Sign Language

Full natural visual languages of Deaf communities

Overview

Sign languages are natural languages that use visual and manual modality, with handshapes, movement, location, facial expression, and body posture, and with their own grammar and vocabulary. They are not signed versions of spoken languages: American Sign Language and British Sign Language, for example, are mutually unintelligible despite both regions using English. Well over a hundred sign languages are documented. They arise naturally within Deaf communities, as shown by the emergence of Nicaraguan Sign Language in the 1970s and 1980s. Deaf children of signing parents acquire sign language natively, following milestones similar to spoken language, but the great majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents, so access to sign often depends on early exposure through family and education. Research links early language access, signed or spoken, to later literacy and cognitive outcomes. Many countries recognize national sign languages in law, and interpreters provide access in medical, legal, and educational settings.