Do deaf people everywhere use the same sign language?
Leila Monaghan
Is sign language really a language? Can you use it no matter what country you go to?
Th ere are two widespread myths about sign languages. One is that they aren’t languages at all. Th e second is that signing is a universal language—that any signer can understand all signers anywhere in the world. Both of these beliefs are false.
It’s easy to understand why you might doubt sign languages are really languages—they’re so diff erent from what we oft en call
‘tongues’. Th ey have to be seen rather than heard. And some signs look like what they represent, making them easy to dismiss as mere gestures. But that view was refuted in 1960 when William Stokoe published the fi rst scientifi c description of American Sign Language (ASL). Stokoe was an English professor at Gallaudet University (the world’s only liberal arts university for Deaf* people) and found the
*See footnote on page 99.
Do deaf people everywhere use the same sign language? 103
language being used around him as systematic and as grammatical as any other language. He showed that (except for sound) sign lan-guages have all the linguistic features that spoken lanlan-guages have.
A word in spoken language, of course, is composed of sounds, made with your mouth and tongue. In ASL, the components of a word can include how you shape your hand, where you place it, and how you move it. For example, the signs for apple and candy are made at the same place, by the side of the mouth, but their handshapes are diff erent: apple is made with a crooked index fi nger while candy is made with a straight index fi nger. Sign languages have complex grammars, so that words can be strung together into sentences, and sentences into stories. With signs you can discuss any topic, from concrete to abstract, from street slang to physics. And if you have any doubt, think about public events you’ve seen recently.
Aft er watching a signer interpret a political speech or a play, could anyone still believe it’s not a language?
As for the second myth, people oft en don’t realize that sign lan-guages vary, just as spoken lanlan-guages do. Whenever groups of people are separated by time and space, separate languages, or at least separate dialects, develop. Th is is as true for sign as it is for spoken languages: there are, for example, diff ering dialects of ASL. Like spoken English, it varies both geographically and across social groups. And the variations in sign language are even more
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evident internationally. Th e signs used in Italy aren’t readily under-stood by a signer using ASL, and vice versa. Even languages that you might think are connected may or may not actually be. British Sign Language and American Sign Language, for example, are unrelated to each other, despite the fact that countries share English as their spoken language: the histories of the British and American Deaf communities are separate. American Sign Language is actu-ally related to French Sign Language because a Deaf Frenchman helped start many of the earliest schools for deaf children in the United States. Although some signs in all sign languages are iconic (they look like the object they are representing), even iconic signs can diff er. In ASL, the sign tree is made by holding up a single hand with fi ngers spread. Th e Danish version is done by tracing the outline of a tree with both palms. Both signs are based on the same image, a classic leafy tree, but they look quite diff erent.
Whenever people can see each other but are somehow prevented from communicating with speech or writing, they turn to signing of some kind. Th ink about monks who have taken vows of silence but need to cooperate on monastery business, or widows from certain Australian Aboriginal groups, who are expected not to speak during a long period of mourning. In cases like these, the sign languages developed refl ect the grammar of the languages the
(a) American Sign Language (b) Danish Sign Language
Do deaf people everywhere use the same sign language? 105
monks or widows knew and could speak if they chose. But those are exceptions. Most sign languages are not based on the spoken language in the culture around them.
Th ere are millions of sign language users around the world. For example, there are at least a half-million users of ASL in the U.S., and possibly as many as two million. It’s routinely taught in schools across the country, and all fi ft y states recognize it in some way. At the last count, there were 147 colleges and universities whose language requirement could be satisfi ed by the study of ASL. In Britain, there are estimated to be around 370,000 sign language users and on March 18, 2003, the U.K. government offi cially recognized BSL as an offi cial British Language.
Sign language is remarkable for its ability to express everything spoken language does, using completely diff erent human capabilities.
According to Hearing people who have learned it, communicating in sign opens a window to a diff erent culture and can give you a totally diff erent perspective—especially an understanding of how Deaf people perceive the world. So the next time you think about learning a new language, think about learning how to sign.
About the author
Leila Monaghan teaches in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington. She received her Ph.D. in linguistic anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles and her dissertation work was with the New Zealand Deaf community. Her other publications include a co-edited book Many Ways to be Deaf (Gal-laudet University Press, 2003), a 2002 Annual Review of Anthropology article on Deaf communities with Richard Senghas, and a forthcoming Deaf Worlds issue co-edited with Constanze Schmaling, ‘HIV/AIDS and Deafness’. She is also involved in literacy issues; in particular she works with local Bloomington residents, tutoring them in reading using a manual developed by William Labov and Bettina Baker.
Suggestions for further reading
In this book: Languages designed by their users are discussed in chapters 59 (Esperanto) and 60 (artifi cial languages in general). Other chapters discussing language acquisition by children include 8 (pidgins and creoles), 13 (babies and language), 15 (language and the brain), 22 (language deprivation), and 33 (children and second languages).
Elsewhere:
Klima, Edward, and Ursula Bellugi. Signs of Language (Harvard University Press, 1979). Classic and very readable introduction to sign language linguistics.
LeMaster, Barbara, and Leila Monaghan. ‘Sign languages’, in A. Duranti, ed., A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (Blackwell, 2004).
Introduction to the study of sign languages and Deaf communities in linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics. Both disciplines look at the interaction between language and culture rather than just at languages themselves.
Monaghan, Leila, Constanze Schmaling, Karen Nakamura. and Graham H. Turner., eds. Many Ways to be Deaf (Gallaudet University Press, 2004). A collection of fi ft een articles from fourteen countries on the history, culture and language of local Deaf communities. Includes a brief overview of fi ve hundred years of Deaf history.
Padden, Carol, and Tom Humphries. Inside Deaf Culture (Harvard University Press, 2005). Latest book from two of the foremost experts on Deaf Culture in the U.S. Interesting and accessible.
Web sites:
http://library.gallaudet.edu/
http://www.signcommunity.org.uk/
http://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/bibweb/
http://www.signpostbsl.com/