Is Sign Language a Language?

[Angus B. Grieve-Smith]

On Sat, 3 May 2003, Philocophus wrote:

> At present I am currently working on a project funded by the British
> Government to create a higher exam course in Deaf History and one of the
> most important elements in Deaf History, is of course language. In my
> quest to ensure that I obtain professional confirmation that sign
> language is indeed and unarguably a language, I encountered one lady,
> copies of whose correspondences with me I attach here.

        Wow!  Did Stokoe kill this woman's family or something?  Where did
she get this much venom?  She's clearly made her mind up based on a whole
lot of outdated theories, and looks like she'll be very difficult to
convince.

        Does she have some authority to block recognition of BSL at some
level?  If so, I'd want to find out how such a closed-minded person got
into a position of power (not that I'm surprised).  If she just wants to
vent, then you two can amuse yourselves for years this way.

        I feel pretty comfortable with the idea that signed languages are
languages, but I don't think it's very productive to quibble over
terminology.  From a practical point of view, I feel that:

- signed languages are an awful lot like spoken languages
- it is very difficult for the vast majority of Deaf people to gain
fluency in a spoken language and have a life as well
- Deaf education is a lot like bilingual education
- converting from a signed language to a spoken language via computer is
an awful lot like machine translation

        The two kinds of languages clearly have differences, but the
similarities are very important, for purely practical reasons.

                                        -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
                                        Linguistics Department
                                        University of New Mexico
                                        grvsmth at unm.edu
                                        grvsmth at panix.com