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ORA Z lOR 0 M E 0 AND LIS A J. R ENE R Y uring her first weeks as an intern at the Mason Perkins Fund in Rome, Lisa Renery was struck by her new Deaf acquaintances' constant references to sports. Having played on soccer teams with Deaf companions, I was enthusiastic when she expressed interest in conducting a study on Italian Deaf people's involvement in sports. Because we both hoped to bring a slice of Italian Deaf life to The Deaf Way, we decided that a popular topic such as sports would offer a glimpse at the "way" of Deaf people in Italy. We conducted structured interviews with more than thirty men and women from all over Italy to help us assess the value of organized sports in the Deaf community. Our questions dealt with the signs used to name and describe sports activities, attitudes and perceptions about Deaf sports, and the relative popularity of Deaf sports today as compared with past years. Beginning with the question of language, it is important to mention that Italy is a country with many sign language dialects. Signs as basic as MOTHER and FATHER are often different from one region to another. We wanted to learn whether the same would hold true for sports signs. Although most of the people we interviewed expressed their doubts that sports signs would be any less subject to variation than other signs, our data revealed the opposite to be true. We observed that if sports signs differed at all, they often differed in handshape alone. The more important sports-soccer, track and field, skiing, and tennis-showed very little regional variation. Signs of less popular activities-horse racing, ice and roller skating, and cycle racing-showed one or more variants while still differing only in handshape and movement. How is it that sports signs are all so similar in a country with so many regional variations? It is possible that the active nature and physical orientation of sports make uniformity of signs more likely. In addition, the fact that organized sports offer Deaf athletes the opportunity to travel contributes to the adoption of signs from one region to another and even to the blending of signs from different regions. Every culture produces linguistic terms according to its needs. The number and richness of these terms reflect the importance of a particular activity or institution in that culture. The emotional and social worth of sports in the Italian Deaf community is reflected in elaborate sets of signs-particularly in soccer, the most popular Italian sport. Soccer has an extensive list of signs to describe the plays and maneuvers, rules, equipment, positions, and calls of the game. From my own experience on the soccer team at Gallaudet-which I attended on a Mason Perkins scholarship-I know that in the United States, where soccer is not so popular, the repertory of soccer terms is smaller and less detailed. However, Deaf people in the United States make up for this The Role of "Silent Sports" in Italian Deaf Culture in their football signs, which are numerous and rich in detail. Cultures do indeed create signs for activities that are important to them. To learn about the origins of sports in Italy, we examined various Deaf publications, both past and present. In the history of Italian Deaf sports, there are two particularly important figures. The first, Emidio Pacenza, is considered to have been the founding father of organized sports for Deaf people in Italy. In Milan in 1923 he made the acquaintance of the secretary general of the National Sports Association of the Deaf in Belgium. It was from him that Pacenza learned with surprise that nearly every European nation other than Italy had its own Deaf sports association. The following year at the World Games for the Deaf in Paris, Roberto DeMarchis, the second great figure in Italian Deaf sports, became the first athlete to represent Italy at the games. DeMarchis took the initiative to enter the games independently and came back with gold medals in the 100 and 1500 meter free-style swimming events. This was impetus enough for sports enthusiast Pacenza. He realized that the time was ripe for a Deaf sports organization in Italy. In 1925, armed with a great deal of passion and energy, he founded in Milan and Genoa the first Deaf sports associations in Italy. In 1929 Pacenza became director of the Silent Sports Commission of Italy, which in 1953 became...

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