Who are we talking about? What is the correct name for calling people who can’t hear? The correct term is “deaf people”: it is the most appropriate from a cultural and social point of view, but also from a physiological point of view.

Indeed, deaf people are not mute as has been thought in “popular beliefs”. They can speak just like anyone else, since the vocal apparatus is intact and functioning.

If some deaf people do not speak it could be because of two reasons: the first is that they don’t want to, they don’t feel pleasure in speaking as they can’t hear themselves; or, second, because in childhood the speech therapy path was not successful.

It is important to deconstruct existing stereotypes about sign language:

“Sign Language is universal”

Sign Language is NOT universal! That’s why we talk about Sign Languages. Like any oral language, Sign Languages vary in time, in space, depend on their specific community and have their own classification and family tree of their linguistic families. International Signs exist but they are not recognized as a Language.

“Sign Language is a pantomime”

Sign Languages are not a development of gestures used by hearing people. In fact, only few of them coincide in sign language. Signs are not a faithful representation of their meaning, they are as arbitrary as the words of all the languages in the world.

“Sign Language is unable to express abstract concepts”

People think that the vocabulary of Sign Languages can only be concrete, only related to real contexts. In reality, every concept can be expressed in signs. If these languages can appear “poor”, this happens because the contexts in which they were used have been few for too long.

“Sign Language has no grammar”

Sign Languages are not just a set of signs, they have a specific grammar, a system of rules for building phrases, as well as a phonology, a morphology, a syntax… Of course, Sign Languages’ grammar is different from oral languages’.

To conclude, we have to be aware about how we use such terms, how we call this language and how we talk about people who are in the Deaf community. The fact is that such concepts refer to important issues such as identity and dignity.

Sign Languages are real languages that constitute Deaf culture and Deaf identity, as well as oral languages from different countries are strictly part of the culture and the way of thinking and living.

To find out more about adapted foreign language learning resources based on artistic cultural heritage, visit the 4 Elements in art project website.

Source: Extract from Guidelines for making videos in SL – 4 Elements in Arts Project – IST (Istituto di Sordi di Torino)