Back in February of last year, I posted a question on a listserv about “social bluffing” a term that I came up with to describe the practice of pretending to understand conversation. I had googled the term and found nothing on it in reference to deaf and hard of hearing people so I came up with a definition.
“Social bluffing,” as I said in my article, ” is pretending to hear or understand something that is being said, and behaving in a way that shows you understand, even when you have little or no clue as to what is being said.”
As a result of the discussion that I initiated, someone mentioned that they were going to write an article about it. I was already in the midst of my own article on social bluffing which was printed in the Hands & Voices Communicator (Summer, 2006):
Calling Our Bluff: Using Communication Strategies in Social Situations.
Kathy Allen’s Communication Strategies Sidebar
I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery because the article “Bluffing…The (Not So) Social Truth” by Jay Wyant appeared in the January/February issue of Voices, a publication by the Alexander Graham Bell organization. They also included a sidebar of “Tips and Strategies.”
But hey, a little credit would have been appreciated.