U n i t 3 British Sign Language,
Communication and Deafness
prepared for t h e course team b y Susan Gregory a n d Dorothy Miles
Contents
Aims 3
Study guide 3
1
Language and culture 4
2
The study of language 6
3
Visual-gestural communication 7
4
The structure of British Sign Language 12
5
Poetic form and sign language 13
6
The recognition of British Sign Language 16
Myths and misconceptions about sign language 19
Popular misconceptions 19
All sign languages are the same? 20
The iconic nature of sign language 22
Sign language is not grammatical? 24
Sign language is a concrete language and cannot express complex
ideas? 24
Sign languages are inferior to spoken languages? 25
Finger spellmg and sign language 27
Signing in use: variations on a theme
Sign Supported English 33
Pidgins and creoles 33
Signed English 34
Artificial slgn systems 35
33
Sign language acquisition 35
Early studies of sign language acquisition 35
How do children acquire language? 36
Language acquisition by hearing children 36
Language acquisition by deaf children 38
Advising hearing parents of deaf children 41
Teaching and assessing British Sign Language 43
11
Sign language interpreters
12
Language and power
45
48
Suggestions for further reading 53
Answers for page 22 53
References 53
Acknowledgements 56
Associated study materials
Videos: As all the videos show aspects of British Sign Language and
communication with Deaf people, all provide useful background material for
this unit. However, Video Two, Sign Language, was produced In conlunction
with this unit, and this vldeo IS studied in detail in this part of the course.
Reader One, Article 5, 'Total Commitment to Total Communication',
Riki Kittel.
Reader One, Article 7, 'Deafness: the Treatment', Lorraine Fletcher.
Reader Two, Article 1.2, 'Everyone Here Spoke Sign Languare', Nora Groce.
Reader Two, Section 6, The Linguistic Perspective (reference is also made to
Section 2, parts of which were studied in connection with Unit 2).
Set Book: D. Miles, British Sign Language: A Beginner's Guide, pp. 15-26,
Chapter 3 (pp. 44-106).
Set Book: J. Kyle and B. Woll, Sign Language: The Study of Deaf People and
Their Language, pp. 48-57.
D251 Issues in Deafness
Unit l
Perspectives on Deafness: An Introduction
Block 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
Unit 4
Being Deaf
The Deaf Community
British Sign Language, Communication and Deafness
The Other Deaf Community?
Block 2
Unit 5
Unit 6
Unit 7
Deaf People in Hearing Worlds
Education and Deaf People: Learning to Communicate or
Communicating to Learn?
The Manufacture of Disadvantage
Whose Welfare?
Block 3
Unit 8
Unit 9
Unit 10
Constructing Deafness
The Social Construction of Deafness
Deaf People as a Minority Group: The Political Process
Deaf Futures
Readers
Reader One: Taylor, G. and Bishop, J. (eds) (1990) Being DeaF The
Experience of Deapess, London, Pinter Publishers.
Reader Two: Gregory, S. and Hartley, G.M. (eds) (1990) Constructing
Deafness, London, Plnter Publishers.
Set Books
Kyle, J. and Woll, B. (1985) Sign Language: The Study of Deaf People and
Their Language, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Miles, D. (1988) British Sign Language: A Beginner's Guide, London, BBC
Books (BBC Enterprises). With a chapter by Paddy Ladd.
Videotapes
Video One Sandra's Story: The History of a Deaf Family
Video Two Sign Language
Video Three Deaf People and Mental Health
Video Four Signs of Change: Politics and the Deaf Community
Aims
The aims of this unit are unusual in that they start by indicating an aim
which is not part of the unit. It is not intended to teach British Sign
Language (BSL), and those of you who have no knowledge of the language
are not expected to learn it, although in order to appreciate some of the
discussion you will need to become familiar with some of its features. A
section of the unit is set aside for this. Even if it were desirable that you
should learn British Sign Language by studying this unit, it would not be
possible, as language acquisition-particularly for a visual-gestural language
with no written form, such as BSL-requires contact with users of the
language.'
The aims of this unit are:
1 To explore the relationship between language and culture.
2 To describe some of the general features of languages.
3 To describe features of British Sign Language.
4 To examine the range and variety of language used by deaf people.
5 To show how British Sign Language is acquired by children and adults.
6 To examine the process of interpreting between British Sign Language
and English.
7 To look at the relationship between power and language and minority
groups.
Study guide
Because this unit is about British Sign Language, it draws heavily on video
material (the same material being used in different ways throughout),
Reader articles and Set Books. It also makes extensive use of activities which
are seen as an integral part of the work for this section of the course. This
means that studying this unit requires particularly careful planning. We
suggest that you go through the unit carefully, noting the activities
(particularly those involving another person) and the use of video material
and readings, so that you can plan your work to fit your circumstances. It
may be helpful, for example, to view all the video material first, or to leave
all the Reader articles to the end.
A suggested plan for study would be:
Week one
Review unit.
Study Sections 1-4, to gain or increase your understanding of BSL.
Week two
Study Sections 5-8, looking at misconceptions about sign language and sign
language as it is used.
Week three
Study Sections 9-12, looking at the acquisition of sign language, and
language and power. You should have time to review the unit at the end of
this week, perhaps by reviewing the video.
'If you do not know Brit~shSign Language but would like to learn it, the Study Skdls
and Resource Booklet will give you ideas on how you m ~ g h tpursue this.
1 Language and culture
You can cut off the fingers of deaf people and they will sign with
their arms, and you can cut off their arms and they will sign with
their shoulders.
(Reported by Hans Furth, 1973, in Deapess and Learning: A Psychosocial
Approach)
In the last unit the Deaf community and Deaf culture were described. One
of the main defining elements of Deaf culture is its language, which for the
British Deaf community is British Sign Language or BSL. Most definitions of
the Deaf community stress the importance of sharing a common language.
This is emphasized in the articles in Reader Two, Section 2 'Defining the
Deaf Community'. Deaf culture was described in Unit 2 partly in terms of
its stories, humour, games and traditions, all of which are interwoven with
the language of Deaf people-sign language
In all societies, language and culture are inextricably bound up together,
with each being a reflection of the other. The relationship between them
can be understood in two complementary ways: on the one hand the
language reflects and describes the culture in which it is used, while on the
other, and at the same time, it constructs that society. One way to
appreciate this is to draw an analogy with advertising. Television
commercials are often criticized for making people want the products
advertised-for creating a need. The advertiser's response is often to say that
they only reflect society, that they can only work because they show to
people images with which they can easily identify. We would want to say
that both processes are occurring together.
The power of language to reflect the society in which it is used and to
construct its reality is an important concept. Some languages talk of
concepts that would not be meaningful in others. Roy Harris gives the
following examples:
Most Europeans would be puzzled to know how to reply if asked the
question 'What is the word in your language for what people say on
Thursdays?' or 'What do you call the words spoken at night?' or 'What
do you call talk that took place a year ago?' But these questions would
make perfectly good sense to a Mayan Indian of Tenejapa, whose
language, Tzeltal, provides commonly used designations for all of
these. It is not that the European lacks the linguistic resources to
make up a translation such as 'Thursday talk' or 'nightwords'; but
rather that he (sic) would be at a loss to understand the point of
drawing such distinctions. It is not part of his (sic) concept of a
language that a language should provide you with Thursday talk or
night words, and if it does not do that then it need provide no
corresponding metalinguistic expressions either.
(Harris, 1980)
There is a sense in which the sharing of experience involves being able to
talk about the experience, and to give name to it. Virginia Woolf talks of
the difficulty of understanding and explaining pain:
English which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of
Lear has no words for the shiver or the headache . The merest
schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her
mind for her, but let the sufferer try to describe a pain in the head to
a doctor and language at once runs dry.
(Woolf, 1967)
In both these examples, language as the medium of expression can be seen
as reflecting the society in which it is used and, at the same time, as
constructing that reality by specifying what is or is not significant. Yet this
is not the whole story, for it presents a static view of language and culture
which does not account for change. It also does not recognize variations of
language use within a society or of the power relations these can represent.
Individuals experience society differently depending upon their status within
that society, for language also serves to describe and maintain power
relations within and between cultural groups. Feminists, for example, have
long argued that the male-centred language not only defines or describes a
male-dominated society, but also serves to maintain such power
relationships and to sustain the male-dominated culture.
There is a further way in which language is linked to culture in that it can
bind together a group of people and set them aside from the rest of the
population. Professional and occupational groups are often accused of using
jargon-particular forms of language which exclude others, and w h ~ c hserve
to maintain the group identity and set it apart. The Open University itself
has its own language of TMAs and D251 which can be incomprehensible to
the outsider. Likewise, the special language of Deaf people can unite Deaf
people, while at the same time setting them aside from hearing people. As
Barbara Kannapell says in writing about American Sign Language (ASL),
though she could equally well be writing about BSL:
ASL has a unifying function, since deaf people are unified by their
common language. But the use of ASL simultaneously separates deaf
people from the hearing world. So the two functions are different
perspectives on the same reality-one from inside the group which is
unified, and the other from outside. The group is separated from the
hearing world. This separatist function is a protection for deaf people
For example, we can talk about anything we want, right in the middle
of a crowd of hearing people. They are supposed not to understand us.
It is important to understand that ASL is the only thing we have that
belongs to deaf people completely. It is the only thing that has grown
out of the deaf group. Maybe we are afraid to share our language with
hearing people. Maybe our group identity will disappear once hearing
people know ASL.
(Kannapell, 1980)