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Sign Language Research: Pre-1980

For centuries, sign languages were not formally regarded as “languages” at all, and thus never became the object of scientific inquiry. This entry emphasizes the important period 1955–1980 in which sign languages were analyzed in a new way, by researchers with different academic traditions and points of departure. A major turning point came in 1960, when William Stokoe and his team summarized five years of observations and analysis in a small publication called “Sign Language Structure.” A unique dictionary of American Sign Language (ASL) followed in 1965. Using this foundation, research began to flourish in a number of academic centers around the world. Methodologies were tested and refined, dissertations were produced, and by 1980, sign languages were viewed in an entirely new light.

This period is also known for Deaf people entering the linguistic profession on their own—at first as informants and teachers, but very quickly learning how to document their implicit knowledge about their own language and proposing analyses on their own terms. While inspired by earlier European work, much of this research took place in the United States, where linguistic research was well funded and expansive. This entry is limited to the work carried out in three American academic clusters located in Washington, D.C., San Diego, and Boston, but it has a global context. This initial stream of research—involving over 100 people in dozens of countries—has had profound effects on understanding the nature of language and cognition, and on many practical matters important to Deaf people everywhere, such as education, employability, social services, and the education of interpreters and delivery of interpreting services.

What Took So Long?

Sign languages—despite their visibility—existed for several hundred years before being “studied” in a scientific manner. One reason is that they were not regarded as “languages” in any formal sense. They were explicitly dismissed by many as “mere gestures” or pantomime—conveying some meaning, perhaps, but not capable of fully expressing the range of human experience. This belief was commonly held by Deaf people themselves, and by those who worked most closely with them. People often held simultaneous, self-contradicting beliefs about sign languages; on the one hand, they “had no grammar”; and on the other, they “were degraded forms of the spoken language.” In many cases, signing was explicitly banned from use in school settings.

William C. Stokoe: Linguistic Research Laboratory at Gallaudet College Circa 1960s

Source: Gallaudet University Archives

A second factor that hampered development of sign linguistics was a well-intentioned fallacy. Many of those who used signs daily in their home or classroom were convinced that the proper use of signs was to mirror the syntax and morphology of spoken languages. So rather than “describing” the language behavior of an interesting minority group, some experts—in both the 19th and 20th centuries—wanted to “prescribe” how the language should be, by inventing signs to “improve” the language—and adding specific signs to mimic the syntactic and morphological functions of spoken languages.

The pictorial emphasis of sign dictionaries was a third factor holding back the emergence of sign linguistics. Dictionaries consistently emphasized the “pictures” or “images” that the signs were trying to convey. The exact detailed physical forms of the signs were considered unimportant. Many people believed that signing was like “drawing things in the air.” And because dictionaries relied on written descriptions of signs, drawings, or photography, they usually hid the all-important role of movement and rhythm in understanding what signs are all about.

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