Oliver Sacks
Seeing Voices
A Journey into the World of the Deaf
1989
Written by the author of ‘The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat’, this book begins with the history of deaf people in the 18th century, the often outrageous ways in which they have been treated in the past, and their continuing struggle for acceptance in a hearing world. And it examines the visual language of the deaf—Sign—which has only in the past decade been recognized fully as a language linguistically complete, rich, and as expressive as any spoken language. Oliver Sacks has also written ‘Migraine’, ‘Awakenings’ and ‘A Leg to Stand on’.
INTRO
[Sign language] is, in the hands of its masters, a most beautiful and expressive language, for which, in their intercourse with each other and as a means of easily and quickly reaching the minds of the deaf, neither nature nor art has given them a satisfactory substitute.
It is impossible for those who do not understand it to comprehend its possibilities with the deaf, its powerful influence on the moral and social happiness of those deprived of hearing, and its wonderful power of carrying thought to intellects which would otherwise be in perpetual darkness. Nor can they appreciate the hold it has upon the deaf. So long as there are two deaf people upon the face of the earth and they get together, so long will signs be in use.
J. Schuyler Long Head teacher, Iowa School for the Deaf.
The Sign Language (1910)
Strobe photograph of ASL signs ‘join’ and ‘inform. (Reprinted by permission from The Signs of Language, E.S. Klima & U. Bellugi. Harvard University Press, 1979.).
PREFACE
Three years ago I knew nothing of the situation of the deaf, and never imagined that it could cast light on so many realms, above all, on the realm of language. I was astonished to learn about the history of deaf people, and the extraordinary (linguistic) challenges they face, astonished too to learn of a completely visual language, Sign, a language different in mode from my own language, Speech. It is all too easy to take language, one’s own language, for granted—one may need to encounter another language, or rather another mode of language, in order to be astonished, to be pushed into wonder, again. When I first read of the deaf and their singular mode of language, Sign, I was incited to embark on an exploration, a journey. This journey took me to deaf people and their families; to schools for the deaf, and to Gallaudet, the unique university of the deaf; it took me to Martha’s Vineyard, where there used to exist a hereditary deafness and where everybody (hearing no less than deaf) spoke Sign; it took me to towns like Fremont and Rochester, where there is a remarkable interface of deaf and hearing communities; it took me to the great researchers on Sign, and the conditions of the deaf—brilliant and dedicated researchers who communicated to me their excitement, their sense of unexplored regions and new frontiers. 1
1. Although the term ‘Sign’ is usually used to denote American Sign Language (ASL), I use it in this book to refer to all indigenous signed languages, past and present (e.g., American Sign Language, French Sign, Chinese Sign, Yiddish Sign, and Old Kentish Sign). But it excludes signed forms of spoken languages (e.g., Signed English), which are mere transliterations and lack the structure of genuine sign languages.
My journey has taken me to look at language, at the nature of talking and teaching, at child development, at the development and functioning of the nervous system, at the formation of communities, worlds, and cultures, in a way which was wholly new to me, and which has been an education and a delight. It has, above all, afforded a completely new perspective on age-old problems, a new and unexpected view onto language, biology, and culture…it has made the familiar strange, and the strange familiar.
My travels left me both enthralled and appalled. I was appalled as I discovered how many of the deaf never acquire the powers of good language—or thinking—and how poor a life might lie in store for them.
But almost at once I was to be made aware of another dimension, another world of considerations, not biological, but cultural. Many of the deaf people I met had not merely acquired good language, but language of an entirely different sort, a language that served not only the powers of thought (and indeed allowed thought and perception of a kind not wholly imaginable by the hearing), but served as the medium of a rich community and culture. Whilst I never forgot the ‘medical’ status of the deaf, I had now to see them in a new, ‘ethnic’ light, as a people, with a distinctive language, sensibility, and culture of their own. 2
2. Some in the deaf community mark this distinction by a convention whereby audiological deafness is spelled with a small ‘d,’ to distinguish it from Deafness with a big ‘d,’ as a linguistic and cultural entity.
It might be thought that the story and study of deaf people, and their language, is something of extremely limited interest. But this, I believe, is by no means the case. It is true that the congenitally deaf only constitute about 0.1 percent of the population, but the considerations that arise from them raise issues of the widest and deepest importance. The study of the deaf shows us that much of what is distinctively human in us—our capacities for language, for thought, for communication, and culture—do not develop automatically in us, are not just biological functions, but are, equally, social and historical in origin; that they are a gift—the most wonderful of gifts—from one generation to another. We see that Culture is as crucial as Nature.
The existence of a visual language, Sign, and of the striking enhancements of perception and visual intelligence that go with its acquisition, shows us that the brain is rich in potentials we would scarcely have guessed of, shows us the almost unlimited plasticity and resource of the nervous system, the human organism, when it is faced with the new and must adapt. If this subject shows us the vulnerabilities, the ways in which (often unwittingly) we may harm ourselves, it shows us, equally, our unknown and unexpected strengths, the infinite resources for survival and transcendence which Nature and Culture, together, have given us. Thus, although I hope that deaf people, and their families, teachers, and friends, may find this book of special interest, I hope that the general reader may turn to it, too, for an unexpected perspective on the human condition.
This book is in three parts. The first was written in 1985 and 1986, and started as a review of a book on the history of the deaf, Harlan Lane’s When the Mind Hears. This had expanded to an essay by the time it was published (in the New York Review of Books, March 27, 1986), and has since been further enlarged and revised. I have, however, left certain formulations and locutions, with which I no longer fully agree, in place, because I felt I should preserve the original, whatever its defects, as reflecting the way I first thought about the subject. Part III was stimulated by the revolt of the students at Gallaudet in March 1988, and was published in the New York Review of Books on June 2, 1988. This too has been considerably revised and enlarged for the present book. Part II was written last, in the fall of 1988, but is, in some ways, the heart of the book—at least the most systematic, but also the most personal, view of the whole subject. I should add that I have never found it possible to tell a story, or pursue a line of thought, without taking innumerable side trips or excursions along the way, and finding my journey the richer for this. 3
3. The many (and sometimes lengthy) footnotes should be regarded as mental or imaginative excursions, to be taken, or avoided, as the reader—traveler chooses.
I am, I should emphasize, an outsider in this field—I am not deaf, I do not sign, I am not an interpreter or teacher, I am not an expert on child development, and I am neither a historian nor a linguist. This is, as will be apparent, a charged (at times embattled) area, where passionate opinions have contended for centuries. I am an outsider, wi
th no special knowledge or expertise, but also, I think, with no prejudices, no ax to grind, no animus in the matter.
I could not have made my journey, let alone written about it, without the aid and inspiration of innumerable others: first and foremost deaf people—patients, subjects, collaborators, friends—the only people who can give one an inside perspective; and those most directly concerned with them, their families, interpreters, and teachers. In particular I must acknowledge here the great help of Sarah Elizabeth and Sam Lewis, and their daughter Charlotte; Deborah Tannen of Georgetown University; and the staffs at the California School for the Deaf at Fremont, the Lexington School for the Deaf, and many other schools and institutions for the deaf, most especially Gallaudet University—including David de Lorenzo, Carol Erting, Michael Karchmer, Scott Liddell, Jane Norman, John Van Cleve, Bruce White, and James Woodward, among many others.
I owe a central debt to those researchers who have made it their lifelong concern to understand and study the deaf and their language—in particular, Ursula Bellugi, Susan Schaller, Hilde Schlesinger, and William Stokoe, who have shared their thoughts and observations fully and generously with me, and stimulated my own. Jerome Bruner, who has thought so profoundly about the mental and language development of children, has been an invaluable friend and guide throughout. My friend and colleague Elkhonon Goldberg has suggested new ways of considering the neurological foundations of language and thought, and the special forms this may take in the deaf. I have had the special pleasure, this year, of meeting Harlan Lane and Nora Ellen Groce, whose books so inspired me in 1986, at the start of my journey, and Carol Padden, whose book so influenced me in 1988—their perspectives on the deaf have enlarged my own thought. Several colleagues, including Ursula Bellugi, Jerome Bruner, Robert Johnson, Harlan Lane, Helen Neville, Isabelle Rapin, Israel Rosenfield, Hilde Schlesinger, and William Stokoe, have read the manuscript of this book at various stages and offered comments, criticism, and support, for which I am particularly grateful. To all these and many others, I owe illumination and insights (though my opinions—and mistakes—are wholly my own).
In March of 1986, Stan Holwitz of the University of California Press instantly responded to my first essay, and urged and encouraged me to expand it into a book; he has given patient support and stimulus during the three years it has taken to realize his suggestion. Paula Cizmar read successive drafts of the book, and offered me many valuable suggestions. Shirley Warren has guided the manuscript through production, dealing patiently with ever more footnotes and last–minute changes.
I am much indebted to my niece, Elizabeth Sacks Chase, who suggested the title—it derives from Pyramus’s words to Thisbe: ‘I see a voice…’
Since completing this book, I have started to do what, perhaps, I should have done at the start—I have begun to learn Sign. I owe special thanks to my teacher, Janice Rimier, of the New York Society for the Deaf, and to my tutors, Amy and Mark Trugman, for struggling valiantly with a difficult, late beginner—and convincing me that it is never too late to begin.
Finally I must acknowledge the deepest debt of all to four people—two colleagues and two editors—who have played a central part in making possible my work and writing. First to Bob Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, who sent me Harlan Lane’s book in the first place, saying, ‘You’ve never really thought about language; this book will force you to’—as indeed it did. Bob Silvers has a clairvoyant sense of what people have not yet thought about, but should; and, with his special obstetric gift, helps to deliver them of their as-yet unborn thoughts.
Second, to Isabelle Rapin, who has been my closest friend and colleague at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine for twenty years, and who herself has worked with the deaf, and thought deeply about them, for a quarter of a century. Isabelle introduced me to deaf patients, took me to schools for the deaf, shared with me her experience of deaf children, and helped me understand the problems of the deaf as I could never have done unaided. (She herself wrote an extensive essay review [Rapin, 1986] based chiefly on When the Mind Hears.)
I first met Bob Johnson, chairman of the linguistics department at Gallaudet, on my first visit there in 1986, and was introduced by him both to Sign, and to the world of the deaf—a language, a culture, that outsiders can scarcely enter or imagine. If Isabelle Rapin, with Bob Silvers, launched me on this journey, Bob Johnson then took over as my traveling companion and guide.
Kate Edgar, finally, has filled a unique role as collaborator, friend, editor, and organizer, inciting me at all times to think and write, to see the full aspectuality of the subject, but always to hold on to its focus and center.
To these four people, then, I dedicate this book.
O.W.S.
New York, March 1989
ONE
We are remarkably ignorant about deafness, which Dr. Johnson called ‘one of the most desperate of human calamities’—much more ignorant than an educated man would have been in 1886, or 1786. Ignorant and indifferent. During the last few months I have raised the subject with countless people and nearly always met with responses like: ‘Deafness? Don’t know any deaf people. Never thought much about it. There’s nothing interesting about deafness, is there?’ This would have been my own response a few months ago. Things changed for me when I was sent a fat book by Harlan Lane called When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf, which I opened with indifference, soon to be changed to astonishment, and then to something approaching incredulity. I discussed the subject with my friend and colleague Dr. Isabelle Rapin, who has worked closely with the deaf for twenty-five years. I got to know better a congenitally deaf colleague, a remarkable and highly gifted woman, whom I had previously taken for granted. 4
4. This colleague, Lucy K., is so expert a speaker and lip-reader that I did not realize at first that she was deaf. It was only when I chanced one day to turn my head to one side as we were talking, inadvertently cutting off communication instantly, that I realized she was not hearing me but lip-reading me (‘lip-reading’ is an extremely inadequate word for the complex art of observation, inference, and inspired guesswork which goes on). When the diagnosis of deafness was made, at about twelve months, Lucy’s parents had immediately expressed their passionate desire that their daughter should speak and be a part of the hearing world, and her mother devoted hours every day to an intensive one-to-one tuition of speech—a grueling business that lasted twelve years. It was only after this (at the age of fourteen) that Lucy learned Sign; it has always been a second language, and one that does not come ‘naturally’ to her. She continued (with her excellent lip-reading and powerful hearing aids) in ‘normal’ (hearing) classes in high school and college, and now works, with hearing patients, at our hospital. She herself has mixed feelings about her status: ‘I sometimes feel,’ she once said, ‘that I am between two worlds, that I don’t quite fit into either.’
I started seeing, or exploring for the first time, a number of deaf patients under my care. 5
5. Prior to reading Lane’s book, I had seen the few deaf patients under my care in purely medical terms—as ‘diseased ears’ or ‘otologically impaired.’ After reading it, I started to see them in a different light, especially when I would catch sight of three or four of them signing, full of an intensity, an animation, I had failed to see before. Only then did I start thinking of them not as deaf but as Deaf, as members of a different linguistic community.
My reading rapidly spread from Harlan Lane’s history to The Deaf Experience, a collection of memoirs by and about the first literate deaf, edited by Lane, and then to Nora Ellen Groce’s Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language, and to a great many other books. Now I have an entire bookshelf on a subject that I had not thought of even as existing six months ago, and have seen some of the remarkable films that have been produced on the subject. 6
6. There have been at least a half dozen major programs in England since ‘Voices from Silent Hands’ (Horizon, 1980). There have been many programs in the Unit
ed States (in particular, some excellent ones from Gallaudet University, such as ‘Hands Full of Words’)—the most recent and important of these is Frederick Wiseman’s huge, four-part documentary ‘Deaf and Blind,’ shown on public television in 1988. There have also been an increasing number of fictional representations of deafness on television. Thus a January 1989 episode of the new ‘Star Trek,’ entitled ‘Louder than a Whisper,’ featured the deaf actor Howie Seago as a deaf, signing ambassador from another planet.
One more acknowledgment by way of preamble. In 1969 W.H. Auden gave me a copy, his own copy, of Deafness, a remarkable autobiographical memoir by the South African poet and novelist David Wright, who became deaf at the age of seven. ‘You’ll find it fascinating,’ he said. ‘It’s a wonderful book.’ It was dotted with his own annotations (though I do not know whether he ever reviewed it). I skimmed it, without paying more attention, in 1969. But now I was to rediscover it for myself. David Wright is a writer who writes from the depths of his own experience—and not as a historian or scholar writes about a subject. Moreover, he is not alien to us. We can easily imagine, more or less, what it would be like to be him (whereas we cannot without difficulty imagine what it would be like to be someone born deaf, like the famous deaf teacher Laurent Clerc). Thus he can serve as a bridge for us, conveying us through his own experiences into the realm of the unimaginable. Since Wright is easier to read than the great mutes of the eighteenth century, he should if possible be read first—for he prepares us for them. Toward the close of the book he writes: 7
7. Wright, 1969, pp. 200-20t.
Not much has been written about deafness by the deaf. 8 Even so, considering that I did not become deaf till after I had learned the language, I am no better placed than a hearing person to imagine what it is like to be born into silence and reach the age of reason without acquiring a vehicle for thought and communication. Merely to try gives weight to the tremendous opening of St. John’s Gospel: In the beginning was the Word. How does one formulate concepts in such a condition?