Esperanto is designed to allow communication between speakers who don’t share a native language, and it works so well that many marriages result in which Esperanto is the only common language spoken in the home. Children growing up in these environments end up speaking three languages natively: Esperanto and the native languages of both parents.

For more info, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers

Kentron, this is an interesting debate in itself. Deaf people have spent many hours at school focussing on speech and using their hearing skills that they have (with amplication through hearing aids) or after having Cochlear Implants and using other equipment.

It depends on the level of ‘residual’ hearing and some people may be able to use what they have to learn to speak and use the hearing they have. But they may still rely on lip-reading and may miss out on conversations. If you google deaf awareness and have a look at some of the issues you will get to know more about this area.

Additionally you will read that Deaf BSL users (BSL in Britain – other sign languages in other countries just as there are other spoken languages) choose to communicate through BSL (British Sign Language) and that they belong to a linguistic and cultural minority.

There is plenty of reading material free on the web I don’t claim to be an expert in these areas, but I have some experience and knowledge. However, there are authors out there with vast knowledge and they have done much research. It would be worth having a look at

Surely the choice of speech versus sign language is only afforded to those with hearing? I feel like I’m missing something here.

With all due respect, if you need to ask ‘Why?’ would you read any such article with and open mind!?

It is mostly (in my experience) those who do not have any ‘disability’ (or haven’t worked/met people who have a disability) that do not understand why inclusion is a Utopia. However, it is achievable with the right attitudes. With the right attitudes many things are possible.

Disappointly, just today, I went into a place that is commented upon for its brilliance in accepting diversity and inclusion and a person in a wheelchair could use all the facilities in the disabled toilet, except the paper towels that were at standing height!

We should aim for an ‘inclusive’ society, not an ‘integrated’ one.

Leaving aside the specific question of the deaf (or Deaf or DEAF- see my comment [32] above) why should this be our goal? I can’t speak for the rest of the Conspirators, of course, but I think this would make a very interesting article in its own right.

It’s a preference – there are choices. Some people communicate through lip-reading with hearing people who have an awareness of communicating with deaf people who use English. Some Deaf people use sign language as a ‘preference’ because that is their linguistic choice and part of who they are culturally. Communicating in a room where everyone signs is more inclusive than one where there is a deaf person who communicates through lip-reading and English. There are many books and articles to read about Deaf culture. When we (hearing and Deaf) all communicate through BSL it is an inclusive environment. This is a different experience to walking into a room with only speech being used.

@ 42

My Deaf friends do not feel they miss out on things. They feel whole. Some say that you can’t miss something you never had. It does seem to make a difference (in terms of feeling positive or negative about things) if a person is born deaf or loses their hearing, if there are others in your family who are deaf, or what language a deaf person uses. It would be interesting to know what it is that you feel you can not do. I know so many positive d/Deaf role-models who work with other people (eg children in schools) demonstrating that d/Deaf people can and do succeed in many areas of life. Choices are indeed limited by society, but that is not the fault of the individual. We should aim for an ‘inclusive’ society, not an ‘integrated’ one.

Just because it isn’t negative doesn’t mean it’s positive. How much a situation is a negative is down to the individual.

Is a D/deaf person communicating through sign language really a choice of preference and not necessity?

Information would not be put into another written format. It would be interpreted into British Sign Language and put onto DVD/Video recording. There are BSL clips on the internet, such as the recently published information regarding Swine Flu – that was put into BSL too.

@25

It’s very much about perception. There is confusion because not everyone knows the difference between deaf and Deaf. One is a group of people who use English to communicate and have a hearing loss, whilst others communicate through their preferred language of BSL. It’s the latter that do not consider themselves to have a disability, but are in fact disabled by societal barriers and attitudes.

Sign languages generate themselves in an absence of spoken communication in the same way that creoles will be generated in the absence of a shared spoken tongue among hearing communities. They are conceptually rich and syntactically consistant; they are not simply an alternative modality of the parent ‘tongue’.

Unless you define ‘language’ entirely in terms of spoken communication I don’t see that you can exclude signed language.

And this is an entirely seperate matter from whether deafness itself is a disability or not.

(And sign language itself is not PC: there are signs for ethnic minorities which be frowned upon if spoken analogues were used, and common visual puns – such as the simple shift between the signs for ‘football’ and ‘disabled’ – which show users distancing themselves from those they feel to be less than themselves.)

This whole thread is claptrap.

Are you suggesting that the loss of my hearing is a “positive situation” for me? It self -evidently makes me less able to do a number of things and entirely incapable of doing some others. In that sense, deafness does make me a lesser person though of course only a fool would account for it in an overall assessment of my human worth..

Calling a visual method of communication a “language” does nothing to improve the situation or indeed how aural impairment is perceived by others.

This whole thread is claptrap.

Are you suggesting that the loss of my hearing is a “positive situation” for me? It self -evidently makes me less able to do a number of things and entirely incapable of doing some others. In that sense, deafness does make me a lesser person though of course only a fool would account for it in an overall assessment of my human worth..

Calling a visual method of communication a “language” does nothing to improve the situation or indeed how aural impairment is perceived by others.

Not in general. Specifically, BSL isn’t dependent on English, that is to say there isn’t the close one-to-one relationship that you’d expect if they were just different modalities of the same language (the way spoken English and written English *are* different modalities of the same language).

You’re perhaps confusing it with fingerspelling, which is merely a different modality of a written language.

@18: Just so I don’t sound like a complete arsehole, I suppose I ought to make clear that I’m fascinated by what you’ve been saying here about signing. Linguistics isn’t my thing at all – it’s interesting to see where my intuitions need examination.

Wikipedia is your friend

People want status, indeed they are genetically programmed to want it — for humans to chase after status is as instinctive as for cats to chase after mice.

“Disabled” by definition means not being able to do things, and status is generally tied in with being able to do things — in your example being able to play football well enough that people will pay you £50k a week to do it.

So there’s probably always going to be some extent to which disabled people will tend to have lower status.

That’s a rather misleading use of words. “SignLanguage” isn’t a langauge any more than “Spoken Language” is a language. Particular sign languages, such as BSL, *are* languages, in exactly the same sense that particular spoken languages,. such as English, as languages — that is to say they have all the complex features of syntax and vocabulary that linguists recgnise in language.

A considerable body of reasearch in cognitive and social psychology shows that concepts
i.e “Deafness” , are represented separately from the symbol (in this case the word) which signifies them, the two are double disaccociated. What that means in layments terms is that changing the word has no effect on the concept, or people’s perception of the concept.

Ergo, it doesn’t matter whether it’s classified as a diability or not, or whether sign language is given a different status, people will still carry around the same the same perceptions of deaf people.

I’ve already said I think sign language is every bit a language as the spoken word but hearing is not simply about language,

I suppose my position is that if people refuse implants, I also have a right to refuse to accommodate my behaviour to their choice, e.g. by refusing to regard them as “members of a linguistic community”.

There are indeed those who refuse to have cochlear implants. In fact, I think that there was a Deaf couple with a deaf son and they refused the implant for him.

Do they think that a baby born blind and deaf is no worse off than one born “merely” blind? I don’t think so. Can they point to a born-deaf individual who has made it to the top of a team sport? And if not are they seriously suggesting that this is due to discrimination against a “linguistic community”? Are they seriously claiming that if a surgical procedure became available that would restore their hearing they would decline it?

I am reminded of those gay activists in the mid-1980s who demanded that Greenwich Council give LGBTs priority in the award of house improvement grants.