Discuss the evolution of sign language.

Darren Horton – ED103 Introduction to Language Awareness - Sign Language Assignment.

The idea behind this essay is to discuss the evolution of sign language. To commence we first must begin to understand the ‘Deaf’ community and how this language affects their lives.

Throughout history deaf people have suffered discrimination at the hands of hearing people.

Most people would be horrified at the thought that they may be acting oppressively towards deaf people, and yet deaf people throughout life meet discrimination in one form or another on a daily basis. Such discrimination may not be deliberate - not that people simply don't care, but more likely that they just don't know how to interact.

This history of persecution dates all the way back to ancient times and can be traced even before the birth of Christ.

“ The earliest known written mention of deafness was in the Babylonian laws which restricted the rights of those born deaf “.

Groce (1985, pg. 99)

Also it is common for early societies to question whether deaf people were capable of being educated or not. In basic terms, they did not have the information or technology to understand the deaf community and therefore abandoned their involvement.

So how can we define deafness?

Deafness can be defined medically, educationally and culturally.

Medically:

Hearing loss is categorised at various levels from slight to profound,

(Slight = up to 40dB loss, moderate = 41dB - 70dB, severe = 71 - 95dB, profound = 96dB and greater loss).

Educationally:

Educationally a child would be considered to be 'hearing impaired' if their hearing loss was large enough to affect the child's ability to learn language via audition and their ability to perform academically.

Culturally:

A shared cultural identity.

Deafness can occur before or after birth. Medically, deafness that is present at birth is called congenital, and deafness that is acquired after birth is called adventurous. Educationally whether the deafness is considered congenital or adventurous is less important than if it is prelingual (before spoken language develops i.e. approximately age 2 years) or postlingual (after spoken language develops).

The sooner a child is diagnosed as deaf is, the sooner they and their family can receive early intervention services. Although, technology exists for identifying deafness virtually from birth, many deaf children are not identified until after infancy. Orlans et al. (1997) found that parents suspect their child to be deaf on average at 17 months, confirmatory diagnosis follows 5 month later, and is a further delay for intervention (e.g. 10 months for a hearing aid, and 11 months for the start of sign language instruction).

Currently there are two main constructions / discourses of deafness. The medical construction and the sociocultural construction.

The Medical Construction is sometimes called a disability construction, and views deafness in audio-logical terms. What this means is that deafness is an inability to hear and therefore a physical problem. Hearing values and behaviour are seen as the norm and so deafness is seen as something negative.

From this perspective deaf people will always be trying to 'catch up' with hearing people and do what they can do i.e. speak and hear.

In trying to overcome the effects of deafness ...

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Currently there are two main constructions / discourses of deafness. The medical construction and the sociocultural construction.

From this perspective deaf people will always be trying to 'catch up' with hearing people and do what they can do i.e. speak and hear.

In trying to overcome the effects of deafness the onus is on the deaf person changing himself or herself to fit into hearing society.

The Sociological Construction is sometimes referred to as the ‘social model of disability’.

The sociocultural construction views deafness in cultural terms. Deaf people who identify with deaf culture form a separate cultural group. Here deafness is viewed in a more positive light, deaf people are 'different' not 'deficient'. The construction emphasises deaf people's abilities rather than their deficiencies. Provision is directed towards catering for a cultural group e.g. sub-titles on TV.

In education the system derived from this is bilingual education where deaf children are taught to sign first or at the same time as learning English.

From this view, the main ‘problem’ of deafness is society and its hearing centred orientation. The key to helping deaf people is not for the deaf person to adapt to hearing society, but for society to adapt to them. So the onus on overcoming the problem becomes one for society.

In the sixteenth century, a physician, Geronimo Cardano, acknowledged that deaf people could be taught. He proclaimed that this community could learn to

“Understand written combinations of symbols by associating them with the thing they represented”

(ED103 – Introduction to Language Awareness Handout).

Later within that century, the first book containing the manual alphabet was published.

Considering the date when this book or language was created, it wasn’t until over one hundred years later when the first free deaf school was founded. In 1755 Abbe Charles Michel de L’Epée discovered the school and taught a system of conventional gestures, hand signs and fingerspelling.

“ He created and demonstrated a language of signs whereby each would be a symbol that suggested the concept desired”

(ED103 – Introduction to Language Awareness Handout).

Abbe developed his language system by slowly learning the signs that a group of deaf people in Paris used. Once he had recognised the signs used, he then inputted his own initiative which resulted in a signed version of spoken French. From this system, French Sign Language (FSL) was developed and is still in use today.

In1816, Thomas Gallaudet brought French sign language to the United States. From here it was combined with various other forms of the language to create American sign language (ASL). The main difference between ASL and BSL is the fact that the American version represents concepts rather than words.

It is difficult to understand how sign language has so many differences throughout each nation. This is backed-up below.

“There are now very many sign languages all over the world – but as yet no ‘standard’ though many are based on early systems thus contain similarities”.

(ED103 – Introduction to Language Awareness Handout).

Another key historical event for deaf people is the 1880 Milan International Congress on the Education and Welfare of the Deaf organised by the hearing teachers of the deaf. The conference lasted only 24 hours, so there was little room for debate, and only one deaf person attended despite there being large numbers of deaf teachers employed at the time. The outcome was the almost unanimous decision to adopt an oralist approach to the education of all deaf children, a trend that continued up until the last thirty or so years. It also meant that teachers who were deaf lost their jobs or were relegated to assistant roles.

As recently as 20 years ago, the term BSL was not yet in regular usage, and the sign language of Britain's Deaf Community was regarded as an inferior system of pantomime and gesture that was not a true language.

BSL users also use fingerspelling. Certain words – usually names of people and places – are spelled out on fingers. However, it is important to remember that fingerspelling is not sign language.

Parents were advised not to allow their children to use signs or even gesture, as this would spoil their chances of developing speech and lip-reading skills and is still the case in some areas within the UK.

One of the chief defining features of culture and identity is our language. In the case of Deaf people in Britain, this is British Sign Language (BSL) and Deaf people have been calling for its official recognition for many years.

Introduction to SIGN LANGUAGE COMPANION 1996.

"...The situation for BSL users has similarities with other 'minority' language users and also important differences. In 1988 the European Parliament called on member nations to recognise their own sign languages as official languages of their countries, yet BSL is still not fully recognised as a language of Britain.

And continues

“...Deaf children need two languages (BSL and English) for healthy growth and development and participation in society, but far from having a bilingual option, many deaf children are in danger of having no true language foundations at all."

(Cath Smith, Sign Language Companion 1996, )

"A study carried out in 1979 found that most deaf school leavers had not progressed beyond a reading age of 8.75 years. In real terms, this means that they would be unable to read the tabloid newspapers, and that instruction manuals, government or official forms, safety regulations, and so on, would all remain beyond comprehension. In addition, speech quality was found to be largely unintelligible, and skill at lipreading was found to be no better than inexperienced hearing children”

(SIGN AND SIGHT 1992)

Large numbers of adult Deaf people remember vividly and with anger their frustration at not being able to understand what was going on, or to express themselves through sign language.

Even when families decided for themselves to offer their children something more, and to learn sign language, classes were virtually non-existent and there were precious few resources on the subject.

Many people are surprised when they discover that sign language was forbidden in deaf education and not used in the teaching of deaf children until about 20 or so years ago, and then not in all deaf schools.

It was not considered appropriate to employ Deaf people in deaf schools until schools started to adopt policies using sign language, and there are still very few Deaf teachers. Approximately 90% of deaf children are born into hearing families who have usually never encountered deafness or sign language before. Even today, deaf children may not have adult Deaf contact unless this is specifically sought after and arranged.

Deaf people provide numerous accounts of being punished for signing at oral schools, and having to sign in secrecy out of class time.

Kyle and Woll describe an example of a child being punished for using sign language at his school.

“I had a lot of punishments for using my signings in classrooms and at the playground. The teachers reported me to the headmistress many times, then one morning at assembly I was caught again, then, ordered me to stand in front of the children, the headmistress announced that I looked like a monkey from a zoo, waving my hands everywhere. She thinks she will put me in a cage in a zoo so the people will laugh at a stupid boy in the cage”

(Kyle and Woll 1985, p263)

However attitudes towards sign language started to change due to research in America in the 1950' and 60's then in Britain during the 1970' and 80's. Sign languages started to be recognised as full, complex visual languages with structure and grammar very different from spoken languages. It is now recognised that sign languages exist throughout the world, wherever groups of deaf people and children come together, and each has its own unique vocabulary and rules, although being visual spatial languages, they have a great deal in common with each other - more in common with each other than with spoken languages.

"Spoken languages have evolved over thousands and thousands of years. They are particularly suited to the auditory medium, expressed by mouth and taken in by the ear. Less is know about sign languages than spoken languages and their study is still fairly new, but it is clear that sign languages have also evolved over time to suit the visual medium, expressed by physical movements and taken in by the eye”

(Sign Language Companion 1996, Cath Smith, WWW.DEAFSIGN.COM)

It is estimated that 8.7 million people in the UK are Deaf or hard of hearing. However, not all of them are members of the Deaf Community – people who use BSL as their first or preferred language. It is difficult to say how many people in the UK use British Sign Language (BSL) as their first or preferred language – current estimates vary between 50,000 and 70,000. BSL users may describe themselves as Deaf, rather than deaf. Their degree of deafness does not, in itself, determine whether or not a person is a member of the Deaf Community. Someone who has become profoundly deaf in adulthood may still identify with the hearing world and rely on lipreading, speech and hearing aids to listen to sound; someone born with a less profound hearing loss into a Deaf family may identify with the Deaf Community and use BSL.

It seems to be very difficult to understand, how a language created using only hand movements still has so many different methods throughout the world.

Considering the fact that this alphabet was created in the 16th century, It is a very difficult language to learn. It is also surprising how such a dated language is still a benchmark to all world-wide manual languages.