Is There a Use for Signed English?

You are left out of the dinner table conversation. It is called mental isolation. While everyone else is talking and laughing, you are as far away as a lone Arab on a desert that stretches along every horizon…. You thirst for connection. You suffocate inside but you cannot tell anyone of this horrible feeling. You do not know how to. You get the impression nobody understands or cares…. You are not granted even the illusion of participation….

You are expected to spend fifteen years in the straitjacket of speech training and lipreading… your parents never bother to put in an hour a day to learn sign language or some part of it. One hour of twenty-four that can change a life time for you.
~Shanny Mow, quoted in 179n of Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf.

Signed English is not a language in itself. It is the transposition of a spoken language into sign, and as such can never be the native language of a deaf person. American Sign Language (ASL), on the other hand, is a complete signed language and is the native language of deaf people throughout the United States, most of Canada[1], and a few other countries as well. Yet listen-up.org claims that Pidgin Signed English "is probably the most widely used communication modality in the United States among deaf and hearing persons who work with them." Why should this be?

I'd never even heard of Signed English until recently, when I began a concerted effort to teach myself ASL with the help of Lifeprint.com (a fantastic resource, which I may say more about in a later post). I found mentions to Signed English on a number of the pages on this site. I had no idea why anyone would bother learning Signed English when they could learn a real sign language like ASL, and so I had little interest in finding out anything about it, until I came across the Day sign page. Here is how you sign "day" in ASL: Support the elbow of your dominant hand with your opposite hand, then sweep your hand into the crook of your other elbow, like the movement of a clock hand. Bill Vicars notes that the dominant hand can be flat or have the index finger pointing, but adds, "I don't recommend a 'D' hand[2], that is Signed English."

Finally, my curiosity was piqued. Whatever Signed English was, it had had enough of an impact that Lifeprint.com founder Bill Vicars felt the need to warn against making SE-like signs when signing ASL. That's when I decided to find out more about it.

I did a search for "signed english" and quickly found listen-up.org's comparison of the different signing systems. The page tries to adopt a neutral tone while discussing the options, but nevertheless displays a clear bias towards Signing Exact English (SEE), which sets itself apart by representing every English word and word ending. I imagine this makes it even more tedious and time-consuming to use than regular Signed English, but the site's author touts SEE as a way for the child to develop an expanded (English) vocabulary, and as a system that "may be more comfortable for English-speaking parents."

The page equally displays a bias against ASL[3]. What stood out for me was this statement: "ASL is used by many deaf in the United States, thus its use promotes assimilation into the Deaf Community."

Well geez... you say that like it's a bad thing.

This was my introduction to the curious notion that deaf people should be kept away from the deaf community. The word "assimilation" has a clearly negative connotation. But that's ridiculous. Does anyone propose that Italian people should be kept away from the Italian community, or that Black people should be rescued from falling into the clutches of the Black community?

In Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf, Oliver Sacks reveals that many hearing parents of deaf children have expressed to him their concern that their child will somehow be lost to them if it learns sign and becomes part of the deaf community (Sacks, 2000, 94n). They feel entitled to retain possession of their child, to exercise their influence on it and teach it their culture, and to that end, many of them attempt to deprive their child of sign while putting it through the intensive, years-long tutoring that is required to teach a deaf child to speak.

The irony is that through such actions, they will give their child ample reason to resent them, as shown in the quote above, perhaps helping to bring about more alienation from their child than the Deaf community and sign could ever accomplish.

Such fears are unfounded, of course. The Deaf Community is not The UnSeelie Court of the Fairies, looking to steal your child from you and put a changeling in its place. Your child's inclusion in another culture does not mean it is lost to you. Really, all children belong to a culture foreign to their parents anyway—the playground culture. And yet I have never heard of a parent fretting that they are losing their child to an alien world of clapping and skipping to rhymes with antisocial themes. (Really, what is that business about Tiny Tim dying with a bubble in his throat, and what does the lady with the alligator purse have to do with anything?)

There is, though, an interesting parallel with the fears that some people have about the gay community: that gay men are conspiring to convert their sons to the joys of homosexuality (so much more enticing and fun than straight sex, they seem to think), as if their sons would not become gay without this exposure.

I guess this shows that prejudice is prejudice, whether it is against gays or deaf. I don't think many hearing people realize that deaf discrimination exists. It may never have crossed their minds that the deaf could be an oppressed minority. I know it didn't cross mine until recently.

But they have been historically, and if things haven't changed substantially since Sacks wrote his book, then they still are. No deaf person, given a choice, would sign an imitation of a spoken language when they could sign a proper sign language. The proof of this is provided by Sacks, who indicates in Seeing Voices that children exposed only to Signed English and not to ASL will nevertheless produce their own true sign language[4]. They do this by dropping the sequential grammar inherent in Signed English and replacing it with a spatial grammar. The signs themselves are kept, but are used differently, in space, and the unnecessary components are dropped.

This is great news, because it means that even deaf children who are only permitted to learn Signed English and not a real sign language will still develop genuine signing capabilities. They will therefore be able to become fluent in ASL once they finally get a chance to learn it. They will not be deprived of a native language. That is the essential thing. Some deaf children are so deprived, because their deafness is not diagnosed early enough, or because their parents fear the deaf community and attempt to teach them to speak while avoiding any exposure to sign language at all.

This is a terrible thing to do to a human being. Everyone needs a native language. It should be a right enshrined in all constitutions and bills of rights. That it is not, is probably due to the fact that the issue does not come up except with children who were imprisoned in cellars by crazy parents, the severely mentally handicapped, and deaf people.

The window of opportunity for acquiring a native language is so small. According to Hearing Voices, a child who has not been exposed to a language before the age of five will probably never acquire the same fluency as someone who was so exposed, and if they only acquire a language after puberty, they probably won't acquire fluency in the language at all; it will always be a second language and will be an effort to use (Sacks, 2000, p65-66, 166n).

But the consequences of inadequate exposure to an appropriate language system before the age of five can be more dire than you might imagine. There is a difference between learning a second language when you have already acquired a first one, and attempting to learn any language when you never did acquire a native language during the critical period. A deaf child deprived of sign may even lack the concepts of language that the rest of us take for granted. Questions, for example, may be incomprehensible to such a child. Isabelle Rapin, quoted in Seeing Voices, described a boy who was unable to understand questions until they were rephrased as incomplete sentences (Sacks, 2000, pp. 45-46).

And while hearing parents might wish their deaf child's first language to be English, and English alone, this is not always possible, especially for the profoundly deaf child. To try and force the issue by denying sign is to gamble with the child's future, really the child's entire life.

It is somewhat difficult and unnatural even to discuss these issues in English, due to its built-in bias for spoken language. I want to use the term "mother tongue," which is the common expression and has a more poetic feel than "native language." Yet it is inappropriate, since signing makes little use of the tongue[5]. It might be more apropos to write "mother hand," except that then no one would know what I was talking about. This invisibility is what deaf people are up against.

Back to my point: Signed English turns out to have a use of a sort. It allows deaf people to have a native language, although in a roundabout sort of way. Of course, it would make more sense to make certain that your deaf child is taught real sign language (and to learn it yourself!), but in the event that hearing parents can't get past their surdophobia, Signed English may at least ensure that they do less damage than they might otherwise do.

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After writing my first draft of this piece, I worried I was being too dismissive of Signed English. Is it possible that, beyond serving as a second-best sign language for children of surdophobic parents, Signed English has a value of its own? One might imagine that it would facilitate learning spoken language more effectively than ASL, which being a separate language does not map exactly to English.

So I turned to Google Scholar, but I was unable to find a trace of evidence that deaf children taught Signed English are able to learn to speak and read English any better than deaf children taught ASL. The most relevant article I could find was probably "How Do Profoundly Deaf Children Learn to Read?" by Susan Goldin-Meadow and Rachel I. Mayberry, which finds that "knowing a language (even if it is not the language captured in print) appears to facilitate learning to read." Thus it seems that Signed English offers no special benefit over ASL or other signed languages. The biggest advantage of it that I can think of is the ability to speak while signing. That's not as easily done with ASL, which uses different word orders. So Shanny Mow's family could have helped him feel included at the dinner-table by signing SE along with their conversation—if they'd been so inclined. It sounds as if they weren't.

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1 Quebec has its own sign language. Back

2 "'D' hand" refers to making the 'D' shape with your hand, when fingerspelling. Back

3 I suppose any prejudice or insensitivity found on this site should come as no surprise given the odd choice of name: "Listen up!"—something a profoundly deaf person cannot possibly do. Back

4 "...James Paul Gee and Wendy Goodhart have shown dramatically that when deaf children are exposed to signed forms of English..., but not ASL, they 'tend to innovate ASL-like forms with little or no input in that language.'" (Sacks, 2000, p. 89). Back

5 Mind you, "native language" isn't really appropriate either, since the root of the word "language" is lingua, the Latin word for tongue. Back

Dumb Things People Say: Stop Grossing Me Out!

When I wrote my last word on this subject, Dumb Things People Say: The Mangling of Popular Expressions, I didn't anticipate that I would one day write a sequel. I should have. People do say an overabundance of stupid things, after all, and there is not one category of ill-conceived speech but several. This particular one puts the "gory" in "category."

WARNING: The following contains images of violence, as well as the most notorious and versatile four-letter word in the English language. If you have delicate sensibilities... then I don't know how you manage in modern society, and I sympathize. Oh, and you read on at your own risk.

You wouldn't expect to find an image of horrifying bloodiness in a discussion of the best science fiction and fantasy books of the year, would you? I certainly didn't. But in Genreville's blog post on the subject, Rose Fox states that Daryl Gregory's short story collection Unpossible "blew my head off and then dumped cold water down the bleeding stump of my neck. Fortunately that’s how I like it. "

No Rose, you wouldn't like that. I admit that once your head was actually off, you wouldn't mind the cold water being poured down your neck, because you'd be too dead to feel it or care one way or another. But I maintain that if somebody came at you with any instrument of decapitation, explosive or otherwise, you'd put up a vigorous argument, even if that somebody was as talented a writer as Daryl Gregory.

I'm normally a fan of Genreville, and I sincerely believe that that metaphor was not Rose Fox's finest moment.

Do people think about what they're saying? Do they picture in their minds the thing they are describing, really picture it in something other than an oh-look-Wile-E.-Cayote-is-alive-again-after-falling-off-that-cliff cartoonish sort of way? I'm sure they must not, because if they did, they would never post something like that on their blogs. They might say it in conversation—and be sorry an instant afterwards. But writing and posting takes more premeditation.

I can't help myself. When somebody talks of chopping off a head and pouring water down the stump, I immediately picture just that, and I don't enjoy it one bit. I have a vivid imagination. I know that not everybody does. It surprises me that somebody so lacking in that area that she can comfortably speak about pouring cold water down bloody neck-stumps, gets much out of reading novels. It's a wonderment.

As is the concept of skull-fucking. So many questions arise. Why would you want to? Where exactly would you insert your penis?* The ear hole? The eye socket? What sort of pleasure could you possibly get out of such an activity, other than the vengeful, twisted satisfaction of degrading your enemy's remains? And finally, just how much would you have to hate somebody to want to do this to them?†

Exotic as it sounds, skull-fucking has apparently become a part of the common discourse. I first encountered it maybe sixteen, seventeen years back. I was in a fit of pique over the bug-ridden unusability of a piece of Microsoft software (some things don't change). I don't remember what I typed into the search engine (this was pre-Google. Imagine! I think my favourite search engine at the time was Infoseek); probably something like "Microsoft sucks." Up came a link to, "Fucking the skull of Microsoft." Curiosity overcame repulsion, and I clicked. I was sorry I did. It was an illustration, you see. Since then, skull-fucking has become sufficiently socially acceptable that Jon Stewart sometimes mentions it in an offhand way on The Daily Show.

Likewise, Steven Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, often invites his interview guests to "rip me a new one." Considering that this is short for "rip me a new asshole," isn't it amazing that this expression has become an acceptable part of polite discourse? Just think about the implications. Think about what is involved. Unless you'd rather not. I think I'd rather not. It's much more horrible than skull-fucking, which, after all, can only take place once the victim is mercifully dead, probably for a long time (unless the perpetrator is so eager to begin the ritual that he uses artificial means to remove the flesh from the bones).

It seems to me that any culture in which such grotesqueries are so casually bandied about is one that has become extraordinarily numbed and hardened to images of violence. How did that happen? If, in fact, it happened. I'm sure some would argue that it's a normal part of the human condition. But this is a discussion worthy of a whole other blog post, one which I will probably write soon. For now, back to the topic at hand: things people say.

At my old job, my coworkers and I once got into a discussion about the internet acronym WTF. I probably don't have to tell you what this means, since you know the internet well or you wouldn't be reading this, but just in case (and because I like my naughty words typed out in full): it stands for What The Fuck. My coworker found it strange that the average internet user thinks it's perfectly polite to type this, even in forums where they'd never use the full four-letter word. He quoted a comedian as saying,"Now you've made me think of that word. I don't want that word in my head!"

I don't mind that word in my head, but there are any number of blood-soaked images I don't want in my head. I would appreciate it if the young people of today could keep them to themselves.

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* I don't mean to be sexist in my assumption that a penis must be involved in skull-fucking, and I hope I haven't offended any young women who want equality in the realm of doing disgusting things. It's simply that I believe—perhaps wrongly, and feel free to correct me if I err—that if a vulva rather than a penis was involved, the activity would be called something else. Skull-humping, perhaps. Back

† Actually, that's not my final question. My final question is, Is this something that a great novel or short story collection might do to Rose's skull after blowing it off its neck? Just asking. Back

Dumb Things People Say: the Mangling of Popular Expressions

Language is for communication. Isn't that obvious? It shouldn't even need to be said. But in fact, it is popular these days to use language for something other than communication. Marketingspeak is meant to lull the reader's brain to sleep with babble that means little, yet is somehow comforting. Meetingspeak and Scholarspeak are meant to make the speaker sound intelligent through the use of polysyllabic, imprecise words that do not make their meaning anywhere near as clear as shorter, simpler words would have done. It appears that as a society, we have largely abandoned the idea that our sentences should make sense. So when common expressions get mangled over time and become nonsense, who's to remark upon it? Other than me, that is.

The language is always changing, of course, and these changes do not always result in nonsense. The word "foundering" has largely been abandoned for the similar-sounding "floundering." Foundering made more sense, but floundering is not altogether nonsensical. One pictures a flounder, out of water, desperately flopping around. On the other hand, when people talk about "flaunting the rules," that's ridiculous, as if rules were a party dress a girl wanted to show off. (The correct word is "flout.")

I, for one, think that language should be used for communication, and hope to turn people back to the path of correct speech through the use of judicious mockery, and, where desirable, cartoons. Here we go.

I could care less

People used to say, "I couldn't care less." It meant they cared very little indeed, or not at all. Now they often say, "I could care less." This should mean that they care somewhat, since it would be possible for them to care less. It could even mean that they do care a fair bit. Yet it is meant to imply a lack of caring, just like the original expression, despite the fact that that's not what the words are saying. This is why people who use this expression tend to sound like idiots.

Party hardy

I am pretty sure that this expression started out as "party hearty," with a t. But in North America, t's tend to be pronounced as d's, so that "party hearty" and "party hardy" sound the same. And in a society where sense is not expected, it doesn't matter that "party hearty" means "to party with gusto" and "party hardy" means, one can only suppose, "to party in difficult, inclement conditions." So when the expression got written down, "party hardy," whimsically nonsensical and having one letter fewer, won the day.

One could argue that, strictly speaking, the expression should not even be "party hearty" but "party heartily." But that wouldn't rhyme. Mangling grammar a little in order to achieve a rhyme may be an acceptable exercise of poetic license, especially where common expressions are concerned.

Saying "literally" when you really mean "figuratively"

Global News did this. "The eyes of the world are literally on Iran," the broadcaster said. No, the eyes of the world are figuratively on Iran.

If worst comes to worst

If worst comes to worst, then nothing's changed, right? You started out with worst, and you ended with worst. Nothing's happened, so while things might be at their absolute worst, at least they haven't gotten any worse. Not that they could, when they started out at their very worst to begin with. You can't get worse than worst.

If worse comes to worst. That's the expression, OK people? Really, a better expression would be, "if bad comes to worse." Maybe that's what the expression used to be, and people didn't think that was strong enough. But at least, "if worse comes to worst" makes some kind of sense. Things got worse, and then they got as bad as they possibly could—the worst. "Worst comes to worst," on the other hand, makes no sense at all.

If you think [fill in blank], you've got another thing coming

Another thing! You've got a thing coming. I love that. It's so idiotic, it's good. And no less an intellectual than Susie Bright used this expression (in her article about Camille Paglia: "If you think Pat Buchanan calls up Hurricane Camille for strategy sessions, you've got another thing coming"*). Et tu, Susie! What is this thing, exactly, why is it coming, and where is it coming from? Is it not a mystery?

Think. You've got another think coming. Doesn't that make more sense? Of course it does. So do, please. Think before you speak. Ask yourself if what you are about to say makes sense. Think. We'll all be better off for it.

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* "Camille Anonymous," San Francisco Review of Books (January/February 1993).