When we talk about the process of language acquisition, we
have to consider the fact that what is/can be acquired by most children is speech. So, just as most children of Hindi-speaking or Tamil-speaking parents naturally acquire Hindi or Tamil at a very early age, similarly the deaf children of deaf parents naturally acquire Sign (or Sign Language). So, the ASL, ESL or SLF, SSL or even IPSL are the names of the sign languages that deaf children acquire as they grow up in these countries/areas. Historically speaking, very few teachers of the deaf learned ASL, or even considered it to be a real language at all. For many people, Sign wasnt language, it was merely gestures. Sign vs. Gesture: Although both Sign and gestures involve the use of the hands (with other parts of the body), they are rather different. Sign is like speech and is used instead of speaking. Gestures, on the other hand, are mostly used while speaking. Examples of gestures are making a shaking movement of the index finger of your while speaking but also telling by the gesture to someone to not do something. Also when you are giving a talk but you want to tell someone to open a bottle or jar for you by making a twisting motion with one hand involves gesturing. The gestures are just part of the way in which meaning is expressed and can be observed while people are speaking and signing. In the study of non-verbal behaviour, a distinction can be drawn between gestures and emblems (allegory = a visible symbol representing an abstract idea). Emblems are signals such as thumbs up (=things are good) and shhhh (= keep quiet) that function like fixed phrases and do not depend on speech. Emblems are conventional and depend on social knowledge e.g. what is and isnt considered offensive in a particular social world. For example, in Britain, the use of two fingers (the index and middle finger) raised in a V-shape traditionally represents one emblem (= victory) only when the back of the hand faces the sender. But it is a different emblem (=I insult you in a very offensive way) when the back of the hand faces the receiver of the signal. Therefore, it is important for all of us to know the salient features of the emblems before visiting different places. Another point that we must understand is that within the set of gestures that accompany speech, we can distinguish between those that echo= the content of the spoken message and those that indicate something being referred to. Iconics are gestures that seem to be a reflection of the meaning of what is said. For example, when we trace a square in the air with a finger while saying Im looking for a small box is an example of using the gesture with the speech. Therefore , an iconic gesture by itself doesnt mean the same as what is said, but it may add meaning. It would be a good idea to discuss C.S. Pierces distinction and nature of sign here. As we know Pierce has made a tripartite distinction of Sign and they are icon, index and symbol. C. S. Peirces Icon, Index, Symbol Every sign works in different way as well as on different levels. Some signs are closely related to the things they represent and look exactly like them these signs are called ICONS. All these images are iconic, some are more motivated than others ICONIC signs communicate truth, reality, seriousness In contrary, in sign language this has very different value, and
this value is due to a very different system that is/has been evolved for sign language as a means of communication. Index An index is a sign which is related to the object it represents but not directly or in a concrete way. For example, a knock on the door an index of arrival. The knock is not ARRIVAL, it is not a direct representation of arrival, but it indicates arrival and is connected to that event. Most facial expressions work in an indexical way because you cannot represent an emotion, we look for signs which indicate them e.g a smile is an index (or sign) of happiness. The smile isnt a direct representation of happiness. Indexes are used to represent abstract things emotions, ideas etc. The smile and happiness on Kats face might be misguiding, let us see some more examples of indexes: Symbol Symbols are signs which have NO link at all with the thing it represents. The only reason we know what they mean is because we have learnt what they mean over time. Words are symbols there is no actual link between the word table and the object because if there was, the word would be the same in all languages. People decide to give labels to various objects in an arbitrary, random way and as long as others agree to these, we all know what each of the symbol means in the language. For example pachyderm or pachiderm is the random label (symbol) applied to which animal? Pachyderm refers any of the various non ruminant hoofed mammals having very thick skin: elephant; rhinoceros; hippopotamus What is this symbol? Another commonly known gesture is what we call deictics. The term deictic means pointing and we often use gestures to point to things or people while talking. We can use deictics in a context when we use our hand to indicate a table (with a cake on it) and ask someone Would you like some cake? We can also use the same gesture and the same table (with cake no longer on it) when we later say, That cake was delicious. In this case, the gesture and the speech combine to accomplish successful reference to something that only exists in shared memory rather than in the current physical space. This use of deictics later paved the path for the development of the complicated system of signing which we know as sign language. Types of sign languages: There are two general categories of language involving the use of signs: alternate sign language and primary sign language. By definition, an alternate sign language is a system of hand signals developed by speakers for limited communication in a specific context where speech cannot be used. In some religious orders where there are rules of silence, restricted alternate sign language is used e.g. by monks in a monastery. Among some Australian Aboriginal groups, there are periods (e.g. times of mourning) when speech is avoided completely and in such situation an elaborative alternate sign language is used. In all these examples, the users of alternate sign language have another first language that they can speak. In contrast, a primary sign language is the first language of a group of people who do not use a spoken language with each other. BSL, ASL, SLF, and IPSL etc. as used for everyday communication among members of the deaf communities in Britain, America, France and India-Pakistan are primary sign languages. It was only after the work of Stokoe (1960) that the ASL was given the status of a natural language. Before this, it was genuinely believed that the use of sign language by deaf children would actually inhibit the acquisition of the English language. Spoken English was given too much weight and a teaching method known as oralism dominated deaf education during most of the twentieth century. This method required that the students practice English speech sounds and develop lip-reading skills. Despite the insistence, in educational terms, most deaf children could not achieve anything. Whatever the reasons, the method produced few students who could speak intelligible English (less than 10%) and even fewer who could do lip-reading (around 4%). While oralism was failing, the use of ASL was surreptitiously flourishing. Many deaf children of hearing parents actually acquired the banned language for deaf at schools not from the teachers, but from other children. Since only one in ten deaf children had deaf parents from whom they acquired sign language, it would seem that the cultural transmission of ASL has been mostly carried out from child to child. There has been substantial change in deaf education in recent years, but there is still an emphasis on the learning of English, written rather than spoken. As a result, many institutions promote the learning of what is known as Signed English (also called Manually Coded English or MCE). MCE is essentially a means of producing signs that correspond to the words in an English sentence, following the word order of English language. In many ways, Signed English is designed to facilitate interaction between the deaf and the hearing community. Its greatest advantage is that it seems to present a much less formidable learning task for the hearing parent of a deaf child and provides the parent with a communication system to use with the child. For similar reasons, hearing teachers in deaf education can make use of Signed English when they sign at the same time as they speak. However, Signed English is neither English nor ASL. When used to produce an exact version of a spoken English sentence, Signed English takes twice as long as the production of that same sentence in either English or ASL. Origin of ASL: It would be very surprising if ASL really was a sort of gestured version of English, as some have claimed. Historically, ASL developed from the French Sign Language used in a Paris school founded in the eighteenth century. In the 19 th century, a teacher from this school, named Laurent Clerc, was brought to the US by an American minister called Thomas Gallaudet who wanted to open a school for deaf children. Clerc not only taught deaf children but he also trained other teachers. During the nineteenth century, this imported version of sign language, incorporating features of indigenous natural sign languages used by the American deaf, evolved into what came to be known as ASL. Such origins help to us explain why users of ASL and users of BSL (in Britain) do not share the common sign language. MYTH 1: Signed languages are not true language because lack writing, speech Writing is a derivative of language Approx. 57% of the worlds languages are unwritten Historically, languages have been spoken long before they have been written down Main difference between spoken and signed languages is mode of communication (vocal- auditory vs. manual-visual)
MYTH 2: Sign language is universal Many different signed languages They are mutually unintelligible American Sign Language British Sign Language (ASL) MYTH 3: Sign language is purely iconic Some signs are iconic house, eat, cat, milk, sit
MYTH 3, cont.: Sign language is purely iconic But, if all signs were iconic Non-signers would understand sign language All deaf people would have same signs Wouldnt be able to sign abstract concepts Recall: Iconicity occurs in spoken languages to some degree (onomatopoeia) ASL has dialects (e.g. candy)
MYTH 4: ASL encodes spoken English into signs Manually Coded English (MCE) translation of English in 1-to-1 encoding used to teach English to the Deaf Fingerspelling used for words for which there is no sign
MYTH 4: ASL encodes spoken English into signs, cont. Simultaneity vs. sequentiality English is sequential: phonemes (as well as morphemes and words in a sentence) are linearly ordered. In signed languages, meaning-bearing units are produced simultaneously e.g., English noun-verb distinction: create vs. creation walk vs. walker --word ending ASL noun-verb distinction