Afterword: Beyond Signs

One repeated motif in this booklet is that of the mutual unintelligibility of different sign languages. A deaf traveller is no more able to understand (without study!) the sign language of the country he is visiting than is the hearing traveller able to understand the spoken language. However, deaf people do enjoy one advantage in their efforts at international communication. Because they lack a certain inhibition in using gestures, deaf persons from different cultures are usually able to communicate their basic needs to each other better than hearing people who speak different languages.

A closer look at this advantage uncovers several potential reasons for this ability to bridge a real communication barrier. First of all, in situations where there is no shared language, deaf persons act out an event or a description of a person without resorting to either spoken or sign language. As an example from your own experience, think of your fisherman friend. He may describe the fish he caught by saying that it was "this big" while holding his hands in front of him to indicate its size. The use of hand movements to show the size in this situation is pantomime. Pantomime is used with sign language in the same way that gesture is used with spoken language. The use of pantomime allows deaf people of one country to get around partially the linguistic barriers that separate them from deaf people of other countries. What is interesting is that the signers may be unaware of the transitions from real signing to pantomime and back.

In addition, certain sign languages, just like some spoken languages, are historically related. In this way, communication is facilitated across national boundaries. French Sign Language (LSF) was brought to the United States in the early 19th century where it mixed with the sign language used by deaf Americans previously. This mixture became the standard sign language in the United States and parts of Canada. Today, although they differ greatly from each other, ASL and LSF share some of the same signs and grammatical features. They are related in the same way that Jamaican English and American English are related. Sharing some vocabulary and grammatical features, these varieties of English may tease listeners with their similarities. However, shared words may have entirely different meanings. A Jamaican protesting, "I neba (never) finish my work!" would be misunderstood by an American. The American English equivalent of this sentence is "I didn't finish my work."

In some essential ways, deaf people often have life experiences that are more similar to those of deaf people in other countries than they do with the hearing people in their own country. The similar world view and values which result from membership in a common minority group may play a greater role for mutual understanding than previously supposed, and a shared language may be less important.