Many people, as the media tells us, are concerned that our children are too dependent on their phones, gaming consoles and computers. They tell us that these children are not being socialised and that their methods of communication, particularly in face-to-face settings, are being restricted. We are told that young people are not building healthy communities to develop their emotional maturity. The future, it seems, is bleak. However, since April 2022 the UK government has written into law British Sign Language (BSL) as an official language. Like Cornish and Welsh, the government is obliged to promote and create more opportunities for people to learn and use sign. This is where BSL has the capacity to create a better society and culture for everyone.
Signing is a visual language, and just as language itself is malleable, evolving and capable of transmitting and creating new and wonderful words and meaning, sign also has this transformative capacity. It has moved and evolved as the world has and like clay that can be moulded into any shape or symbol, so too, sign is an evolution of ideas, concepts and can be far more subtle than, I suspect, most people outside deaf culture, realise.
Cochlear implants can introduce the deaf child or adult into the hearing world, yet ‘disability’ is still something perceived to be resolved or adjusted in order to make the individual more suited to an ‘abled’ world. My hope is that in forty years, this attitude has less of a hold on society, and so the richness of deaf, and other ‘disabled’ cultures are recognised for the extraordinary variations and stories that these same ‘disabled’ people can teach us. Being deaf does not have to have the stigma of ‘disability’. Within deaf communities no such stigma exists. Deafness, like short-sightedness, hair-colour or freckles is utterly ‘normal’. It is a choice to have a cochlear implant, and it is a choice to learn to sign and in the current era, these are personal decisions and cochlear implants do change lives and have positive outcomes. I know people with implants that still use sign daily.
However, in forty years, it might be normal for children to sign at school. One way to protect their hearing in noisy environments is to sign, not scream. Sign brings people together. It would allow teachers to communicate with a single child struggling over a sticky problem while the others work on silently. It allows people to talk to each other across a room, in a crowd, in private as well as in wider social settings.
What is deafness? It is merely the lack or impairment of one of our senses. It has different degrees, different manifestations. A person can hear in one ear, but not two, someone may be born without ears altogether. Like me, perhaps someone is hard-of-hearing, rather than ‘profoundly’ deaf. It can mean a gradual loss, or a total one due to accident, injury or birth. With this comes complex adjustments often for whole families and navigating the ‘hearing’ world can be traumatising, terrifying or lead to, like our children attached to their phones and gadgets, isolation. But BSL offers all of us the chance to change this – and it already exists. The deaf community does not need another forty years to adapt to new ways of communication, rather the rest of the world needs to catch up to us.
Communication is about ‘voices’. Whether these voices appear on a page, a television or through a phone, someone’s voice, with the ability to express and emote, is the most powerful gift human beings have. A voice is an identity, and identities are diverse. Sign language is also part of an identity as a first, second or third language, it is part of an individual. BSL is about the whole body. Using the face, arms, hands, fingers, whole worlds can be communicated and articulated. In the future, what better way to lead these isolated, technology driven children into a future of face-to-face, whole system communication.
In forty years, sign has the capacity to become a more conventional, socially observed means of communicating. Perhaps, the tone of this essay appears naïve. How, you might ask yourself, is this possible when ‘traditionally’ sign language has been for the exclusive use of those who need to use it, rather than for those to choose to? Once again, the moral panics of the media can be a guide. With more studies than ever pointing to headphone and ‘ear-bud’ use as detrimental to young people’s hearing, sign can fulfil both a need and a solution. Through the simple act of needing to see the person you are talking to who uses sign, these children don’t need things covering their ears, and in a situation where the child or young person experiences hearing difficulties through headphone overuse signing itself offers an alternative, a form of revealing the feelings of one who might find the adult world overwhelming.
So far, this short essay seems to undermine technology, and the perception here might be assumed to be that reliance on technology is a bad thing. Not so, visual apps such as Skype, Zoom and Teams have been used with success throughout the lockdown period as a means for people to keep the world turning. These apps are not reliant on speech for their usefulness, sound can be turned off. Video conferencing and sites such as YouTube have been invaluable for my own BSL learning. Other apps such as Sign BSL have also proved valuable. There are no barriers to access signing. People use their bodies and hands to communicate all the time, visual cues, arm waving, pointing and gesticulation can be interpreted as basic, less-coherent sign. We’ve all used ‘signs’ when navigating other language barriers, especially, perhaps, when abroad on holiday.
In ‘predicting the future’ I can see one where people are more united, connected and understood. This future starts with sign language.
(Please note that this article was written by an external author and any views expressed do not represent Signature)