Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research, Vol. 1 Linguistics ed. by Susan D. Fischer, Patricia Siple (review)

REVIEW Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research, Vol. 1 Linguistics, edited by Susan D. Fischer & Patricia Siple. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-25150-0. ix &338 pgs. $29.95 Paper; $55 Library cloth. In TISLR, Susan Fischer and Patricia Siple present: "...an outgrowth of a conference entitled, not coincidentally, 'Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research' held in 1986 at the University of Rochester and co-hosted by the University of Rochester and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology" (p. 5). They introduce it with an intriguing analogy: "About ten years ago there appeared a flurry of books about sign language . . . the linguistic study of ASL was still in its infancy" [16 to 19 years after its birth in 1960]. Continuing the analogy they say: "If ASL research was in its infancy ten years ago, it could now [at the time of the 1986 conference or the 1990 publication?] be said to be in its adolescence" (p. 1). The temptation is strong for this reviewer to pursue the analogy further, but then one might feel the need to characterize the linguistic study of sign languages as a case of arrested development: a two-decade infancy and an adolescence reached ten or twelve years later would accord with such a diagnosis. Like all analogies, however, the facts not the figure, the tenor not the vehicle, must convince us. Fischer and Siple no doubt see in "the controversy among contributors on . . . theoretical issues" a similarity to the ebullience of adolescence in "the kind of healthy ferment we expect of a maturing science" (ibid.). The editors thus make it clear that whether study of theoretical issues in sign language is comparable at present to one or more of the seven ages of man, they are asking their readers to accept this study as ''a maturing science." Deciding whether the present study of theoretical issues is the product of normal maturation or whether it is proliferating out of control depends, however, on whether it is indeed a science. The editors and the contributors address themselves to theoretical issues in a way that implies a Platonic distinction between philosophy and the mechanic arts, between the study of sign language as an end in itself or as a means to further practical purposes like teaching, learning, @1991 by Linstok Press, Inc. See note inside front cover ISSN 0302-1475 83 WCS interpretation, and so on. As the editors see the present: "This relatively atheoretical emphasis on description [1960 to 1979] was of course a necessary stage in the development of thinking about sign language." They approve thinking on a higher plane: "Arguments are no longer primarily about what the data are, but rather address what the data mean for the study of both signed and spoken languages, and indeed for language as a human phenomenon" (p. 1). What the data, descriptive or not, presented in the volume seem to mean is that sign languages must be included in any consideration of linguistic universals. The word "universals" at once raises the discussion above such mundane matters as language learning or teaching. The editors say: "The syntax section [chs. 12, 13 & 14] addresses a number of very important issues in sign language research, particularly in relation to linguistic universals" (p. 3). The word universals appears in several chapters, but characteristically without definition or description, as here. Perhaps readers of TISLR are expected, unlike Socrates and his followers who kept asking questions about ideas, truth, justice, and universality, to know what linguistic universals are and be able to enumerate them. The editors do provide a framework: "This book deals with the four traditional core areas of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics" (p. 1). As they point out, however, there is no agreement among the contributors on any of these areas, and one is left to wonder whether if what is universal about language is uncertainty, variance, and a certain randomness-but this is hardly the stuff of which a science is made. The disagreements are not minor matters either. What is discussed in these chapters is whether signs consist of sequential segments or simultaneous tiers to which features are attached, whether there are...