I King Jordan's Freudian Slip? Or Right brain Left Brain Language Interference?

Got an interesting note in my email from one sharp person regarding I King Jordan supposed Freudian slip of the, uh, fingers signing "president" instead of "provost" when he talked about Provost Dr. Jane K. Fernandes.

We know that Lynn Jacobowitz made a pointed reference about IKJ's supposed Freudian slip by making notes of a videotape taken during his retirement announcement address. And she managed to get the deaf and hard of hearing audience all riled up, probably over nothing, in the speculation that the signing of "president" was in fact a Freudian slip as seen in the transcript provided by Elisa in her blog.

The supposed Freudian slip was when IKJ referred to Provost Fernandes as being the "next president [of Gallaudet]" where he then immediately corrected himself.

But let's look further on this involving IKJ's left hand where the right brain governs its movements and the right hand where the left brain governs its movements. And then you have of the speaking and signing done in a fashion that are done almost simultaneously.

Here are IKJ's slip ups.

IKJ fingerspelled with his left hand the Provost's name: "Jane Fernandes". And he then switched over to his right hand and finger-spelled "Jane" and almost signed "president" and then promptly corrected himself fingerspelling "provost" twice. You can see the video of the slip up at timecodes 23:20 to 23:28.

But in this video you do not see the word "next" as in the "next president" [of Gallaudet University]. Had he said that in that fashion it would have been an interesting show and would point more to a Freudian slip. But there is also an explanation in cognitive and language science for what had happened that does not involve a Freudian slip.

There is a process called "First-to-second language interference" which, in this case, would be the English language interfering with ASL or sign language. IKJ's first language is English. His second is sign language though not in pure ASL. From the American Scientist:

Although competition between languages explains some of the differences in first- and second-language learning, if first-language interference were the only problem, then learning a first language itself should never pose difficulties. However, deaf individuals learning American Sign Language (ASL) for the first time in adolescence do not achieve native-like competence even after decades of use (indeed, they do less well than individuals, deafened in adolescence, who learned ASL as their second language). In other words, age itself may be a factor. Many changes occur with age that could affect language learning and create the wide range of individual differences that are the hallmark of learning a second language—loss of ability to segment sounds, loss of neurological plasticity, increased capacity to recall and store input, changes in motivation to learn and self-consciousness.

There's more elsewhere on the internet that talks about "first to second language interference."

IKJ signed the word "president" througout his speech delivery so much that it could have been a factor when he tried to fingerspell "provost". For "provost", he spells it out. Knowing that the "pr" in provost and president, in his first language (English) speaking mind he was saying "provost" but his signing hand almost signed the word "president" because it began with the "pr"?

We'll never know for sure if it was a Freudian slip but it is rather tacky, sad and irresponsible to attack IKJ for signing the wrong word (almost). He didn't sign "next president" but talked about the current provost. And that alone is probably sufficient to say that it wasn't a Freudian slip.