Is Sign Language a Universal Language?
07 April 2005
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There are two widespread myths about sign languages. One is that they aren't languages at all and the second is that signs are a universal language. That any signer can understand all signers anywhere in the world. Both ideas are false.
It's easy to see why you might ask if sign languages aren't really languages -- they're so different from what we often call "tongues". They have to be seen rather than heard. And some signs look like what they represent, making them easy to dismiss as just gestures. But in 1960, the first scientific description of American Sign Language (commonly called ASL) was done at Gallaudet -- the only liberal arts university for deaf people. And the question was totally resolved. William Stokoe showed that -- except for sound -- sign languages have all the linguistic features that spoken languages have.
A word in spoken language, of course, is made up of sounds, made with your mouth and tongue. In ASL, the components of a word can include how you shape our hand, where you place it, and how you move it. Sign languages have complex grammars, so that words can be strung together into sentences, and sentences into stories. With signs you can discuss any topic, from concrete to abstract, from street slang to physics. And if you have any doubt, think about public events you've seen recently. After watching a signer interpret the State of the Union or a commencement address, could anyone still believe it's not a language?
As for the second myth, it's not as well known that sign languages vary -- just as spoken languages do. Whenever groups of people are separated by time and space, you get separate languages, or at least separate dialects. This is as true for sign as it is for spoken languages. Yes, there are dialects of ASL. It can vary geographically, like American English does, and across social groups. And sign language varies internationally too. The signs used in Italy aren't readily understood by a signer using ASL, and vice versa. In ASL the sign for TREE is made by holding up your hand with your fingers spread. The Danish version is done by tracing the outline of a tree with your palms. Both are based on the same image, a classic leafy tree, but the signs that result are quite different.
Whenever people can't talk to or hear one another, they turn to signing of some kind. Think about hearing adults who need to talk to each other in signs, like monks who have taken vows of silence. Or widows from certain Australian Aboriginal groups expected not to speak during a long period of mourning. In those cases, the sign language invented reflects the grammar of the spoken languages of the adults. But that's an exception. In most cases, sign languages aren't based on the spoken language in the culture around them. If you still think they are, you'll be shocked to learn that signers of ASL don't understand users of British sign language. And British signers don't understand ASL -- even though both swim in a sea of English.
There are at least a half million users of ASL in the U.S., and possibly as many as 2 million. It's routinely taught in schools across the country, and all 50 states recognize it in some way. There are said to be 147 colleges and universities in which the study of ASL can be used for the university's language requirement.
It's really an amazing language system. And according to hearing students who have learned it, communicating in "sign" can give you a totally different perspective on the world -- and an understanding of how non-hearing people perceive it. It opens a window to a different culture. So the next time you think about learning a new language, think about signs.
That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Dr. Leila Monahan in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. If you'd like to ask a question about languages, go to our website at www.cofc.edu/linguist. In the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.