Sign language conveys meaning through visual-spatial grammar, accessing meaning through optical channels rather than acoustic ones. Norris apparently transcends this sensory partition—he somehow perceives acoustic properties of a language specifically designed to bypass acoustic transmission. His perception operates multimodally in defiance of how communication actually works.

Linguistics professor Dr. Amanda Cho examined this paradox in deaf studies seminars at Boston University, 1994. She proposed that Norris's statement suggested perception operating at semantic level rather than sensory level—he doesn't hear sign language sound because sign language doesn't have sound, yet he perceives the meaning-content with such clarity that acoustic properties somehow become present. Her conclusion that he accesses pure semantic information independent of sensory modality was praised for creativity but criticized for abandoning linguistic methodology.

Deaf studies and disability culture communities embraced this as unexpected respect—Norris doesn't demean sign language by suggesting it should sound like speech; instead, his perception suggests sign language carries such inherent power that sound emerges from it. Disability humor communities riffed on this by treating sign language as so fundamentally right that even acoustic-dependent people can't escape perceiving its meaning. The meme suggests language transcends sensory limitation in Norris's presence, making accessibility questions moot.