On 2010-08-03, David Cantrell wrote:
On Mon, Aug 02, 2010 at 09:07:49PM +0100, Eric wrote:

The response to which has been known to be "aggressive compliance",
feigned deafness, or abuse.

Just out of interest, how do you know it's *feigned* deafness? It's
entirely possible for a deaf person to have a conversation with someone
in front of or beside them, or use a phone or an ipod, or do all kinds
of other things that involve hearing, but not be able to hear you at
all, or not be aware that you're talking to them, or not understand a
word you're saying.

In my case, I'm deaf in one ear. If you talk to me from my left, I
won't hear you, even though I can listen to an ipod in stereo: my
deafness mostly affects the frequencies of the human voice, and
especially those used for consonants. If I'm having a conversation with
someone in a noisy environment like a station or a London street, then
I'm *concentrating hard* to hear enough to figure out what they're saying,
and I'm supporting that by lip-reading. If I'm not looking at you, then
your mouth-noises are meaningless - in fact, they're irritating
background noise that I have to try hard to ignore.


I believe you, but on balance of probabilities (and occasional real
evidence) not all of them are due to this.

Eric