le paper on le blog

alright, so here's my paper - if any of you read it and are left with a huge question, just ask and i'll try to go back and include better explenations of stuff - this is, ideed, a rough draft.
here goes:

Oral Traditions – Not For the Hard of Hearing
Why Our Chirographic Culture Gave Rise to Deaf Communication

James Joyce wrote in his famous book Finnegans Wake that before writing there was only speech, and before speech there was only gesture. As a way of communicating, gesture has been used by humans for thousands of years, and while today’s systems of signed languages is much more sophisticated than general pointing or large gesticular motions, there are major differences between speaking orally and speaking with one’s hands. In the traditions of oral cultures, voice is a vital component to story telling and exchanging information; before writing systems became an integral part of communication, voice was what kept communities going. But what about those members of a community who had no means to communicate with voice? Imagine the disadvantages to someone living in a primarily oral community before the proficient use of signing. Gestures can only go so far in creating the ideas and morals of traditional story telling, and in cultures where story telling could go on for hours, and even days, the powerful effect of chanting and singing in a rhythm would have been lost on an individual who could not hear. Fortunately, with the advances of writing systems and the integration of print into the modern world, there have been more opportunities for people with hearing disabilities to communicate in oral communities. Learning how to read and write has not just benefitted our society in terms of technology and intellect, it has opened doors to communication. With the decline of primary orality, there became an avenue for the deaf community to become a bigger part of the general public, as well as creating their own way of communicating in a visual way while still retaining the importance of voice.
In chapters four, five and six of Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy, one of his biggest arguments is that the rise of writing and print culture brought on the decline of oral cultures. Before an alphabet was created and writing systems were, as Ong describes them, “a system of recording economic transactions by using clay tokens encased in small, hollow but totally closed pod-like containers or bullae, with indentations on the outside representing the tokens inside,” communication was based on speech. (85). Telling stories was not only a form of entertainment, but a way of preserving people’s history and myths. For a long time, writing was only used to keep track of things in a numerical sense, like keeping records of crops or animals. So it wasn’t until a more sophisticated writing system based on symbols (for example, drawing a tree to represent a tree) was created that led to an alphabetic writing system that formed words that could be written out like the sentences that people were speaking. But while these communites throughout the world were still figuring out how to create a writing system, their main way of communicating with each other was through speech.
If someone is unable to hear, how can they survive in a world where everything is spoken, and nothing is written down? How does one represent the concept of a creation myth to a person who cannot hear them? This is the dilemma that faced deaf people for so many years before a writing system developed. And even then, how does one teach a deaf person to understand a written word that they have never heard being spoken? Perhaps those who were for so long considered “deaf mutes” were in reality just unable to effectively communicate in an oral culture because they could not learn the words written on the page. It took many centuries, but finally, a way of communicating with the deaf was created.
Sign language is, “a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns (manual communication, body language and lip patterns) to convey meaning – simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to express fluidly a speaker’s thoughts” (Wikipedia – CITE). In its earliest days, a signed language was basically assigning a symbol to a word – much like the earliest days of writing. Ong writes about how “Pictures can serve simply as aides-memoire, or they can be equipped with a code enabling them to represent more or less exactly specific words in various grammatical relation to each other” (85). Much like the drawing of a tree to represent a tree, “many signs are iconic, that is, they use a visual image for signing an idea” (library.thinkquest.org – cite). In this respect, both systems of communication started out the same way, but while the alphabet helped contribute to actual letters forming single words, sign language still uses the concept of representing an idea rather than a specific word. For example, the word “day” mimics the sun moving from sunrise to sunset. In this respect, sign language can be a more effective way to communicate than simply speaking because one can create a feeling while simultaneously communicating a word – it is like a two for one deal.
Signing also uses finger spelling, much like a printed alphabet. There is a sign for each letter, and many times, if a word has not been assigned a particular sign, it is conveyed with finger spelling until it is given a true sign. In is interesting to note that finger spelling represents the letters in a visually similar way to the Greek alphabet. For example, an “m” is formed by placing the thumb under the first three fingers, making the hand look like a lower-case “m.” Finger-spelling is the most closely related aspect of sign language to the print culture, and by learning the letters of the alphabet along with the form the mouth makes while saying a letter, speech reading becomes possible, which is probably the most main-stream way that deaf people communicate in an oral culture. Ong says
There is no way to translate the works, literary, scientific, philosophical, medical or theological, taught in schools and universities, into the swarming, oral vernaculars which often have different, mutually unintelligible forms among populations perhaps only fifty miles apart (111).

In this way, a signed language can be seen as a code, much like early writing systems, and in the same respect that one cannot just translate a vernacular word into another language, finger-spelling must be used to spell out a word rather than using a concept sign. Much like learning to read and write the individual letters of the alphabet before learning to actually read a word, young deaf people are taught the sign alphabet before learning to lip-read. In this respect, the visual world of the deaf community is closely related to the oral world of the hearing community, and with the advantages of lip reading, oral storytelling can, in a sense, become visual story telling.
The concept of creating a signed language goes back to the 1600’s, when a Spaniard named Juan Pablo Bonet wrote a book called “Reduction of Letters and Art for Teaching Mute People to Speak” (Wikipedia – CITE). Using his ideas, a Frenchman named Charles-Michel de l’Epee created a French sign language and a school for the deaf. It took about two-hundred more years for deaf communication to become main-stream, with schools being established all over Europe and the United States just for the deaf community. Fortunately, at this time, literacy was also becoming more mainstream, and with the spread of the writing and print culture, it became possible to teach deaf people to communicate with the written word, as well. In fact, for as many languages and dialects exist in the world, there are as many signed languages. For example, American Sign Language, or ASL is very different, even unrecognizable at times compared to British Signed Language, or BSL. This is because
Sign languages are not pantomime – in other words, signs are conventional, often arbitrary and do not necessarily have a visual relationship to their referent, much as most spoken language is not onomatopoeic. While iconiticty is more systematic and wide- spread in sign languages than in spoken ones, the difference is not categorical. Nor are they a visual rendition of an oral language. They have complex grammars of their own (Wikipedia – CITE).

That being said, sign languages are not usually written down. Obviously, people who sign the language of the country they live in can also read the language, but aside from dictionaries for sign language, and basic books used for educational purposes, one will not find a translation of Pride and Prejudice with signs printed on the pages.
The whole point of a signed language is to make it possible for people with hearing disabilities can communicate in a hearing culture. Before the days of the written or signed word, deaf individuals were at a loss in the oral culture. Not being able participate in the sacred story telling of one’s community could have been potentially devastating, making one an outcast in their society. But, as Ong says, “Since the shift form oral to written speech is essentially a shift from sound to visual space,” the creation of a signed language is congruent with the creation of a written language, giving the deaf community a chance to use visual communication in place of primary orality. While there are many differences between the written and spoken word, signing can combine both, using gestures, facial expressions, and conceptual movement rather than just letters strung together on a piece of paper. But without the advantages of a chirographic movement in our history, the use of signed languages would not have come to fruition, leaving the deaf community in silence.