British Sign Language
British Sign Language (BSL) is a visual-gestural language used by Deaf and hard of hearing communities in the United Kingdom. It has its own grammar and syntax and is not simply a visual representation of spoken English. BSL is an important means of communication and cultural expression for the Deaf community in the UK.
6 Key excerpts on "British Sign Language"
eBook - ePubTheology without Words
Theology in the Deaf Community
- Wayne Morris(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Despite the evidence, however, those with power over Deaf people, in government and education, still insist on speech as the first language for Deaf children, though the recognition of BSL as a national minority language may change things manifest in new policies to ‘mainstream’ Deaf children 22. 20 Kyle, J.G. and Woll, B., Sign Language, p.63. 21 Woll, B. ‘Development of Signed and Spoken Languages’, p.60. 22 Ladd, P, Understanding Deaf Culture, pp.157–8. Introduction to British Sign Language British Sign Language is a language of movement and space, of the hands and of the eyes, of abstract communication as well as iconic story-telling, but most important of all, it is the language of the Deaf community in Britain 23. British Sign Language is a language in its own right which follows a particular set of grammatical rules and principles. While BSL may share certain characteristics with other languages, the grammar which it follows, in its entirety, is unique to BSL. A common misunderstanding concerning sign languages has traditionally been that they are not languages at all, but rather involved nothing more than a few gestures which anyone, who tried, could understand. This error must immediately be rectified, as I have already tried to do, by stressing that a hearing person who has never learned BSL could no more comprehend that language than an English-speaking person who has never learned Dutch could understand a person from the Netherlands. Although BSL is particular to the Deaf community in Britain, deaf people are more able to move between different sign languages than hearing people are able to move between different spoken languages. While each country has a sign language which is particular to that nation, following very specific and particular grammatical rules – not to mention local dialects within nations – Deaf people tend to be able to cross these barriers of language with Deaf people from other nations...
eBook - ePub- Michael Rodda, Carl Grove(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...Instead of seeing reading as a deficiency in deaf students, we would do well to heed the advice of Nolen and Wilbur: “To concentrate on isolated sentences in the classroom, rather than to use meaningful context, ignores a potentially powerful educational tool for teaching English to hearing-impaired students” (p. 402). It is a challenge to the educator to produce for the deaf written materials that employ relatively simple syntax to communicate complex semantic information. British Sign Language Grammar So far we have only made limited reference to British Sign Language (BSL) used in the United Kingdom, although cross-cultural studies of languages are a vital research tool. They establish universal features that enable us to distinguish biological or neurophysiological mechanisms from the effects of experience, context, and culture on language development. Unfortunately, psychologists and linguists in the United Kingdom have only recently begun to investigate the visual-gestural language of the British deaf community, and only limited cross-cultural comparisons are possible. In fact, prior to the mid-1970s, no systematic studies of BSL were reported, and like their American counterparts, British linguists generally dismissed any suggestions that sign language was, or could be, a language. The philologist Frederick Wood (1941) remarked: I am, of course, aware that we speak of “sign language,” “deaf and dumb language,” etc., and that many authorities consider that the earliest language was not spoken but rather a matter of gesture … but in applying the term language to these methods of communication we are really using it metaphorically; and in any case they all lie outside the sphere of linguistic study (p. 2, f.n.). However, the work on American Sign Language (ASL) in the United States by Bellugi and her associates (see chapter 3) has resulted in steadily increasing interest in BSL as a language...
eBook - ePub- Natalie Braber, Sandra Jansen, Natalie Braber, Sandra Jansen(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...National and local deaf social and sporting clubs and associations are active in all the major urban centres, along with a range of welfare organisations specifically offering services to signing deaf people. The History of BSL The origins of BSL are unknown, as there are relatively few early records of sign language use in England (although many in comparison with other sign languages). BSL, nevertheless, may be assumed to be a relatively ‘old’ language when compared to many of the sign languages that have been identified in other parts of the world. For example, Taiwan Sign Language dates back to only the late nineteenth century (Smith 1989), and Israeli Sign Language from the early twentieth century (Aronoff et al. 2003). In contrast, there is some evidence of links between BSL and varieties of signing used in England during the seventeenth century, as we explain below. The earliest references to sign language use in England date from the sixteenth century, although there is no evidence to link these with BSL as it subsequently developed (Jackson 1990). These include a report of signed communication used between deaf friends Edward Bone and John Kempe in Richard Carew’s History of Cornwall (Carew 1602). None of these early references, however, provide any formational descriptions of signs or of sign language grammar. Amongst the earliest records which describe the sign language(s) in use in seventeenth-century England are two books by John Bulwer, Chirologia and Philocophus, published in 1644 and 1648, respectively (Bulwer 1644, 1648). The latter book was dedicated to a baronet and his brother, both of whom were deaf. Bulwer provided mostly written descriptions of the signs used by the deaf brothers, and some seem to closely resemble signs with a related form and meaning used in BSL today, such as good, bad, wonderful, shame, congratulate and jealous 2 (see Fig. 7.1). Fig...
eBook - ePub- (Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
...They can only look at one pair of lips or hands at a time. So remember that when you’re in a group situation, it helps if people talk one at a time. If the Deaf person is lipreading, they need to know who is speaking and when, and be given a few moments to adjust to a new face. Raising your hands to indicate who is wanting to speak, in a meeting or group discussion, helps as the Deaf person then knows who to turn towards. If a BSL interpreter is being used, he is only able to interpret one person at a time. Interpreters only have one pair of arms and interpreter training has yet to provide extra limbs. English versus BSL English and BSL are not the same thing! BSL has its own grammar and structure and its own idioms and phrases that are unique to BSL and different to the English language. When someone is signing in BSL, they do not sign word-for-word. Some of their signs may occasionally be accompanied by English word lip patterns. However, they don’t follow English grammar – they use BSL grammar and use their ‘signing space’ to convey time, tense, direction, and many other linguistic features. If you see someone signing at the same time as speaking, using English grammar and word order, that’s not BSL – what you see is SSE (Sign Supported English) or Signed Exact English (where even word endings like –ing and –ed are fingerspelt). SSE is mostly used by deaf people who rely on lipreading and the English language and like to use signs to aid communication. Members of the Deaf community use BSL, and may know English too, but possibly as a second, or even third or fourth language, depending on what they’ve been brought up with. As the grammar is so different, an SSE user and a BSL user may not be able to understand each other, even though both use signing. Don’t Give Up! Communication breakdowns always cause problems, and can happen often. The most important thing to remember is to be flexible and don’t give up...
eBook - ePubTalking Heads
The Neuroscience of Language
- Gianfranco Denes, Philippa Venturelli Smith(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...10 Speaking with our hands: Sign language Until relatively recently the reason for left-hemisphere dominance for language had not been entirely clarified. Was this dominance a result of the greater ability of the left hemisphere to process the acoustic stimuli specific to spoken language, or, alternatively, a consequence of the fact that syntactic structures are represented in the left hemisphere, so that all natural languages, regardless of their physical realization, are processed by the same neurological structures? An important contribution to the clarification of this issue has been provided by the study of linguistic deficits subsequent to cerebral damage in patients who use sign language, in combination with the results of neuroimaging studies. Signed language can allow representations that, in comparison with spoken words are more iconic and convey information more directly. For example, according to Pietrandrea (2002), in Italian Sign Language, some 50% of the hand signs stem from iconic representations, although there is a tendency to become more and more iconic, in the interest of speed and efficiency (conventionalization, Burling, 1999). Analysis of sign languages used by different hearing-impaired communities has demonstrated that signing is a natural language, not derived from and independent of the spoken language of the surrounding hearing community. For example British Sign Language (BSL) is characterized by a specific lexicon and grammar, with its own rules at segmental and morphological levels (for a review of BSL, see Sutton-Spence & Woll, 1999). At a sublexical level, signs are broken down into sublexical elements (cheremes, Stokoe, 1960), characterized by place of production, hand shape and orientation of the different types of movement. At a morphological level, markers have been introduced, serving the same function as the inflected and derivational morphemes of spoken language...
eBook - ePubLanguage and Linguistic Diversity in the US
An Introduction
- Susan Tamasi, Lamont Antieau(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...14 American Sign Language GUIDING QUESTIONS 1. Where and how did American Sign Language (ASL) begin? 2. What is the structure of American Sign Language? 3. Who uses American Sign Language? 4. What is the relationship between ASL and American Deaf culture? 5. What is the connection between ASL and English? OVERVIEW This chapter examines the creation and development of a sign language for America’s Deaf community. It discusses and details the structure of the language, including dialectal variation, and looks at the history of its use (or disuse) within the American educational system. It also presents social issues and controversies within the Deaf community, such as the debate over the use of cochlear implants. COMMON MYTHS There is one universal sign language used by all deaf people. ASL is not a language but simply a series of gestures. Sign language is simply fingerspelling. ASL is a signed version of English. ASL signs mimic the shape or action of the noun or verb. INTRODUCTION In Chapter 1, we defined language as “an open, arbitrary, conventional system of sounds used for communication within a linguistic community,” but this definition overlooks the fact that while most languages are spoken, some are articulated through nonverbal signs. Except for the mode of transmission—spoken languages utilize auditory processes, whereas sign languages comprise complex visual-spatial structures (National Association of the Deaf, 2008)—all other aspects of our definition of language apply to signing. All sign languages are individual, complex systems in their own right, with their own grammars, their own lexicons, and their own pragmatic rules. They change and vary, and they are generally not mutually intelligible with other sign (or spoken) languages. Crucially, they are not simply gestured versions of spoken languages. And significantly, like spoken languages, they are intimately related to the identities of the communities that use them...
