While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Sign language, being the
mother utterance of nature, poetically
styled by Lamartine the visible attitudes of
the soul, is superior to all others in that
it permits every one to find in nature an
image to express his thoughts on the most
needful matters intelligently to any other
person. The direct or substantial natural
analogy peculiar to it prevents a confusion
of ideas. It is to some extent possible to
use words without understanding them which
yet may be understood by those addressed,
but it is hardly possible to use signs
without full comprehension of them. Separate
words may also be comprehended by persons
hearing them without the whole connected
sense of the words taken together being
caught, but signs are more intimately
connected. Even those most appropriate will
not be understood if the subject is beyond
the comprehension of their beholders. They
would be as unintelligible as the wild
clicks of his instrument, in an electric
storm, would be to the telegrapher, or as
the semaphore, driven by wind, to the
signalist. In oral speech even onomatopes
are arbitrary, the most strictly natural
sounds striking the ear of different
individuals and nations in a manner wholly
diverse. The instances given by Sayce are in
point. Exactly the same sound was intended
to be reproduced in the "bilbit
amphora" of Nævius, the "glut glut
murmurat unda sonans" of the Latin
Anthology, and the "puls" of Varro.
The Persian "bulbul," the "jugjug"
of Gascoigne, and the "whitwhit" of
others are all attempts at imitating the
note of the nightingale. Successful signs
must have a much closer analogy and
establish, a consensus between the
talkers far beyond that produced by the mere
sound of words.
Gestures, in the degree of their pantomimic
character, excel in graphic and dramatic
effect applied to narrative and to
rhetorical exhibition, and beyond any other
mode of description give the force of
reality. Speech, when highly cultivated, is
better adapted to generalization and
abstraction; therefore to logic and
metaphysics. The latter must ever
henceforth, be the superior in formulating
thoughts. Some of the enthusiasts in signs
have contended that this unfavorable
distinction is not from any inherent
incapability, but because their employment
has not been continued unto perfection, and
that if they had been elaborated by the
secular labor devoted to spoken language
they might in resources and distinctiveness
have exceeded many forms of the latter.
Gallaudet, Peet, and others maybe right in
asserting that man could by his arms, hands,
and fingers, with facial and bodily
accentuation, express any idea that could be
conveyed by words.
The combinations which can be made with
corporeal signs are infinite. It has been
before argued that a high degree of culture
might have been attained by man without
articulate speech and it is but a further
step in the reasoning to conclude that if
articulate speech had not been possessed or
acquired, necessity would have developed
gesture language to a degree far beyond any
known exhibition of it. The continually
advancing civilization and continually
increasing intercourse of countless ages has
perfected oral speech, and as both,
civilization and intercourse were possible
with signs alone it is to be supposed that
they would have advanced in some
corresponding manner. But as sign language
has been chiefly used during historic time
either as a scaffolding around a more
valuable structure to be thrown aside when
the latter was completed, or as an
occasional substitute, such development was
not to be expected.
The process of forming signs to express
abstract ideas is only a variant from that
of oral speech, in which the words for the
most abstract ideas, such as law, virtue,
infinitude, and immortality, are shown by
Max Müller to have been derived and deduced,
that is, abstracted, from sensuous
impressions. In the use of signs the
countenance and manner as well as the tenor
decide whether objects themselves are
intended, or the forms, positions,
qualities, and motions of other objects
which are suggested, and signs for moral and
intellectual ideas, founded on analogies,
are common all over the world as well as
among deaf-mutes. Concepts of the intangible
and invisible are only learned through
percepts of tangible and visible objects,
whether finally expressed to the eye or to
the ear, in terms of sight or of sound.
Sign language is so faithful to nature, and
so essentially living in its expression,
that it is not probable that it will ever
die. It may become disused, but will revert.
Its elements are ever natural and universal,
by recurring to which the less natural signs
adopted dialectically or for expedition can
always, with, some circumlocution, be
explained. This power of interpreting itself
is a peculiar advantage, for spoken
languages, unless explained by gestures or
indications, can only be interpreted by
means of some other spoken language. When
highly cultivated, its rapidity on familiar
subjects exceeds that of speech and
approaches to that of thought itself. This
statement may be startling to those who only
notice that a selected spoken word may
convey in an instant a meaning for which the
motions of even an expert in signs may
require a much longer time, but it must be
considered that oral speech is now wholly
conventional, and that with the similar
development of sign language conventional
expressions with hands and body could be
made more quickly than with the vocal
organs, because more organs could be worked
at once. Without such supposed development
the habitual communication between
deaf-mutes and among Indians using signs is
perhaps as rapid as between the ignorant
class of speakers upon the same subjects,
and in many instances the signs would win at
a trial of speed. At the same time it must
be admitted that great increase in rapidity
is chiefly obtained by the system of
preconcerted abbreviations, before
explained, and by the adoption of arbitrary
forms, in which naturalness is sacrificed
and conventionality established, as has been
the case with all spoken languages in the
degree in which they have become copious and
convenient.
There is another characteristic of the
gesture speech that, though it cannot be
resorted to in the dark, nor where the
attention of the person addressed has not
been otherwise attracted, it has the
countervailing benefit of use when the voice
could not be employed. This may be an
advantage at a distance which the eye can
reach, but not the ear, and still more
frequently when silence or secrecy is
desired. Dalgarno recommends it for use in
the presence of great people, who ought not
to be disturbed, and curiously enough
"Disappearing Mist," the Iroquois chief,
speaks of the former extensive use of signs
in his tribe by women and boys as a mark of
respect to warriors and elders, their
voices, in the good old days, not being
uplifted in the presence of the latter. The
decay of that wholesome state of discipline,
he thinks, accounts partly for the
disappearance of the use of signs among the
modern impudent youth and the dusky
claimants of woman's rights.
An instance of the additional power gained
to a speaker of ordinary language by the use
of signs, impressed the writer while
dictating to two amanuenses at the same
moment, to the one by signs and the other by
words, on different subjects, a practice
which would have enabled Cæsar to surpass
his celebrated feat. It would also be easy
to talk to a deaf and blind man at once, the
latter being addressed by the voice and the
former in signs.
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materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or
language of a particular period or place. These items are presented as
part of the historical record and should not be interpreted to mean that
the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes implied.
Sign Language
Among North American Indians Compared with
that Among Other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes,
1881
