Session 9

Session 9: The Rise of Deaf Culture

Language and culture are probably the most fundamental issues for the deaf community but ones which could not have been discussed openly until very recently. Missioners for the Deaf used to try to explain the position of deaf people - they were the original community workers or social workers. They were often considered to have gone native and to have adopted not only the cause of deaf people but to have had their judgment impaired by their continued contact with deaf people. Some were more influenced by the charitable nature of their work and saw deaf people as greatly handicapped. George Furth (whose book "Chosen Vessels", you should try to read,) described deaf people as "having minds like babies" as recently as the early 1980's and also said at a conference in 1979, that "sign language was a fossil" - to mean that it was an incomplete and unsatisfactory communication form. He was one of a long line of people who worked closely with deaf people and yet considered that what they did was not a language - was a poor substitute for English.

There were many misconceptions about sign language:

- it was only gesture, but faster

- it was just concrete, dealing with objects in sight

- it was derived from pictures

- it was not derived from pictures! (sometimes used to deny that certain things could be signed)

- there were very few signs, none had been recorded

These sort of statements were presented by those on whom the deaf most depended - teachers and social workers and as a result were all the more damaging. They built a wall around sign language and the deaf community, a wall which has not yet been fully dismantled. Leo Jacobs book, "A deaf man speaks out", is a very good rebuttal of many of these constraints which were placed on deaf people as a result.

Yet we are still only part of the way towards meeting all of the criticisms - we do not have an adequate description of the grammar of BSL and we cannot yet give a definitive answer to the question about the extent of BSL signs. It is true that BSL does not have signs for certain things that English has words for and it is also true that new signs entering the language are often influenced either by English or by the visual aspect of the action or object - deriving meaning from the iconic nature.

However, it is interesting that we do not have an agreed description of English at least in its spoken form and we have only theories about how English is acquired - and much less on other spoken languages. English borrows all the time from other languages - that is, it does not have the words for certain concepts. In the Guardian article which we used to give to people at interview for these courses - English was described as a "magpie among languages" meaning that it stole from other languages. The universal acceptance of English by the international community makes it very difficult to challenge the "superior position" of it - yet there are many features of English which are weak.

When we say:

The policeman held up his hand to stop the traffic
The doctor held up his hand to inspect the injury
The soldier held up his hand where the bullet had passed through

we have different meanings for each one, which can only determined when we understand a good deal about our culture. There would be no confusion in the signed version of these meanings. Locations in sign are generally unambiguous, yet we have immense problems in English.

Lane, 1985, in Deaf Liberation, Why the deaf are angry, p 150-1, illustrates this spatial problem.

What this tells us is that comments on the relative merits of different languages are unwise as each language develops to express the experiences of its users. At each new stage of the development of the deaf community new signs will be added. The language will become richer and richer.