Forbidden signs : American culture and the campaign against sign language

The Resource Forbidden signs : American culture and the campaign against sign language

Label

Forbidden signs : American culture and the campaign against sign language

Title remainder

American culture and the campaign against sign language

Statement of responsibility

Douglas C. Baynton

Language

eng

Summary

Forbidden Signs explores American culture from the mid-nineteenth century to 1920 through the lens of one striking episode: the campaign led by Alexander Graham Bell and other prominent Americans to suppress the use of sign language among deaf people. The metaphors and images used to describe the deaf - outsiders; beings of silence, innocence, and mystery; users of a language alternately seen as ancient and noble or primitive and animal-like - offer a unique perspective for examining American thought and culture
The debate over sign language invoked such fundamental questions as what distinguished Americans from non-Americans, civilized people from "savages," humans from animals, men from women, the natural from the unnatural, and the normal from the abnormal. An advocate of the return to sign language, Baynton finds that although the grounds of the debate have shifted, educators still base decisions on many of the same metaphors and images that led to the misguided efforts to eradicate sign language. Ending with a discussion of recent changes in the images of deafness and sign language and a critique of the current state of deaf education, Forbidden Signs will benefit historians and those interested in the study of gesture and human movement, disability, sign language, and the American deaf community

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

419

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

HV2471

LC item number

.B39 1996

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Context

Context of Forbidden signs : American culture and the campaign against sign language

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Context