A city where sign language is the primary language.

:-)

Watching with interest, as are a lot of people I know.

Seems quite promising, and would be just unspeakably cool. To be able to communicate with ANYONE in the whole town with no problem at all... <dreamy sigh>

Front page article in the NYT, too:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/21/national/21deaf.html

(Several annoying things in the NYT article, which I'll expound upon at the slightest prodding...)

Oh, yes! Please do expound!

I read the NYT article yesterday and wondered if you knew more than the article was telling.

Oh, I don't really know more, like inside info about where the money is coming from. I don't even know Marvin Miller, which is actually surprising since we're about the same age and from the Midwest. (I bet I know someone who knows him though ;-)). Quick example of annoyance:





Weird way to frame the question, weird assumptions. Is mainstreaming effective? Largely, no. Are CI's effective? To some extent, yes, to some extent, no. Saying it's "easier" is a really weird way to put it. There is still a large population of deaf people who are most successful in an ASL environment, for a lot of reasons. As a corollary, CI's and mainstreaming are not the answer for every deaf person -- that is, it's not just that people choose them or not, it's that there are people for whom they plain don't work and are thus not an option.

Aside from the CI's not working, from the deaf people I have worked with/ known, alot of them dont like the idea of thier children and family members all of a sudden becoming ' hearing people'.
What I gather is that being deaf is a lifestyle as well. And you loose alot of benefits, closeness and identity by suddenly dropping your INability to hear for the ABILITY to hear..
Worded strange... im sorry.. but does that sound familiar to you soz? Is this a common theme?
If so, I think this city would be a wonderful thing, just for that reason.

sticking a label on the page


just listened to an interview with one of the planners
lots of thoughts

Looking forward to your thoughts.

This is the letter to the editor that had me sputtering:



She doesn't see how that will help Marvin's kid's -- and she has one of her own. Scary.

It has been demonstrated over and over and over again that deaf kids in a deaf/ signing environment acquire language in ways exactly parallel to hearing kids in a hearing environment. They learn a language which is accessible to them and "easy" -- this is actually seen as a negative to many people, believe it or not -- and they can then learn a second language, such as English, once all of the general language pathways are laid down thoroughly by their usage of ASL.

By contrast, a deaf kid in a hearing/ non-signing environment has much, much less language exposure, often with very serious consequences (language delays and even general cognitive issues.)

This is all setting aside the fact that while everyone will know ASL, not everyone will be deaf. I'm sure there will be speech pathologists and all the usual. It's not an either/ or proposition -- many people are culturally Deaf but are still interested in learning how to speak because, yes, it's a nice tool to have.

But to not NEED it -- to have that be a nice little extra -- how very seductive.

Once it gets established, I can't wait to visit. I imagine they'll pull in major tourist dollars for that reason, people who wouldn't quite want to move there but love the idea of being some place where we have just as much access to everyday civic life as everyone else.

That brings up another point, though -- how does one town for the deaf REMOVE anyone's choice? Ms. Feretti can make whatever decisions she wants for her daughter. If she feels it's too isolating, fine. (I disagree and think her way of thinking is dangerous for her daughter, but fine.) The vast majority of Deaf Americans will live elsewhere. What possible harm is done by having this one little town?

The Laurent site

http://www.laurentsd.com/

Deposits being accepted now.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I'm very curious about the Martha's Vineyard community which this is, in part, based on. Other than what I've read in Oliver Sacks' book, Seeing Voices, I don't really know anything about it.

Any references you'd suggest, soz?

To re-state a tad more succinctly:

Research could not indicate more strongly that Marvin K. Miller would be doing the best possible thing for his Deaf children by creating a whole town of signers to surround them.

"We all spoke sign language here" I think it's called... just a sec... great book.

Here we go:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067427041X/103-7329768-1226235

By the way I was a huge fan of Oliver Sacks until "Seeing Voices". I became a fan again afterwards -- he's a good writer. Just alarmingly and consistently inaccurate in "Seeing Voices."

I usually recommend Harlan Lane as a Sacks antidote. Probably the all-time best reading on Deafness in America, though, was a NYT magazine cover article. I'll see if I can find it.

Oh funny, Googled and found a link to it here. :-)

Long, but worthwhile.

http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2001/ling001/nytimes_deaf.html

Checking in...

This is not unusual in the American experience. The 19th century was rife with special interest communities generally based on utopian or religious principles. The Oneida Community, the Shakers, even the State of Utah come immediately to mind. Many of them were very successful for a time. But on the whole I do not think it is a good idea. Anything that segregates and isolates people based on a perceived or real difference is, I think, in the long run destructive. While the present generation may think it is a good idea, future generations may find it limiting and stifling. The underlying assumption here is that the deaf would be better off with their "own kind". That is the same assumption apartheid was based on. Their "own kind" is the rest of humanity.

I know this has nothing to do with what you guys are talking about here, but...

I wonder if sign language is the easiest language to learn when in an enviroment in which no other way to communicate is available. For instance, when I first moved to America I spoke no english and I gradualy started to pick up on things and I was able to understand/speak the language after a while. There was a lot of mimicry involved in the learning process too.

So... sign language is technically mimicking and associating the "word" with a sound is not part of it. When learning a foreign language you not only have to learn what the sound means, but you also have to be able to enunciate the same sound in order to be understood. Now, the sign language learning process gets cut down by only having to associate the "word" with a "sign".

It makes sense, right?

Language is an innate human capability. There is a case in Nicaragua where a community of deaf children invented their own language. (linguist are all over this) I doubt that the presence of hearing children would prevent or delay the acquisition of sign language among deaf children, or adults.

Sozobe has talked on other threads about how a young baby can start talking very early with signing, communicating at a level I'd not assumed possible until I read about some of her sign conversations with young Sozlet.

I see Acquiunk's point. I am not so sure this planned city would be all so isolated though, in that it is expecting, I think, to host visitors routinely. (I'd better go read more..)

Yes, I see from the site it is welcoming hearing residents as well.

Acquiunk, that is a perspective I started out with, and after I researched extensively and changed my mind, it is a perspective that I have run into repeatedly as an advocate. It's a completely understandable perspective, but doesn't quite jibe with the actual Deaf experience.

At its core is the fact that if everyone signed, deafness would not be a disability. Language and disability are all intertwined. No other group has that sort of mixture. Any other language group you can think of CAN learn the language of the dominant group, HAS choices. Deaf people don't. They have one language which is easily accessible (and a true language -- ASL), and then another one which is accessible only in written form (English).

So, what to do? Research is very clear on the fact that the innate human capability you refer to needs to be nourished. The language in Nicaragua that spontaneously generated was very rough at the beginning. As children learn from native speakers, the language is quickly refining itself. There is pure language, and then there is more refined and complex language. It is important to development of the brain to be in the most language-rich environment possible.

90% of all learning is incidental learning. (Apologies to those who have sat through this lecture before -- I've given it so many times it's part of why I was hesitant to start up on this thread again, but I guess it's been a while.) Not what is purposely taught, but that which is overheard, parents talking to each other, next-door neighbors, other kids on the playground. Deaf children don't have that unless they are in an all-signing community.

That has nothing in particular to do with audiology, just language. A Deaf child growing up in an all-hearing but all fluently signing environment will do just as well as a Deaf child growing up in an all-Deaf and all fluently signing environment. It's the language-rich environment that is important.

I found some stat when I was advocating for a Deaf charter school, can try to track down, that I believe 20 Deaf/signing peers were needed before a language environment provided the minimum amount of necessary exposure. That is unheard of in mainstream environments. When I say mainstream I mean schools, but basically no Deaf kids grow up in an everyday environment with 20 signers.

This is all about the benefits of such a town, but again, it's going to be a tiny percentage of the total Deaf population. There will be plenty of people who will choose to continue to spend their lives as a minority within the hearing majority -- except for maybe the occasional heady vacation in Laurent.

Superjuly, immersion is almost always the best way to learn any language. I think what you say would apply more to hearing people who would be interested in learning ASL (American Sign Language) than deaf people, as usually deaf people gravitate towards ASL if it exists with no need for prompting -- that is, learning English/ speech is usually the most effort, and is usually what is forced upon them.

So even if English/ speech is available, per se, it's almost never something that a deaf child will seek out if ASL is available.

One quick point which is sort of off topic. Languages cannot be ranked. As far as linguists are concerned they are all equally complex and if you wish "pure". The linguistic capability of humans is a universal and it does not vary. As for the Nicaraguan sign language, it took several generations of users to develop completely which is interesting as it suggests that language is as much a social as an innate phenomenon.

This has nothing much to do with the topic at hand.

As for the community for deaf people only, I think that isolation, for what ever reason is in the long term counter productive. If for no other reason than that it allows the hearing community to solve it's "problem" by suggesting to deaf people that that is really where they want to be, whether they do or not.

Your terms are more accurate, I was saying the same thing. The first generations of what developed into Nicaraguan Sign Language was not actually a language. Then after a few generations, as the children started learned it from native speakers, it attained that level.

My point is that any given child can't be expected to just become fluent in any language. (I don't think this is what you were saying, but could be an extension of what you were saying -- the Nicaraguan language spontaneously appeared, therefore humans have an innate ability, therefore deaf children will develop a language no matter how much exposure to any language they have.) My point is that deaf children very much need a rich language environment, and right now it is very hard to find such an environment.

I don't think your last concern has any real practical application, because the percentage of the total Deaf population in Laurent will be so small. (Depending on how you count, I think it would be between something like .01% and 2% of the population, if it were filled to the brim with Deaf people and only Deaf people.) And those of us who continue to live elsewhere will certainly continue to demand our rights.