The Order of Signs: Perspectives on the Relationship between Language and Thought during the First Century of Widespread Sign Language Teaching

Sabine Arnaud (1)

1 CAK-CRHST - Centre Alexandre Koyré - Centre de Recherche en Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques

While current debates surround the privilege that cochlear implants provide in acquiring speech over teaching sign language, nineteenth-century debates, in contrast, opposed those who saw sign language as a tool for learning to read and write, and those who saw in it an autonomous language for organizing thought itself. Should the order of gestural signs follow written syntax? Or should it have its own coherence, that is, possibly a different syntax and order of enunciation? Starting with these questions, distinct teaching legacies developed, specifying which kinds of signs to use in which context and what role signs were to fulfill. This article focuses on French deaf and hearing teachers whose positions were influential throughout Europe and the United States, moving from Abbé de l’Epée’s 1784 method to Rémi Valade’s 1854 publication of the first sign language grammar.

Mots clés: French sign language; methodical signs; natural signs; Sicard; nineteenth-century deafness; syntax

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Education; Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences; Littératures

Sabine Arnaud. The Order of Signs: Perspectives on the Relationship between Language and Thought during the First Century of Widespread Sign Language Teaching. History of Education Quarterly, 2020, 60 (4), pp.520-545. ⟨hal-02914479⟩