15 Gestures and sign languages
This old lady, in her nineties, but sharp as a pin, would sometimes fall into a peaceful reverie. As
she did so, she might have seemed to be knitting, her hands in constant complex motion. But
her daughter, also a signer, told me she was not knitting but thinking to herself, thinking in Sign.
And even in sleep, I was further informed, the old lady might sketch fragmentary signs on the
counterpane. She was dreaming in Sign. Sacks (1989)
When we considered the process of language acquisition, we concentrated on the fact that
what is naturally acquired by most children is speech. Yet this is not the only way that a first
language can be acquired. Just as most children of English-speaking or Spanish-speaking
parents naturally acquire English or Spanish at a very early age, so the deaf children of deaf
parents naturally acquire Sign (or Sign Language). Later in life, as Oliver Sacks observed,
they may even use Sign when they “talk” in their sleep. If those children grow up in American
homes, they will typically acquire American Sign Language, also known as Ameslan or ASL,
as their version of Sign. With a signing population of at least half a million, and perhaps as
many as two million, ASL is a widely used language in the United States. The size of this
population is quite remarkable since, until relatively recently, the use of ASL was
discouraged in most educational institutions for the deaf. In fact, historically, very few
teachers of the deaf learned ASL, or even considered it to be a “real” language at all. For many
people, Sign wasn’t language, it was “merely gestures.”
Gestures and sign languages 199
Gestures
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,
whereas gestures are mostly used while speaking. Examples of gestures are making a
downward movement with one hand while talking about not doing very well in a class
or making a twisting motion with one hand as you describe trying to open a bottle or
jar. 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 behavior, a distinction can be drawn between gestures
and emblems. Emblems are signals such as “thumbs up” (= things are good) or
“shush” (= 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 isn’t
considered offensive in a particular social world). In Britain, the use of two fingers (the
index and middle fingers together) raised in a V-shape traditionally represents one
emblem (= victory) when the back of the hand faces the sender and a quite different
emblem (= I insult you in a very offensive way) when the back of the hand faces the
receiver of the signal. It is important, when visiting different places, not to get the local
emblems mixed up.
Types of gestures
Within the set of gestures that accompany speech, we can distinguish between those
that echo, in some way, 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, as when we trace a square in the air with a finger while saying
I’m looking for a small box. By itself, an iconic gesture doesn’t “mean” the same as
what is said, but it may add “meaning.” In one particularly clear example (from
McNeill, 1992), a woman was moving her forearm up and down, with a closed
hand, as if holding a weapon, while she was saying and she chased him out again.
The communicated message, including the weapon (actually an umbrella), was
accomplished through speech and gesture combined.
Another common group of gestures can be described as deictics. As noted in
Chapter 10, the term “deictic” means “pointing” and we often use gestures to point
to things or people while talking. We can use deictics in the current context, as when
we use a 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
200 The Study of Language
speech combine to accomplish successful reference to something that only exists in
shared memory rather than in the current physical space.
There are other gestures, such as those described as beats, which are short quick
movements of the hand or fingers. These gestures accompany the rhythm of talk and
are often used to emphasize parts of what is being said or to mark a change from
describing events in a story to commenting on those events. As with other gestures,
these hand movements accompany speech, but are not typically used as a way of
speaking. When hand movements are used in order to “speak,” we can describe them
as part of a sign language.
Types of sign languages
There are two general categories of language involving the use of signs: alternate sign
languages and primary sign languages. 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 languages are used (e.g. by monks in a monastery).
Among some Australian Aboriginal groups, there are periods (e.g. times of bereave-
ment) when speech is avoided completely and quite elaborate alternate sign languages
are used instead. Less elaborate versions are to be found in some special working
circumstances (e.g. among bookmakers at British racecourses or traders in commodity
exchanges). In all these examples, the users of alternate sign languages 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. British Sign Language (BSL) and French
Sign Language (SLF), as used for everyday communication among members of the deaf
communities of Britain and France, are primary sign languages. Contrary to popular belief,
these different primary sign languages do not share identical signs and are not mutually
intelligible. British Sign Language is also very different from American Sign Language
(ASL) which, for historical reasons, has more in common with French Sign Language.
We will focus our attention on ASL in order to describe some features of a primary
sign language, but first, we have to account for the fact that, until fairly recently, it was
not treated as a possible language at all.
Oralism
It was not until the 1960s that any serious consideration was given to the status of ASL
as a natural language, following the work of William Stokoe (1960). Before that, it was
Gestures and sign languages 201
genuinely believed by many well-intentioned teachers that the use of sign language by
deaf children, perhaps because it was considered too “easy,” actually inhibited the
acquisition of the English language. Since spoken English was what those teachers
believed the children really needed, a teaching method generally 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
its resounding lack of success, the method was never seriously challenged, perhaps
because of an insidious belief among many during this period that, in educational
terms, most deaf children could not achieve very much anyway.
Whatever the reasons, the method produced few students who could speak intelligible
English (less than 10 percent) and even fewer who could lip-read (around 4 percent).
While oralism was failing, the use of ASL was surreptitiously flourishing. Many deaf
children of hearing parents actually acquired the banned language at schools for the
deaf, 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.
Signed English
Substantial changes in deaf education have taken place 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). This is essentially a means of producing signs that
correspond to the words in an English sentence, in English word order. 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. It is also easier for those hearing
interpreters who produce a simultaneous translation of public speeches or lectures
for deaf audiences. Many deaf people actually prefer interpreters to use Signed
English because they say there is a higher likelihood of understanding the message.
Apparently, when some interpreters try to use ASL, the message seems to suffer, for the
simple reason that, unless they learned ASL in childhood, few hearing people are
proficient at it.
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
202 The Study of Language
production of that same sentence in either English or ASL. Consequently, in practice,
exact versions are rarely produced and a hybrid format emerges, using some word-
signs and incomplete English word order. (In many cases, even the word-signs are
changed to be more English-like, with a G letter-shape, for example, being used to
represent the English word glad, rather than the actual ASL sign for this concept.) It’s
sort of like producing messages with German word order, but containing French
nouns, adjectives and verbs. The product is neither French nor German, but (one
might argue) it is one way of getting French speakers to learn how German sentences
are constructed.
The type of argument just presented is what has been used in support of teaching
Signed English in deaf schools because one of the major aims is to prepare students to
be able to read and write English. Underlying that aim is the principle that deaf
education should be geared towards enabling the deaf, for obvious economic reasons,
to take part in the hearing world. The net effect is to make ASL a kind of underground
language, used only in deaf–deaf interaction. As such, this natural sign language of the
deaf continues to be poorly understood and subject to many of the myths that have
existed throughout its history.
Origins 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. Early in the nineteenth century, a
teacher from this school, named Laurent Clerc, was brought to the United States by an
American minister called Thomas Gallaudet who was trying to establish a school for
deaf children. Clerc not only taught deaf children, 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 became known as ASL. Such origins help to explain why users of ASL and users
of BSL (in Britain) do not share a common sign language.
The structure of signs
As a natural language functioning in the visual mode, ASL is designed for the eyes, not
the ears. In producing linguistic forms in ASL, signers use four key aspects of visual
information. These are described as the articulatory parameters of ASL in terms of
shape, orientation, location and movement. We can describe these parameters in the
use of the common sign for THANK-YOU.
