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Manually coded language

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Manually Coded Languages (MCLs) are representations of spoken languages in a gestural-visual form; that is, "sign language" versions of spoken languages. Unlike the natural sign languages that have evolved naturally in Deaf communities over hundreds of years, MCLs are the invention of hearing people. MCLs have mainly been used in deaf education and by sign language interpreters.

History

It is unknown when the first attempts were made to represent a complete spoken language with gesture. Indeed, some have speculated that spoken languages may have evolved from sign languages, and there may be many undocumented cases in history when spoken and signed modes of a language existed side by side. The Warlpiri community of central Australia have developed an elaborate representation of their spoken language, known as Warlpiri Sign Language, due to traditional proscriptions against speech in certain situtations.

Most of today's modern Manually Coded Languages can trace their origin to the manual alphabets used in medieval Europe which designated a different hand sign for each letter of the Latin alphabet (see manual alphabet) and began to be used in deaf education from the 17th century. A significant innovation was introduced by the Abbé de l'Épée, an educator from 18th century France who founded the world's first known public school for deaf students. Épée recognised that the Deaf community used their own sign language, but thought it must be primitive, and set about designing a complete visual-gestural system to represent the concepts of religion and law that he wanted to impart to his pupils. His system of signes méthodiques (known in English as "Methodical Signs") wasn't a strict representation of French, but its success laid the groundwork for modern Manually Coded Languages (especially the "signed spoken languages" — see below).

The real proliferation of such systems occurred in the latter half of the 20th century, and by the 1980s, "signed spoken languages" were the dominant form of communication used by teachers and interpreters in classrooms with deaf students in many parts of the world.

The emerging recognition of sign languages in recent times has curbed the growth of Manually Coded Languages, and in many places, interpreting and educational services now favor the use of the natural sign languages of the Deaf community. A contemporary attempt to develop a MCL is Arabic Sign Language.

The use of MCLs is controversial, and has been opposed since Épée's time by "oralists" who believe Deaf people should speak, lipread and use hearing aids rather than sign — and on the other side, from defenders of Deaf culture who resist attempts to supplant their community language with the language of the dominant (Hearing) culture. The Deaf community tend to find MCLs "unnatural" and "cumbersome", but elements of these systems have also had an influence on deaf sign languages (see Contact Sign).

Some MCL systems have survived by shifting their focus from deaf education to people with other kinds of commiunication needs.

Major approaches

There have been many different approaches to manually coding spoken languages. Some consist of fingerspelling everything, a technique sometimes known in English as the "Rochester method" after Rochester School for the Deaf in New York where it was used from 1878 until the 1940s. While most MCLs are slower than spoken or sign languages, this method is especially so, and in modern times is generally considered not to be accessible to children. However, some deafblind people still communicate primarily using this method.

A unique system that was widespread in British deaf education from the 1960s to the 1980s is the Paget Gorman Sign System. Developed in Britain 1930s, it uses 37 basic signs and 21 standard hand postures to represent a large vocabulary of English words, word endings and verb tenses.

Signed spoken languages

These systems ("Signed English", "Signed German" and so on) were the vehicle for the world-wide explosion of MCLs in the second half of the 20th century. They build up a word-for-word representation of the spoken (or written) language by taking signs ("lexicon") from the local deaf sign language and adding specially-created signs for words and word endings, often using "initialisations" and spelling. Thus "Signed English" in America (based on ASL) has a lexicon quite different to "Signed English" in the UK (based on BSL), as well as the Signed Englishes of Ireland, Australasia and South Africa.

Cued Speech

Another popular system that has been adapted for many languages is Cued Speech, which is a manual supplement to lipreading than a full Manually Coded Language. Cued Speech uses a limited number of handshapes and locations near the mouth to differentiate between sounds not distinguishable from on the lips. When viewed together with lip patterns, the system renders all phonemes of the spoken language intelligible visually.

List of manually coded languages

See also

References

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