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!
The signs made by congenital and uninstructed deaf-mutes to
be now considered are either strictly natural signs,
invented by themselves, or those of a colloquial character
used by such mutes where associated. The accidental or
merely suggestive signs peculiar to families, one member of
which happens to be a mute, are too much affected by the
other members of the family to be of certain value. Those,
again, which are taught in institutions have become
conventional and designedly adapted to translation into oral
speech, although founded by the abbé de l'Épée, followed by
the abbé Sicard, in the natural signs first above mentioned.
A great change has doubtless occurred in the estimation of
congenital deaf-mutes since the Justinian Code, which
consigned them forever to legal infancy, as incapable of
intelligence, and classed them with the insane. Yet most
modern writers, for instance Archbishop Whately and Max
Müller, have declared that deaf-mutes could not think until
after having been instructed. It cannot be denied that the
deaf-mute thinks after his instruction either in the
ordinary gesture signs or in the finger alphabet, or more
lately in artificial speech. By this instruction he has
become master of a highly-developed language, such as
English or French, which he can read, write, and actually
talk, but that foreign language he has obtained through the
medium of signs. This is a conclusive proof that signs
constitute a real language and one which admits of thought,
for no one can learn a foreign language unless he had some
language of his own, whether by descent or acquisition, by
which it could be translated, and such translation into the
new language could not even be commenced unless the mind had
been already in action and intelligently using the original
language for that purpose. In fact the use by deaf-mutes of
signs originating in themselves exhibits a creative action
of mind and innate faculty of expression beyond that of
ordinary speakers who acquired language without conscious
effort. The thanks of students, both of philology and
psychology, are due to Prof. Samuel Porter, of the National
Deaf Mute College, for his response to the question, "Is
thought possible without language?" published in the
Princeton Review for January, 1880.
With regard to the sounds uttered by deaf-mutes, the same
explanation of heredity may be made as above, regarding the
words invented by young children. Congenital deaf-mutes at
first make the same sounds as hearing children of the same
age, and, often being susceptible to vibrations of the air,
are not suspected of being deaf. When that affliction is
ascertained to exist, all oral utterances from the deaf-mute
are habitually repressed by the parents.
This site includes some historical
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
