Myth: Signs are Glorified Gestures

What is a gesture? By definition, a gesture is the spontaneous movement of the hands and body which expresses a concept in irregular and imprecise fashion. Each of us uses gestures as an accompaniment to speech, although we are often unaware of our gesturing. In some cultures, gesture systems are highly developed and speakers quite consciously accompany their speech with arm and body movements. Whatever the role of gesture in the culture, gestures vary from speaker to speaker and on different occasions vary even for the same speaker.

Describing signs as glorified gestures however, indicates a serious misconception. To a person unfamiliar with ASL, signs may appear to consist of random hand and body movements accompanied by various facial expressions. The ability to separate the connected flow of signs into its individual components develops after introduction to the language. The same process is identifiable in spoken languages. The speech sounds of a language are noises produced by the speech organs. These noises are separated into meaningful words, phrases, and sentences, only if one knows the particular language.

Man can produce an infinite variety of vocal sounds, but each spoken language has a unique selection of fewer than sixty sounds. Each language also has a particular way of combining them into words and larger meaningful units. These sounds - consonants and vowels - are combined according to rules which specify the possible combinations for a particular language. A possible combination in English is br as in the word brick, or ts as in cats, but bn does not occur. Note also that no English word ends in br or begins with ts. However, borrowed words sometimes violate these rules. Consider the words tse-tse fly and tsimmes.

In addition to these word-formation rules, other rules determine subtle changes that take place when certain sounds occur together. For example, the English negative prefix "in-" takes different forms depending on the sound that follows: invariable, impossible, illegal, irresponsible. The rules that specify the possible combinations of sounds in a particular language are unstated agreements that native speakers apply, even though they may not be consciously aware of them. These rules are part of the structure of the language analyzed and described by linguists. Every person who grew up speaking a particular language knows the rules of his language at an unconscious level, can use them correctly, and also recognizes when they are not being used correctly - by a foreigner, for example. However, the rules are so complex that to date, linguists have not been able to write down all the rules of a single language. The complexity of the rules can be illustrated by the fact that all attempts to use computers for linguistic analysis, for the translation of foreign languages, and for the transcription of spoken language into a written form have thus far achieved only very limited results.

Nor are the rules limited to the sounds of a language. Each language has a unique set of rules that specifies how words are formed, combined, and interpreted. Generally, people are unable to state the rules, but this does not mean they do not know them. Their consistent use of the rules in everyday conversation shows this and provides for a ready-made environment for language learning in children. In every society, children acquire - without formal training - the rules for creating and comprehending an infinite set of sentences by observing how adults and older children communicate around them.

In spite of their differences, languages share many important features. All languages have similar grammatical categories, such as nouns and verbs. Every language has the means for indicating time, for forming questions, or negating statements, and so on. All languages are equally complex and capable of expressing any idea. A language which appears simple in some respects is likely to be more complex in others. For example, while English has a relatively simple grammar, in comparison to Greek and Finnish, it contains a very large number of expressions whose meanings cannot be determined by their individual parts. Consider the phrase fall in (meaning to line up) or the phrase to kick the bucket (meaning to die). Phrases of this kind are known as idiomatic expressions. It is easy to understand the difficulty a foreigner faces in attempting to master idiomatic expressions in English, despite its so-called "simple" grammar.

Sign languages are of course different from spoken languages because the former make use of the visual channel and the latter the auditory channel. However, linguists who study ASL have determined that signs are structured movements in the same way that spoken words are structured sounds. Specific rules apply within the American Sign Language and are unconsciously known by ASL users. Most signs are made in a limited area extending from the top the head to just below the waist; the signing space is limited on the sides so as to form an imaginary square with the top and bottom.

Just as some people speak in a softer or louder voice, some signers use a larger area of the signing space than others. During a sign conversation, the "listener" watches the signer's face, usually maintaining eye contact. Signs made on or near the face tend to be small and most use only one hand. When the signs are made further away from the face, often the two hands perform the same movement with the same handshape.

These patterns conform to our ability to perceive the signing space while retaining eye contact. However, neither pattern is part of the signer's awareness. This is also true for the conventions of English word formation which are not part of the consciousness of speakers of English.

In spite of the difference of channels, linguists find striking similarities between the structure of spoken and sign languages. Signs are made by combining simultaneously handshapes, orientation of the palms, movements of the hand(s), and their locations on or near the body. ASL has approximately 18 handshapes, 12 locations, and 23 types of movements. The exact number varies in the same way that the number of vowels in spoken English varies, depending on the dialect.

There are formational rules which specify the possible combinations for signs in ASL. Combinations which violate the rules are considered to be impossible ASL signs, although they may be combinations that occur in other sign languages. These rules are of the same type which determine what combinations of vowels and consonants are possible English words, thereby excluding other combinations such as rbiatp, for example.

In ASL, signs which are made with both hands moving independently must have identical handshapes and movements as in MEET, BECOME, and HOUSE.

For signs which have nonidentical handshapes, one hand serves as a base and usually remains stationary while the other executes the movement, as in WEEK, FULL, THAT and SITUATION. The moving hand is normally the dominant hand - the right hand for many signers (or the left hand for left-handed individuals). Of all the different possible handshapes in ASL, only 6 normally occur as the base hand of those signs made with two different handshapes. Naturally, as with spoken languages, there are a few exceptions to the rules.

Experimental and historical evidence shows that in the brain, signs, like words, are processed according to their structure. If we ask hearing people to listen to and repeat a list of six or seven unrelated words, their errors in remembering will be indicated by words that are similar in sound (structure) to the words actually presented to them. For example, they make substitutions like: means for beans, cat for cab, and coat for coke.

WORLD and YEAR share structural similarities in sign language. A signer would be unlikely to substitute WORD for WORLD.

In a study with deaf users of ASL, subjects were asked to remember lists of signs that are translations for these words. Their mistakes were signs whose structures are like the signs presented in the original list. The signer's errors, when they occurred, are neither concept-related nor sound-related. In other words, deaf people are not likely to replace WORLD with WORD, nor EGG with LEG. Rather, signers substituted WORLD for YEAR, STOCKINGS for STAR, and EGG for CHAIR. If signs were in fact glorified gestures, that is spontaneous and unstructured mimed descriptions, one would expect the subjects of these experiments to replace signs they had forgotten by other signs for similar objects, such as SHOE for BOOTS, and FLOOR for GROUND. The evidence from these experiments does not support this assumption.

The handshape and movement needed to make the signs STARS and STOCKINGS are identical. The difference between the signs is the hand placement relative to the body.		EGG and LEG are structurally related in English, but not in ASL. A signer would be more likely to substitute EGG for CHAIR in ASL because their handshapes and placement are structurally similar.

Each pair of signs represents similar objects. Deaf signers do not make substitutions of these signs for each other.

Looking Back

Using old sign language dictionaries and films made by the National Association of the Deaf in 1913, researchers have compared present day ASL with earlier stages of the language. Regular patterns of change have been observed and described by linguists. For example, some signs which used to be made on the left elbow - like SUPPORT and HELP - are now made on the left hand. In some geographical areas and in some age groups these signs are still made in the older way. Regional, social, racial, and sexual variation in ASL is distributed in regular patterns, similar to the patterns observed in English (for example, a New York accent, teenage slang, or a style for reading out loud from a prepared text).

Although space limitations restrict a lengthy discussion of the investigations carried out thus far in the historical development of sign languages, it is important to note a few of the general conclusions resulting from these studies:

• The changes from history are not random and sporadic, but can be grouped into regular patterns.
• The same type of historical rules which modify the form of spoken words, also change the physical form of signs.

The regularity of patterns of historical change in signs, together with the other evidence described above, has led linguists to conclude that signs are highly structured symbols. Further, signs are verbal symbols because, like spoken or written words, they represent concepts. Any fluent ASL signer is a verbal individual, whether or not he has complete knowledge of a spoken language. As we know from our own experience, fluency in one language does not guarantee fluency in a second language. In the past, however, a deaf person who was fluent in ASL, but not fluent in English was identified as low-verbal by some individuals. This is as inappropriate as applying that same label to a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences simply because he does not know English!