Sign Language & Language Suppression

DFA rev. 355 SIGN LANGUAGE & LANGUAGE SUPPRESSION [A Review of Christian Cuxac. Le langage des sourds. Paris: Payot. 1983. 210 pp. Paper. 140 x 226mm. (106, Boul. St.-Germain, Paris 6'r")] David F. Armstrong This is an interesting book, but before broaching some of its subjects of interest, it would perhaps be best to consider what the book is not. To begin with, the title ('The language of the deaf') is something of misnomer -- this is really a book about the history of deaf education in France; and in particular about the suppression of sign language in the schools and the rise of oralism during the 19th century. In this regard, I have found it useful to compare the book to another recent book on the subject, Lane's Wild Boy of Aveyron (1976), and will do so at greater length below. Given the title of Cuxac's book, one expects some treatment of either the linguistics or the sociolinguistics of French Sign Language (FSL), and of this there is almost none, nor is there any discussion of the now voluminous literature on the linguistics of ASL, a presumably closely related form. How, then, is this book to be understood, and what are its strengths? I think this book can be most usefully understood as a work in political advocacy, and as such it has considerable power. At the heart of the book is an attempt to explain how a system of education of the deaf based almost exclusively on some form of signing (whether FSL or Signed French, signes m~thodiques) could be rapidly supplanted by an almost exclusively oral system. Cuxac takes several approaches to solving this problem; I will attempt to summarize and categorize them here. First is a category of causes that might be termed "social currents" and related to official or unofficial government policy. Foremost among these would be the linguistic and cultural unification of France in the post-revolutionary era. Suppression of the sign language of deaf people could be seen under this theory as part and parcel of a larger attempt to homogenize the "new" French nation through suppression of the languages and cultures of its minorities (Alsatians, Basques, Bretons, Catalans, Flemings, Occitans). Related to this drive toward homogenization is a more general "social current" toward normalization. According to this theory, it is to the individual's SLS 41 Winter 83 Winter 83 DFA rev. 356 pecuniary as well as emotional advantage to fit into the general society as easily as possible, and mastery of the spoken (majority) language is the only way to this goal. The first resolution of the Congress of Milan (cited by Cuxac, p. 138) is couched in these terms: The Congress, considering the incontestable superiority of speech over signs to return the deaf-mute to society and to give him a more perfect knowledge of language, declares: that the oral method must be preferred over that of sign language for the education and instruction of deaf-mutes. (Translation and emphasis by the reviewer) Cuxac identifies another and more sinister set of motivations to support oralism on the part of hearing educators of the deaf. I will call these "hidden agenda" causes. First among these is the observation that there were many physicians among the leading educators of the deaf in the mid 19th century and that they naturally adopted a "deafness as disease" model. Deaf education then became treatment, and through a logical process, "to induce speech is to cure (p. 124), since "to induce speech is to induce hearing" (p. 121). This motivation toward oralism is obviously related to the normalization process noted above, as Western medicine traditionally has as its goal to return the patient to normality (health) and so to the bosom of society. In the course of describing this 19th century medical paradigm Cuxac incidentally discusses several of the barbarities to which deaf children were subjected during the course of "treatment." Another and more self-serving item Cuxac finds on the "hidden agenda" of the hearing educators was their apparent failure, in many cases, to master FSL. In a rigidly hierarchical educational environment it would be unthinkable for the student to be superior...