THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE: Sign Language and the Deaf Community in America

by Arden Neisser ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 1983

More specifically focused than Beryl Benderly's Dancing Without Music (1980), this is another forceful, ardent portrayal of the deaf--with an emphasis on the sign languages issue. Neisser does not concern herself with the oral/manual dispute: she knows that oralism, for a variety of reasons, has no standing in the deaf community--perhaps ten percent have the capacity for speech. Her concern is with sign languages: a defense of American Sign Language as a language (recognized by linguists, preferred by the deaf among themselves) and an appreciation of signed English as a necessary language connecting the deaf to the hearing world (90 percent have hearing families) and its literature. Oral schools, she finds, have no better results in English-related skills than those offering Total Communication (where the quality of signed English, regrettably, tends to be poor). Although no TC school endorses ASL in the classroom, many of the teachers seem to rely on it for clarification; certainly, most students do. Neisser traveled from California to Vermont, observing, interviewing, checking out libraries and resource centers. Often her impressionistic reporting is revealing. One knows that the principal who thinks a large station wagon traveling the countryside would be the best classroom is a more desirable planner than the oral day school administrator whose classes still drill to a 1926 grammar. But though knowledgeable about Chomsky, ape sign-language research, deaf education bungles, and the threats from mainstreaming, Neisser can not always keep her distance. ""Few professionals in the worm of the deaf have ever thought seriously about deafness,"" she charges at the start. ""They think only about hearing."" But throughout her book she introduces many who consider deafness and its complexities quite thoroughly. And she can't consider the possibility that absence of a sense might affect someone's development: ""Deaf children with ASL are intellectually, emotionally, and linguistically indistinguishable from hearing children with English."" Had she looked into the fantasies of deaf children or into the research on the role of audition in early development, she might make a more convincing case. Nevertheless, this is an absorbing book--wide-ranging, strong on telling details--and a powerful argument for ASL as a language worthy of wider recognition.

Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION