{"id":337,"date":"2008-09-18T11:31:58","date_gmt":"2008-09-18T16:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/election08.cusjc.ca\/?p=337"},"modified":"2008-09-18T11:32:44","modified_gmt":"2008-09-18T16:32:44","slug":"what-stephane-dion-hears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=337","title":{"rendered":"What Stephane Dion hears"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amanda Truscott<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

St\u00e9phane Dion\u2019s trouble with English is not the result of a hearing problem, according to a prominent Toronto audiologist \u2013 though some other experts are not so sure.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr. Marshall Chasin, the director of auditory research for the Musicians\u2019 Clinics of Canada, says Dion\u2019s speech has all the sounds and intonation patterns it would be missing if hearing loss had prevented him from learning the language properly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIntonation is carried on the nasals, on the vowels, on the \u2018L\u2019 and the \u2018R\u2019\u2014 what we call sonorants in linguistics\u2014 and if he had a deficit for that, his speech would be missing those sounds as well, or they wouldn\u2019t be well-articulated. But the nasals in English and in French are fine,\u201d he \u00a0<\/span>says.<\/p>\n

Dion\u2019s difficulties in expressing himself clearly in English have been cited by critics, and some in the media, as an obstacle to connecting with English-speaking voters.
\nAt a campaign stop last week in Saint-Lambert, Que., Dion told reporters that he had trouble hearing different English intonations and isolating sounds in the presence of background noise.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If I am in a cocktail and everybody is speaking at the same time I will have difficulty and it may affect my ability then to catch the music of the beautiful language of English,” he said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He has been diagnosed with a hearing condition, he said, but he couldn\u2019t remember what it was called.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly plausible that Dion does have trouble hearing, Chasin says. Everyone begins to lose some hearing after the age of 40, and Dion is 53. He may even have some other, less common hearing problem.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Imperfections in his English, however, are more likely a result of the age at which he learned it, Chasin says.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only time that you will really acquire a new language without an accent is if you acquire it before the age of puberty, age 10 or 12.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In contrast, Dr. Chantal Kealey, the director of audiology for the Canadian Association of Speech Language Pathologists and Audiologists, says Dion was too vague about his condition for it to be possible to make a specific diagnosis, but she didn\u2019t rule out the possibility that it could be something that might affect his ability to learn a language.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a hearing loss, you certainly are at a disadvantage if you\u2019re trying to learn a second language, because one of the ways to learn a second language is by hearing it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Regardless of the reasons for the state of Dion\u2019s English, Chasin says the media have been unfair in criticizing his grasp of the language. \u201cI can certainly understand Mr. Dion\u2019s speech quite well,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has French as his first language, and I don\u2019t think that this is any reflection on how good a leader he would be, or how good a representative in the House of Commons he would be for his constituency, so I think the media is stupid for concentrating on a second language issue. It\u2019s a form of covert discrimination, or even racism against people that speak French as their first language.\u201d<\/ins><\/span><\/p>\n

Jean Chretien won three elections as Liberal leader despite his own strong French accent and sometimes mangled syntax in English. Yet Canadians have also had experience with several leaders, including Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Paul Martin who were almost equally fluent in the two official languages.<\/p>\n

Dr. John Esling, head of the linguistics department at the University of Victoria, says people should be more concerned with the content of what\u2019s being said than with how it sounds. He also commends Dion\u2019s improvement.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the time that he\u2019s been leader of his party, it sounds like he\u2019s changed and developed his repertoire in English quite a great deal, and also what I would call his spoken fluency, as opposed to talking about pronunciation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rhythm and intonation of French and English are quite different from one another, he says. \u201cSo, is it a difficult task to pick up on the rhythm and get it right, or even to hear it right? Yeah, it is a bit of a difficult task, but it doesn\u2019t mean that somebody can\u2019t have an incredibly strong accent and still use words that make a point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Esling says it\u2019s possible a candidate\u2019s abilities as an orator are important to voters, but he thinks Canadians are discerning enough to look beyond the grace with which a speech is delivered.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In any case, he says, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem to me that any of the Canadian party leaders are outstanding rhetorical speakers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He adds, \u201cI don\u2019t know how to make the connection between how people sound, and how you know what they\u2019re going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amanda Truscott is a student in the Master of journalism program at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amanda Truscott St\u00e9phane Dion\u2019s trouble with English is not the result of a hearing problem, according to a prominent Toronto audiologist \u2013 though some other experts are not so sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election2008","category-election-2008-student-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}