History of Sign Languages

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Historical account of the manual alphabet of French sign language  - in decorative border top left Abbé de l'Epée , right Abbé Sicard

The history of sign languages begins in antiquity , as sign languages as well as spoken languages ​​have a long history. Plato , Augustine and Leonardo da Vinci already reported about signing deaf people. In the Jewish Talmud , marriage of deaf wives is mentioned in signs. The well-known history of modern sign languages ​​only began in the 18th century with the education of deaf children.

Beginnings

There must have always been certain relatively simple sign languages ​​that arose spontaneously and developed over a long period of time. Sign language developed wherever deaf people met. It grew out of simple pointing or pointing gestures, sketching replicas of objects with one or both hands and pantomime replicas of actions. With increasing volume, the sign characters also received a structuring sequence, a grammar.

Sign language systems that emerged in different places in different groups are not the same, but have similar structures. An obstacle to the even emergence and distribution was the scattering of only small groups of deaf people.

Sign languages ​​experienced a stabilizing development with the pedagogical care of deaf children, initially in privileged circles, for example by the monk Pedro Ponce de León in Spain, who around 1550 used signs from the monastery of San Salvador in Oña to teach deaf noble children.

Abbé de l'Epée

The founder of the first public school for deaf children was the clergyman Abbé de l'Epée in Paris in 1755 . He had seen the deaf there in the middle of the 18th century talking with their hands in the streets. The deaf bookbinder Pierre Desloges also reported on this in a small book “Observations” in 1779, how he had conversed with other deaf, untrained adults in gestures “about everything there is under the sun”. De l'Epée quickly realized that this language could form the basis for the upbringing of deaf children.

After founding his school for deaf children, French sign language developed under his direction from the "street signs" with the help of French grammar as an extension language . This sign language quickly spread and became popular. Towards the end of the 18th century there were 21 schools for deaf children, although some attempts were made to teach deaf children primarily spoken language.

Nonetheless, the children in orally- oriented schools used the time when the teachers could not keep an eye on them to converse with each other in sign language. In any case, the schools for deaf children were the places where sign language developed further or where it was banned again and again in the underground.

In 1816 the deaf graduate of the above-mentioned school in Paris and teacher Laurent Clerc met the American clergyman Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet at the same school . He traveled to England and France to research the upbringing and education for deaf children. Then Clerc decided to go to America with Gallaudet to take care of schooling for deaf children. After Clerc and Gallaudet founded the American Asylum for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut in 1817, the American Sign Language (ASL) was developed there. ASL quickly spread to other states in the United States and Canada. The first higher education institution for deaf students was established in Washington DC in 1864, with Edward Miner Gallaudet, the youngest son of Thomas H. Gallaudet, as president. It was later named Gallaudet College and then Gallaudet University in honor of Thomas H. Gallaudet . This institution owes the most extensive standardization of ASL in the whole of the USA and in English-speaking parts of Canada.

Setbacks

However, in the early 19th century, it became popular to educate deaf children to speak only. The so-called " oralists ", none of whom were deaf, fought sign language by all means. It was presented as "monkey language". This view led in 1880 to the decision at the Milan Congress of 1880 to generally ban sign language from teaching and only allow speaking. After that, sign language was banned in almost all schools in all countries. To this day, sign language has not regained the same position it had before. In France , the ban on signing in schools for deaf children was lifted by law in 1991.

Scientific research

William Stokoe

The educator and linguist Bernard Tervoort in the Netherlands had already emphasized the value of sign language for communication between deaf people in 1953, before William Stokoe , a hearing linguist at Gallaudet College, examined the structures of American sign language with the means of modern linguistics and in 1960 convincingly proved that sign language is in no way inferior to spoken language.

Since 1975 the German Sign Language (DGS) has been systematically researched by the linguist Siegmund Prillwitz .

Sign language is also being researched at universities in other European countries, particularly in Sweden and the UK.

Since 1977, the so-called “Blue Books” 'The Signs of the Deaf' have been published in Germany by the deaf educators Starcke, Maisch and Wisch.

Around 1982, the Institute for German Sign Language and Communication of the Deaf was established under the direction of Prillwitz .

Since around 1985, deaf people in Germany have become proud of their self-confidence thanks to their knowledge of the full value of their sign language.

In 1991, Henri Wittmann established a classification of French sign languages based on the research carried out by Anderson and Peterson in 1979 .

See also

literature

  • Hellmuth Starcke (text), Günter Maisch (photos): The signs of the deaf. A handbook, textbook and exercise book. 2nd, unchanged edition. Verlag Hörgeschädigte Kinder, Hamburg 1981 (text and learning book for German Sign Language (DGS)).
  • Nora Ellen Groce: Everyone spoke sign language here. Hereditary deafness on the island of Martha's Vineyard (=  International studies on sign language and the communication of the deaf , Volume 4). Signum-Verlag, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-927731-02-1 .
  • Harlan Lane: Hear with the soul. The life story of the deaf and mute Laurent Clerc and his struggle for the recognition of sign language. Unabridged edition. Dtv, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-423-11314-6 .
  • Susan Schaller: A life without words. A deaf and mute learns to understand language. Knaur, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-426-75002-3 .
  • Oliver Sacks : Mute voices. Journey into the world of the deaf. 7th edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-19198-9 .
  • Marina Ribeaud: Learning Sign Language. Part 1. With illustrations by Sonja Rörig. 1st edition. Fingershop.ch, Allschwil (Switzerland) 2011, ISBN 978-3-9523171-5-0 (with DVD; learning book for Swiss-German Sign Language (DSGS)).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wittmann, Henri 1991, Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement , in Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée , Vol. 10, No. 1, pages 215-288, online