Phonemic Awareness and the ‘Mirrors’ in our Lives
12 September 2024
In the tale of Snow White, the evil queen asks the magic mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all? The magic mirror replies that she, the queen is the fairest in the land. As we know, the queen is somewhat obsessed with her own appearance and continues to ask the mirror the same question every single day at exactly the same time. The mirror, which we assume to be truthful and trustworthy, reflects back to the queen the answer that she wants to hear, again and again.
The queen’s habit becomes deeply reinforced through daily practise over a long period of time. She becomes dependent upon the praise and the flattery, delivered by the mirror and her brain’s reward system becomes increasingly contingent upon these messages, until out of the blue, the magic mirror breaks the pattern, and declares that Snow White has become the fairest in the land. Having lost what she perceived to be her source of power and status, the queen is devastated by the mirror’s apparent betrayal and drops into symptoms of severe withdrawal. Her sense of identity fragments like shattered glass.
She vows to deceive and poison Snow White who seemingly caused her so much unnecessary pain and suffering. This projection of personal suffering onto another person is directed by the ‘mirror’ within the queen’s nervous system. Our nervous system acts as a ‘mirror’ whenever we are engaging with our environment. It feeds information up to the brain, which responds according to the context, so that we might anticipate reward, relief, dread or fear.
Mirror neurons
For instance, whether through gestures, vocal sounds, words or simply facial expressions, our most rewarding or ‘fun’ experiences take place when we feel ourselves ‘in alignment’ with others: bouncing stories, ideas, jokes and memories in playful banter. In fact our brains even have an area dedicated to ‘mirror neurons’, which specialize in the type of behaviors that help us ‘fit in’ through social skills such as mimicry for example, allowing certain behaviours to spread within a group, even without our conscious awareness. Although these neurons may appear to be primarily social, they might also have played an important role in human survival in times of hardship.
Reflection to infinity
Many years ago, as a child, I managed by chance to align two mirrors in my parents’ bedroom. I could see myself reflected into infinity in two directions simultaneously. At the age of six, this was such a surreal and powerful experience that I told no one about it and crept back into the room to see if it would happen again. Of course, the effect was still there and I felt I’d seen all the ‘secrets’ of the universe in a single wardrobe door. Experimenting with the angle of the mirrors was a risky business because I thought that the magical effect could be lost forever. It seemed that the alignment between the mirrors had to be very precise for the light to form an infinite pattern of images. Of course, I learned that the relationship between the mirrors was what mattered most, and that I even had the ‘power’ to manipulate the mirrors by bringing them in and out of alignment.
Peering into the reflections, I could see that each one was repeated, with each iteration considerably smaller than the one it preceded. The sequence continued until the reflections were so small that they were just little dots in the distance. When the relationships between the shapes were consistent - and I didn’t really appreciate the importance of proportions and ratios at the time - I could see that the gradient was (to my childish eye) an ‘even slope’. In other words, when the relationship between the reflections was absolute and predictable - always the same, it provided absolute clarity, perspective, harmony and truth.
Reflecting each other
So, how might this visual delight help us to understand phonemes, rhythm and language? To my mind, it is actually very simple. If the alignment between child and caregivers is not quite steady - for example imagine the wardrobe doors are not consistently reflecting each other, then the depth of that relationship, the consistent qualities of that relationship and the precision of the communication will not really be ‘anchored’ or stable or able to achieve that level of clarity, that a true and steady alignment can bring.
True alignment allows for all the smaller elements to line up and fit into the larger ones. Yes - as a design it is worthy of Louis Vuitton, who created a system of luggage that utilised space efficiently and eased the flow of baggage during transit. The dimensions of each piece differed in terms of shape and size, the entire set was designed to fit into the largest piece of all.
Grammatical structures
The grammatical structures of language and music share this same principle that underpinned the Louis Vuitton concept. In a language utterance, the tone, the pace and the shape of the sound waves carry a message at every level - from the smallest phoneme to the arc of the entire sentence.
The shapes of individual syllables are contained within the shapes of words. The shapes of words are contained within the shapes of phrases and sentences. Although these are constantly changing in real time - like a kaleidoscope of mirrors, the principle of hierarchy - that a single unit fits perfectly within another - remains robust.
In music, the shapes of riffs, licks, motifs, melodies and phrases are also highly varied, but the hierarchical principle remains a constant here too. The musical message is heard in the tone, the pace and the shape of the smallest and largest units of a musical phrase.
Distortions and protrusions
Just as Vuitton used design to create accurate dimensions at every level of his luggage set, the same degree of precision is also achieved at a subconscious level in spoken language and in music. A protruding syllable, the wrong emphasis or inflection can throw the meaning of an entire sentence out of alignment. A musical message is similarly diluted if a beat protrudes, is cut short or is lengthened, because the length and shape of an entire phrase is distorted.
Arguably, the precise dimensions in Vuitton’s groundbreaking designs reflect a preference for proportion and balance that also underpins all aspects of human communication. Our delight in the consummation of symmetry, grammar and rhyme is present in the rhythm of language and also in music. At a conceptual level, it is ratio that unifies the Vuitton designs with language and music, and it is ratio that anchors our human experience in interaction with one another and our environment.
A return to alignment
This concept of ratio, as well as hierarchical relationships and the precision of rhythm in real time underpin the Rhythm for Reading programme. Think of this reading intervention as an opportunity to reorganise reading behaviour using a beautiful luggage set, designed for phonemes, syllables, words and phrases. It’s an organisational system that facilitates the development of reading fluency, and also reading with ease, enjoyment and understanding. And yes, we understand how ‘mirroring’ accelerates learning.
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