Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) was a village sign language that was once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, U.S., from the early 18th century to 1952. It was used by both deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, deafness did not become a barrier to participation in public life. Deaf people who spoke Martha's Vineyard Sign Language were extremely independent. They participated in society as typical citizens, although there were discrimination and language barriers.
The language was able to thrive on Martha's Vineyard because of the unusually high percentage of deaf islanders and because deafness was a recessive trait, which meant that almost anyone might have both deaf and hearing siblings. In 1854, when the island's deaf population peaked, the United States national average was one deaf person in 5,728, while on Martha's Vineyard it was one in 155. In the town of Chilmark, which had the highest concentration of deaf people on the island, the average was 1 in 25; in a section of Chilmark called Squibnocket, as much as a quarter of the population of 60 was deaf.
Sign language on the island declined when the population migrated to the mainland. There are no fluent signers of MVSL today. The last deaf person born into the island's sign language tradition, Eva West, died in 1950, though there were a few elderly residents still able to recall MVSL when researchers started examining the language in the 1980s. Linguists are working to save the rare language, but the task is difficult because they do not and cannot experience MVSL firsthand.
Video Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
Origins
The hereditary deafness first appeared on Martha's Vineyard by 1714.
The ancestry of most of the deaf population of Martha's Vineyard can be traced back to a forested area in the south of England known as the Weald--specifically the part of the Weald in the county of Kent. Martha's Vineyard Sign Language may be descended from a hypothesized sign language of that area in the 16th century, now referred to as Old Kent Sign Language. Families from a Puritan community in the Kentish Weald emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony area of the United States in the early 17th century, many of their descendants later settling on Martha's Vineyard. The first deaf person known to have settled there was Jonathan Lambert, a carpenter and farmer, who moved there with his hearing wife in 1694. By 1710, the migration had virtually ceased, and the endogamous community that was created contained a high incidence of hereditary deafness that persisted for over 200 years.
By the 18th century there was a distinct Chilmark Sign Language, which was later (19th century) influenced by French Sign Language, forming Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (19th and 20th centuries). From the late 18th to the early 20th century, virtually everybody on Martha's Vineyard possessed some degree of fluency in the local sign language.
Maps Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
Deaf migration to the mainland
In the early 19th century, a new educational philosophy began to emerge on the mainland, and the country's first school for the deaf opened in 1817 in Hartford, Connecticut (now called the American School for the Deaf). Many of the deaf children of Martha's Vineyard enrolled there, taking their sign language with them. The language of the teachers was French Sign Language, and many of the other deaf students used their own home sign systems. This school became known as the birthplace of the deaf community in the U.S., and the different sign systems used there, including MVSL, merged to become American Sign Language or ASL--now one of the largest community languages in the country.
As more deaf people remained on the mainland, and others who returned brought with them deaf spouses they met there (whose hearing loss may not have been due to the same hereditary cause), the line of hereditary deafness began to diminish. As the 20th century began, the previously isolated community of fishers and farmers began to see the influx of tourists that would become a mainstay in the island economy. The jobs in tourism were not as deaf-friendly as fishing and farming had been. Further, as intermarriage and migration joined the people of Martha's Vineyard to the mainland, the island community more and more resembled the wider community there.
The last deaf person born into the island's sign language tradition, Katie West, died in 1952. A few elderly residents were able to recall MVSL as recently as the 1980s when research into the language began. Indeed, when Oliver Sacks subsequently visited the island after reading a book on the subject, he noted that a group of elderly islanders talking together dropped briefly into sign language then back into speech.
Life as a deaf person in Martha's Vineyard
There have been deaf people on Martha's Vineyard since the 18th century. The development of cochlear implants in the late 20th century brought major changes. The implants allowed deaf people to hear more efficiently and clearly, but they did not consider them as helpful as was expected. The hearing implants were, at first, not accepted due to the fact that they viewed the new technology as a mechanism to help the handicapped. The deaf people in Martha's Vineyard did not define themselves as handicapped. Eventually the cochlear implants were used by younger generations and MVSL slowly declined, but it certainly wasn't needed.
Although the people who were dependent on MVSL were different, they still did the same activities as the normal Martha's Vineyard citizen would. The deaf would work both complex and simple jobs, attend island events, and participate within the community. They were treated as normal people, which is extremely different from other deaf communities around the world. The deaf living in rural Mexico have a similar community, but few hearing people live there permanently. Other deaf communities are often isolated from the hearing population; the Martha's Vineyard deaf community of that period is exceptional in its integration into the general population.
Deaf MVSL users were not excluded by the rest of society at Martha's Vineyard, but they certainly faced challenges due to their deafness. Marriage between a deaf person and a hearing person was extremely difficult to maintain, even though both could speak MVSL. For this reason, the deaf usually married the deaf, raising the degree of inbreeding even beyond that of the general population of Martha's Vineyard. These deaf-deaf marriages are what really increased the deaf population within this community. The MVSL users often associated closely, helping and working with each other to overcome other issues caused by deafness. They entertained at community events, teaching hearing youngsters more MVSL. The sign language was spoken and taught to hearing children as early as their first years, in order to communicate with the many deaf people they would encounter in school. Lip movement, hand gestures, mannerisms, and facial expressions were all studied. There were even separate schools specifically for learning MVSL. Hearing people sometimes signed even when there were no deaf people present. For example, children signed behind a schoolteacher's back, adults signed to one another during church sermons, farmers signed to their children across a wide field, and fishermen signed to each other from their boats across the water where the spoken word would not carry.
Outside of Martha's Vineyard, though, deaf people were discriminated against. This drove them to try extremely hard to be accepted by locals, which also explains why at first the cochlear implants were not utilized.
Decline
The first person to attempt to change the genetics of Martha's Vineyard and reduce the amount of deaf people was Alexander Graham Bell. He proposed that the deaf should be schooled elsewhere, so they not only build their oral language abilities further, but meet and potentially reproduce with non-Vineyard citizens, since Martha's Vineyard society was highly packed. By doing so, new genetics would be introduced, the deaf experience a different way of life, which would eventually cause the deaf gene to become even more recessive. This was part of his overall campaign to eradicate Deaf intermarriage and culture, which included attempts to erase sign language.
As technology advanced, more deaf people resorted to cochlear implants, as stated previously. The device allowed the deaf to understand more language, and therefore travel farther away from Martha's Vineyard's borders. The implants worked in Bell's favor, pushing the deaf to meet others.
Most people in the U.S. with hearing loss today are helped by hearing aids. The implants also reduced the amount of MVSL taught in school. As more children used the new technology, sign language was needed less. Between dispersion and cochlear implants, MVSL users slowly declined. The demand for it was simply diminishing.
Attempts to save the sign language
Because there are little to no users of MVSL today, many linguists ignore the complex language. The linguists that do study Martha's Vineyard Sign Language face several issues that many other language studiers do not encounter. The remaining deaf MVSL users cannot explain their culture and MVSL adequately, while the linguists cannot describe their culture accurately due to the fact they themselves do not experience it. This communication and experience barrier forces linguists to feel they cannot record entirely accurate, which is what keeps the language from being fully documented. Without documentation, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language can become extinct. Linguists do, however, believe that MVSL will be saved as long as they can seek a remaining deaf MVSL writer and teacher. That individual could then communicate the Martha's Vineyard sign language and culture properly. From there, the citizens of Martha's Vineyard, as well as the state government, can attempt to mainstream the sign language in hopes to gain speakers. Because Martha's Vineyard sign language is such an important part of its history, it is an interest of the community. If the language itself cannot be preserved, the history of the language will be - how the deaf lived, their culture, stories, etc.
See also
- Village sign language
- Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language
- Adamorobe Sign Language
- Founder effect
- Kata Kolok
- List of extinct languages of North America
- Nicaraguan Sign Language
- Yucatec Maya Sign Language
- Martha's Vineyard
- Sign language
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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