.

But getting back to the silent/vibrate issue - I’m pretty sure I’d need to page thru several screens to find the option, and just turning the phone off or on gives me some obnoxious musical tone. Are there phones made with a button that’ll give an instant off/silent option? Granted, mine is the bottom of the line freebie I got for signing away 2 years of my life, but even if I hit the off button after the first ring, those around me would be treated to some silly tune before it finally powered down.

How difficult is an Off/Silent/On switch on the phone case?

111

Some can be set so a single button bush changes the mode. Different modes can be set up with different volume settings for different functions. In other phones there is a volume button on the side and if you keep bushing down it will eventually get to vibrate only.

112

On my phone the * key has a little icon of a shaking phone on it. If you hold it down for 2 seconds, the phone goes into vibrate-only mode. There is also a volume button on the side of the phone that has “vibrate only” as the lowest setting.

113

So it appears my problem is having a cheapie little phone. But like I said, it mostly stays in the car, so no biggie for me.

114

Not necessarily. Depending on the phone, it can be something that seems completely counterintuitive. I wonder if you could google the manufacturer’s name and phone’s model number in regard to changing from ringing to silent to get some good instructions on that. ::shrugs:: If you’ve got a Motorola of any flip-up sort, there’s side buttons for the volume and one underneath; press the lower button and it’ll show the ringtone mode, then press the up/down buttons to change it. I think.

115

The OP would have LOVED a guy I heard on the bus the other day. There was a cellhole (hmmm…not bad :D) talking on his phone. He was talking at absolute top volume, so that even though he was in the back of the bus, everyone else could hear his every word.

He was talking to some poor hapless soul named Carol (IIRC that is). He was very self-importantly giving her instructions on how to do this, that or the other with some sort of paperwork, and kept tossing in (at an even louder volume, so we could all be impressed), what sounded like possible industry jargon for said types of paperwork.

It was almost a parody of a guy who wants to impress everyone around him with something completely stupid and useless. Not only was he behaving this way on the phone, but from the sounds of the conversation, the call kept getting dropped or something and we were treated to him yelling “Carol!, CAROL!!!, are you there CAROL?, you have to XYZ with the Super Top Secret Document CAROL!” Very bossy and controlling (Gosh did I feel sorry for Carol).

And again, it was obvious that he very arrogantly assumed that we were all OH SO impressed that while we bums were merely riding a bus, HE Master of the Universe Of Business, was actually working and making “VERY IMPORTANT DECISIONS”.

About the time I could feel the first stirrings of mutiny arising amongst the bus seats I hear an even louder voice (Not the cellhole’s) state “CAROL’S not there asshole!!! WE can all hear you, but she can’t, because she’s NOT THERE!”.

Believe it or not, cellhole was so oblivious that he kept up his litany of “CAROL, CAROL” for a few more minutes. But our hero was louder (and likely drunk, but for once I was glad about that!) and more determined to drown him out than cellhole was to reach Carol.

It ended with several of us applauding the cellhole shouterdowner and the cellhole finally subsiding into angry mutters from the back of the bus. Since they were both clear in the back of the bus I never saw either of them, but it was nice to see cellphone karma (though not as funny as the youtube one) for once.

116

My cellphone has a feature that flips it from large font to small font every time I put it in my purse. How cool is that? :smiley:

I’m never impressed by people talking business on cellphones in public. I just feel sorry for them, that they aren’t allowed to leave work at work like I do.

117

Very illuminating! Thank you.

My phone (which I got in 2004) has volume up and volume down buttons on the side. The ringer volume goes from “Off” to “Vibrate”, then “Beep”, then “Level 1” through “Level 8” and then “Level 8 + Vibrate”. I usually keep mine on “Level 8 + Vibrate”, cause I miss calls if it just rings or just vibrates. When I go to work or school I put it on vibrate. Thankfully, the vibrate function on our phone is exactly as strong as it should be: hard enough to notice (for most people :wink: ) but soft enough that it doesn’t alert the whole room and kill the point. Some of my classmates, though, their phone’s vibrate function is as loud as a ringer.

118

Another rather strange practice among mobile-phone users in Thailand – just females, too, sorry to sound sexist – but they’ll be yakking on it riding down an escalator, then just stop at the bottom while talking, making everyone behind her plow right into her. Happens a lot.

119

I never set a cellphone to silent because I don’t own one! Am I the last person around without one?

120

yes.