I always enjoy being part of an audience waiting for the curtain to go up on an evening’s entertainment. But here at the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness, it is rather different. The show is already a few minutes late, but people are still standing around in the aisles, hailing long-lost friends from one side of the theatre to the other and rattling off their news. And yet it is also curiously peaceful. Apart from a couple of lusty babies cooing and chuckling to each other, and occasional bursts of laughter, the theatre is quite silent.
With the exception of those two babies and me, nearly everyone here is deaf, and they are chattering away in a silent language—the language of signs. They have come from all over the country to attend a special congress of the British Deaf Association (BDA). And as I can see all around me, they are relishing the chance to take over a large space and, for once, to watch their own form of communication prevail.
Most people recognise nowadays that sign languages are linguistically much the same as any other language. They are autonomous linguistic systems, independent of spoken languages on the one hand and mimicry and pantomime on the other. Linguists have identified more than 100 separate sign languages, from Adamorobe and Algerian to Croatian and Venezuelan, all of them different from each other, and all displaying the same kinds of characteristics that define mainstream languages. Just like their spoken counterparts, sign languages are essentially collections of arbitrary symbols that little children can learn to reiterate and recombine without limit, even if the finest grammarians may have difficulty sorting out their syntax. And as I marvel at the quiet hurly-burly that surrounds me, with dozens of conversations flashing round the theatre but no one being interrupted or distracted by anyone else, I can see the practical and aesthetic advantages of signing compared with the loud, rude intrusiveness of speech.
If you are a subscriber, please log in »
This article is available to subscribers only
Subscribing to Prospect is the most reliable and convenient way to receive the magazine every month, and offers the best value.Subscription Types:
Online
An online subscription offers you complete and unlimited access to the entire website, including our searchable archive of every back issue of Prospect, and a PDF edition of each new issue: all this for just £20 per year. Purchase an online subscription »Renewal
Renew an existing subscription »Institutional access
If you are a library, business organisation or any other large institution that needs a multi-user licence, you can obtain institutional access.
Share
Subscribe to post comments
Print
