Tribulations des langues des signes du XIXe siècle à nos jours

• Main Author: Aude de Saint Loup
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Publications de l’Université de Provence 2018-08-01
• Series: TIPA. Travaux interdisciplinaires sur la parole et le langage
• Subjects: Sign Languages; Training Deaf; Deaf Education; Deaf History; Exclusivism; Eclecticism
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/tipa/1976

Sign Languages (SL) asserted themselves and developed in some of the first specialized institutions for deaf people in Europe at the end of the 18th C. and during the first half of the 19th C. SL then began to lose ground with the growing demand for oral teaching and for the integration of deaf young people into regular schools. They also lost ground because the institutions for deaf people went through difficult periods (due to sharp criticism) and began to modify their educational project. In addition to that, towards the middle of the 20th C., deaf pupils using SL started to be separated from those trying to speak. Oralism finally established, but experienced a crisis too in the late 20th C. when SL came back on the scene and were practised anew. It is difficult to study the deaf diaspora: censuses and evaluations of needs, as well as responses and outcomes, are not always reliable and neither were in the past. While the highlights and key players of this history are well-known, the transition periods are less well explored. These periods shed light on the complexity of the matter, and particularly on the training periods deaf people follow, whether the sign or speak. Even though the contexts, the moments, the people are different, the same issues can be raised from one century to the other. The tensions appearing as to the choice of an exclusive language for the deaf reflect the diversity of the goals to be achieved and also the diversity of the deaf people. In this paper, we will focus on the more balanced opinions-therefore “defeaned” by extremists of all sides-which give a warning against the danger of exclusivism. Indeed, since the 19th C., deaf people or hearing instructors as well as some physicians have been calling for the respect of diversity and warning against focalization on a single linguistic modality, method, purpose or anything that would reduce the scope of responses. Abbot Carton (1845) and Canon Désiré de Haerne (1865), who practised in Belgium, reported that until the middle of the 19th C., it was seen as a privilege to be admitted in an institution for deaf people: entries were limited, deafness taken into account and teaching adapted, whatever the method. Belgium represented at the time a sort of in-between France, where signs were prioritized, and Germany, where speech was prioritized, while mixed options (eclecticism) were adopted almost everywhere. Most deaf young people did not attend school at the time, especially as school became compulsory at different moments: 1836 in Belgium, 1882 in France... In the second half of the 19th C., and even more so from 1880 to the present day, the judgement was reversed. Separating deaf pupils who signed from deaf people who tried to speak resulted in assessing their intellectual capacities. The “best” pupils were placed in separate “articulatory” classrooms inside the institutes or even outside. At the same time “wild” integration in mainstream education persisted (it was later officialized with facilities for some pupils). Those having greater difficulty in speaking, reading, writing and understanding were declared unfit and kept in specialized institutions where care prevailed over education. Since the 1880s however, they have also been offered speech therapy courses. Integration in mainstream schools slowly proceeded: by default first, because of the geographic dispersion of deaf children, their isolation and their limited enrolment in residential institutions. These conditions favored integration on a long-term basis, because most children had no other option, except preceptorship or no education at all. Secondly, integration was gradually valued by the prospect of a better education than in specialized institutions, and of socialization in the hearing world with a preparation for oral communication. Specialized institutions still remained an alternative to the difficulties experienced in mainstream schools. But they began to transition away from sign education and definitively neglected it from the 1880s-even though deaf pupils as well as some teachers kept on using signs, despite the management prohibition. SL were thus openly practiced outside institutes in associations or meeting halls. With the progress in speech therapy, hearing aids, Cued Speech (or LPC for Langue Parlée Complétée) and under the pressure of dissatisfied parents of deaf children who set up their own associations, the principle of integration in mainstream schools was promoted in the 1970s-1980s. At almost the same time, the Deaf Awakening emerged in France and Western Europe, following the Unites States of America, and swinging the pendulum back to SL, triggering the creation of bilingual classes (SL + national language). The advances of cochlear implants in the 1990s-2000s tipped the balance against in favor of oralism, but claims for bilingualism did not cease. LS were formally recognized, as well as the principle of bilingual education, although it was difficult to apply and took various forms. Fears linger. Parents of deaf children are afraid of losing him/her due to a different mode of communication, a different identity and also fear the cruelty of social integration. Deaf people are frightened by technical advances promoting oralism. Hearing and deaf people share the same fear regarding early genetic detection, supposedly mutual pollution of SL and national languages, etc. It is important to reckon these fears so as to find appropriate responses to each. Sociologist Bernard Mottez wrote in 1977 a paper intitled persisiting against deficiencies amounts to increasing disability, in which he called to accept differences (or singularities) so as to preserve each individual’s vital way of being. Oralized deaf, naturally or potentially bilingual, convincingly maintain that when diversity is respected, the bridges for reciprocal accessibility are easier to build. As for deaf signers, who now enjoy special facilities to validate qualifications and diplomas, they hold the key to biculturalism, which will be shared as long as communication spaces will be open. Although some might regret its slowness, general accessibility to society has improved. Physician Prosper Menière, in 1853, had already understood the notion of inclusion, even before the word existed: “it is more difficult for deaf-mute people to make a step towards us than it is for us. We should move towards them”. Inclusion, which lately replaced integration, implies society to adapt. This will only be possible if we get rid of the levelling equality which dissolves differences. The advocates of LS and deaf culture have been and still are accused of being closed off to progress because they are opposed to medical and paramedical repair which aims at conforming deaf people to the hearing-speaking majority. But it is this very medical tendency which generates a eugenic current that equates the deaf to deficient people or rejects them because of their disturbing difference. Deaf people nevertheless manage to take advantage of medical advances as well as technical progress in the field of communication (the Internet, visual communication systems and multimedia). Finally, it is not the methods or the techniques that are questioned but the way they are applied. The adventure of LS and of deaf people in their diversity is above all a deeply human history, inscribed in situations of power and powerlessness, complex and moving on the surface of societal, scientific and technical streams at variable speed.