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Sign Language StatusIn 1980-1, Tervoort received, from 20 countries in Europe, responses to a questionnaire about their views on sign language and its status. His survey results were published in 1983. He concluded that everywhere sign language awareness was on the increase, and noted that, “ .... there are great extremes in European attitudes towards Sign, there is a tendency away from pure oralism, there is pressure on schools from outside, specifically from deaf adults and parents of deaf children ....” page 144. He linked the progress to research but he suggested a continuum of development in education which might be the basis of society’s attitude to deafness: “There appears to be a tendency to go from oral-only to speech with speech-supportive means ..... from these there is a movement in the direction of the use of Sign to better disambiguate the spoken word; next comes a signed version of the spoken language either with speech or without it ... and finally, the continuum develops from Signed Danish, Swedish, English to Danish Sign Language, Swedish Sign Language, British Sign Language etc.” page 146 Such changes at the beginning of the 1980s were thought to be revolutionary and sign language had been recognised in only a few countries. Nevertheless, there was considerable optimism for the improvement in the status of sign language. In June 1988, the European Parliament confirmed this view and “recognised sign languages as used by deaf people in each member state.” It was assumed by deaf people that a major breakthrough had occurred. However, in many countries the visible and tangible effects of this breakthrough are hard to detect in 1996. The abolition of the remaining obstacles to the use of sign language seems as distant as ever. Just how distant is a major question of this study. |
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