Sign Culture: Sign Language And Sign Culture

Deaf culture has been around since really the beginning of the human race, but it was never really accepted until 1760 which was when the first public deaf school was created. Before that, there was still acceptance amongst some groups but the overall view of people who are deaf was that they were less than and could not be educated. To many Christians they were seen as a person God took their anger out on and made them the way they are. However, Pedro Ponce de leon; who was a monk, thought that they weren’t God’s anger and that they could be taught to speak and write and read. In fact around the same time, Geronimo Cardano taught his deaf son how to communicate using symbols, which was the start of sign language.

Sign Language is a nonverbal way of communicating only using hand and face gestures to get the point across. Sign language is not universal and is different within each spoken language. It’s highly unique because it is a language with its’ own syntax and grammatical structure, meaning they don’t use certain words like “the” or “and” and that how we say “how are you?” they sign “you are how?” but the point still gets across if you understand correctly. Sign language cannot be written and as I stated before it is not universal, although sign language itself cannot be written, many people who are deaf know how to read and write with the spoken language and will communicate that way as well. The language was passed down from generation to generation and like any spoken