The Evolution of Sign Language
Sign language, which utilises manual communication and body language rather than sounds to convey meaning, has likely been used by every culture throughout history in which deafness has existed. The earliest written record of sign language in the West appeared in Plato’s 5th century BC dialogue Cratylus, in a part where Socrates mentions deaf people making signs using body parts such as the hands and head. But the standardization of sign language occurred relatively recently in world history, having its roots in 16th century European education.
What we know of this history began in the 1500s when Italian mathematician and physician Geromino Cardano made the discovery that deaf persons could be educated using written word. Prior to this, the common assumption—in part attributed to Aristotelian pedagogical philosophy—was that education of the deaf was impossible, relegating persons with the condition to lives of dependency upon family members and to significant social marginalization. However, because Cardano had a deaf son, he devoted his time and energy to developing educational methods that would give deaf persons the opportunity to participate as fully active members of society.
At around the same time, a Spanish monk named Pedro Ponce de Leon was gaining a reputation for his methods of teaching deaf children in Spain. He established a school for the deaf at San Salvador Monastery, which primarily catered to children of wealthy aristocrats, and there developed a manual alphabet that would allow students who mastered it to spell out words letter by letter. His methods were taken up and improved by Spanish priest Juan Pablo de Bonet, whose manual alphabet system corresponding to different sounds of speech was the first widely recognised system in deaf history.
Over in France, the standardization of sign language had a later start. Although the deaf in France had already been using localised forms of sign language for many years—as observed by deaf author Pierre Desloges in his 1779 book Observations of a Deaf-Mute—it was Abbe de L’Epee who developed what would become the national standard. A French Catholic priest in Paris, de L’Epee, also known as the “Father of the Deaf,” established the first social and religious association for deaf people in 1750. He then went on to found the first free public deaf school in 1771 called the National Institute for Deaf-Mutes. The school attracted deaf children from all across France, giving de L’Epee an opportunity to study the various local forms of sign language and incorporate them into a system that is now known as Old French Sign Language, which is the origin for contemporary forms of sign language in France and other Western countries.
Due to the proliferation of sign language systems and teaching methodologies in Europe, an American minister named Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet traveled from America to Europe in the early 1800s to study this new trend. Although distinguishable sign language systems were already used in places such as Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts where hereditary deafness had become commonplace from the 17th century onwards, there wasn’t enough expertise in America yet to formulate a standardised, teachable system for the rest of the country. For that reason, Gallaudet decided to spend some time in England and France learning from masters such as Abbe Sicard.
After a few years he returned to America and co-founded the American School for the Deaf in 1817 in Hartford Connecticut with Larent Clerc and Jean Massieu, both deaf students of Sicard. The school combined signs from French Sign Language with local variations in America to create the standardized American Sign Language that is now one of the most comprehensive sign languages in the world. Gallaudet’s work was carried on by his son Edward, who in 1864 founded Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a college for the deaf and hard of hearing that offers degree programs to more than 1,500 students each year.
The influence that the standardization of American Sign Language has had worldwide is considerable. In North America, of course, the language has been adopted by local and national agencies, with an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 signers of American Sign Language in the united States and Canada alone. But with the major role that America plays on the world stage in the era of globalisation, as well as the significant influence that American deaf organisations have had on promoting sign language in developing countries, American Sign Language has become the international lingua franca from among the 130 known standardised sign languages worldwide. For better or worse, American Sign Language has assured its place as the most prominent standardised sign language of our time, and thus will set the standards for the evolution of sign language in coming centuries.