Indian Sign Language
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220215366
2008-06-18T20:22:26Z
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{{language
|name=Indian Sign Language
|states=[[India]], [[Pakistan]]
|region=Regional dialects
|signers=Unknown
|fam1=Related to [[Nepalese Sign Language]] and possibly other sign languages of the region
|iso2=sgn
|iso3=ins}}
{{for|the Native American sign language|Plains Indian Sign Language}}
'''Indian Sign Language''' (ISL) or '''Indo-Pakistani Sign Language''' (IPSL) is possibly the predominant [[sign language]] variety in [[South Asia]], used by at least several hundred thousand [[Deaf culture|deaf]] signers (2003).<ref>{{cite journal
|author=Vasishta, M., J. C. Woodward, and K. L. Wilson
|year=1978
|title=Sign Language in India: Regional Variation within the Deaf Population
|journal=Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics
|volume=4
|issue=2
|pages=66–74}}</ref><ref>Ethnologue gives the signing population in India as 2,680,000 in 2003.<br>
{{cite book
|author = Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.)
|year = 2005
|title = Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition.
|publisher = Dallas, Tex.: SIL International.
|url = http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ins
}}</ref> As with many sign languages, it is difficult to estimate numbers with any certainty, as the [[Census of India]] does not list sign languages and most studies have focused on the north and on urban areas.<ref name=Zeshan>{{cite book
| author = Ulrike Zeshan
| title = Sign Language of Indo-Pakistan: A description of a Signed Language
| publisher = John Benjamins Publishing Co
| location = Philadelphia, Amsterdam
| year = 2000 }}</ref>
The Indian deaf population of 3.1 million is 98% illiterate. In line with [[oralist]] philosophy, deaf schools attempt early intervention with hearing aids etc, but these are largely dysfunctional in an impoverished society. As of 1986, only 2% of deaf children attended school.
==Status of sign language==
Deaf schools in the region are overwhelmingly [[oralist]] in their approach.<ref>{{cite book
|author = Dilip Deshmukh
|title = Sign Language and Bilingualism in Deaf Education,
|location = [[Ichalkaranji]],
|year = 1996
}}</ref>
Since [[2001]], a group at the [[Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped]] (AYJNIHH) has been working on providing teaching material and training teachers for ISL. The Rehabilitation Council of India and the Ishara Foundation are also involved in ISL training, English through ISL, and [[interpreter]] training. A number of vocational schools, e.g. ITI [[Secunderabad]] use ISL for teaching. Other institutes such as the [[All India Institute of Speech and Hearing]] remain exclusively focused on oralism.
In 2005, [[India]] the National Curricular Framework (NCF) gave some degree of legitimacy to sign language education, by hinting that sign languages may qualify as an optional third language choice for hearing students. [[NCERT]] in March 2006 launched a class III text includes a chapter on sign language, empasizing the fact that it is a language like any other and is “yet another mode of communication." The aim was to create healthy attitudes towards the [[differently abled]].
==Dialects and language families==
There are many [[Variety (linguistics)|varieties]] of sign language in the region, including many pockets of [[home sign]] and informal sign languages. There is no consensus regarding which of these varieties constitute dialects of a language or separate languages, but several researchers have identified relatedness between the sign languages used in urban regions of India, Pakistan and Nepal.<ref>
{{cite journal
| last= Woodward
| first= J
| author = Woodward, J
| year = 1993
| title = The relationship of sign language varieties in India, Pakistan and Nepal
| journal= Sign Language Studies
| issue= 78
| pages= 15–22}}</ref><ref name=Zeshan/> It is unknown whether this group is related to other languages of the subcontinent such as sign languages in [[Bangladesh]] or [[Sri Lanka]].
Ethnologue.com claims that sign languages across urban India appear to share about 75% of their vocabularies, and that the [[Mumbai]]-[[Delhi]] dialect is the most influential.<ref>{{cite web
| url= http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ins
| title= Ethnologue entry on Indian Sign Language
| accessdate=2007-05-05}}</ref> Ethnologue identifies the following regional dialects within India:
* Mumbai-Delhi Sign Language (or separately: Delhi Sign Language, Bombay Sign Language)
* Calcutta Sign Language
* Bangalore-Madras Sign Language (or Bangalore-[[Chennai]]-[[Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh|Hyderabad]] Sign Language)
While the sign system in ISL appears to be largely indigenous, elements in ISL are derived from [[British Sign Language]]; for example, ISL does not have signs for the [[Devanāgarī]] script, and [[fingerspelling]] is based on the Latin alphabet. In addition, a small number of the Deaf near [[Bangalore]] sign [[American Sign Language]] owing to a longstanding ASL deaf school there.
The Delhi Association for the Deaf is reportedly working with [[Jawaharlal Nehru University]] to identify a standard sign language for India.<ref>
{{cite web
|author = Press Trust of India
|title = Standard sign language for the deaf in India soon
|url = http://www.deaftoday.com/v3/archives/2004/09/standard_sign_l.html
|location = [[New Delhi]],
|publisher = Hindustan Times
|date = 2004-09-16
}}</ref>
==History==
===Early history===
Although discussion of sign languages and the lives of deaf people is extremely rare in the history of South Asian literature, there are a few references to deaf people and gestural communication in texts dating from antiquity.<ref>{{cite web
| url = http://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/bibweb/Miles/Miles.html
| accessdate = 2007-05-06
| date = 2001
| author = M. Miles
| title = Sign, Gesture & Deafness in South Asian & South-West Asian Histories: a bibliography with annotation and excerpts from India; also from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma / Myanmar, Iraq, Nepal, Pakistan, Persia / Iran, & Sri Lanka.}}</ref> Symbolic hand gestures known as [[mudra]]s have been employed in religious contexts in [[Hinduism]], [[Buddhism]] and [[Zoroastrianism]] for many centuries, although these religious traditions have often excluded deaf people from participation in ritual or religious membership.<ref>Scholar of [[Oriental studies]] [[H. W. Bailey]] identifies passages in the ''[[Avesta]]'' (Yast 5.93) and the [[Vinaya]], e.g. "Excluded from the Buddhist [[Theravāda]] community ([[sangha]]-) were the andha-, mUga-, and badhira-, 'the blind, dumb, and deaf'." (Footnote: [[Pali]] Vinaya I, 91, 15)<br>{{cite journal
|last=Bailey
|first=H.W.
|year=1961
|title=Arya III
|journal=Bull. School of Oriental & African Studies
|issue=24
|pages=470–483}}</ref> In addition, [[classical Indian dance]] and [[Classical Indian musical theatre|theatre]] often employs stylised hand gestures with particular meanings.<ref>{{cite book
|author=Shukla, Hira Lal
|year=1994
|title=Semiotica Indica. Encyclopaedic dictionary of body-language in Indian art and culture. 2 vols
|location=New Delhi
|publisher=Aryan Books International}}</ref>
An early reference to gestures used by deaf people for communication appears in a [[12th century]] Islamic legal commentary, the [[Hidayah]]. In the influential text, deaf (or "dumb") people have legal standing in areas such as [[bequest]]s, [[marriage]], [[divorce]] and financial transactions, if they communicate habitually with intelligble signs.<ref>Vol. IV, Book LIII. {{cite book
|author=Al-Marghinani
|title=The Hedaya or Guide. A commentary on the Mussulman laws. 2nd edn. transl. Charles Hamilton, ed. Standish Grady
|year=1870, reprint 1975, 4 vols in one
|location=Lahore
|Publisher=Premier Book}}</ref>
Early in the 20th century, a high incidence of deafness was observed among communities of the [[Naga hills]]. As has happened elsewhere in such circumstances (see, for example, [[Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language]]), a sign language had emerged and was used by both deaf and hearing members of the community. Ethnologist and political officer John Henry Hutton wrote:
{{cquote|"As one might expect ... of men without the art of writing, the language of signs has reached a high state of development... To judge how highly developed is this power of communicating by signs, etc., it is necessary only to experience a Naga interpreter's translation of a story or a request told to him in sign language by a dumb man. ... Indeed the writer has known a dumb man make a long and detailed complaint of an assault in which nothing was missing except proper names, and even these were eventually identified by means of the dumb man's description of his assailants' dress and personal appearance."<ref>{{cite book
|author=Hutton, John Henry
|year=1921
|title=The Angami Nagas, with some notes on neighbouring tribes
|location=London
|publisher=MacMillan
|pages=291-292}}</ref>}}
However, it is unlikely that any of these sign systems are related to modern IPSL, and deaf people were largely treated as social outcasts throughout South Asian history.
===Residential deaf schools===
Documented deaf education began with welfare services, mission schools and [[orphanage]]s from the 1830s, and "initially worked with locally-devised gestural or signed communication, sometimes with [[Simultaneous Communication|simultaneous speech]]."<ref>Miles, M. 2001, extended and updated 2006-04. "Signs of Development in Deaf South & South-West Asia: histories, cultural identities, resistance to cultural imperialism". This is a further revised, extended and updated version of a chapter first published in: Alison Callaway (ed) Deafness and Development, University of Bristol, Centre for Deaf Studies, 2001. Internet publication URL: http://www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles200604.html</ref> Later in the 19th century, residential deaf shools were established, and they tended (increasingly) to adopt an [[oralism|oralist]] approach over the use of sign language in the classroom. These schools included The Bombay Institution for Deaf-Mutes, which was founded by Bishop Meurin in the 1880s,<ref>Hull, Ernest R. (1913) Bombay Mission-History with a special study of the Padroado Question. Volume II 1858-1890. Bombay: Examiner Press</ref> and schools in [[Madras]]<ref>Report on Public Instruction in the Madras Presidency for 1892-93. Madras, 1893. (Report by D. Duncan).</ref> and [[Calcutta]]<ref>Editorial (1895), "The deaf mutes in India". The Indian Magazine and Review, August 1895, pp. 436-38. (Quoting largely an article by Ernest J.D. Abraham, in The British Deaf-Mute, May 1895).</ref> which opened in the 1890s. Other residential schools soon followed, such as the "School for Deaf and Dumb Boys" at Mysore, founded in 1902,<ref>Iyer, A. Padmanabha (1938). "Modern Mysore, impression of a visitor". Trivandrum: Sridhara Printing House. pp 78-83</ref> a school in [[Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia|Dehiwala]] in what is now [[Sri Lanka]], founded in 1913,<ref>Smith, M. Saumarez (1915) "C.E.Z.M.S. Work among the Deaf in India & Ceylon". London: Church of England Zenana Mission Society. p. 13</ref> and "The Ida Rieu School for blind, deaf, dumb and other defective children", founded in 1923 in [[Karachi]], in what is now [[Pakistan]].<ref>Report on Public Instruction in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1923-24. Bombay: Central Govt Press. 1925. (Report by M. Hesketh). p. 91</ref>
While a few students who were unable to learn via the oralist method were taught with signs, many students preferred to communicate with each other via sign language, sometimes to the frustration of their teachers. The first study of the sign language of these children, which is almost certainly related to modern IPSL, was in 1928 by British teacher H. C. Banerjee. She visited three residential schools for deaf children, at [[Dacca]], [[Barisal]] and Calcutta, observing that "in all these schools the teachers have discouraged the growth of the sign language, which in spite of this official disapproval, has grown and flourished."<ref>Banerjee, H.C. (1928) The sign language of deaf-mutes. Indian Journal of Psychology 3: 69-87. (quote from p.70)</ref> She compared sign vocabularies at the different schools and described the signs in words in an appendix.
A rare case of a public event conducted in sign language was reported by a mission in [[Palayamkottai]] in 1906: "Our services for the Deaf are chiefly in the sign language, in which all can join alike, whether learning [[Tamil language|Tamil]], as those do who belong to the [[Madras Presidency]], or English, which is taught to those coming from other parts."<ref>Swainson, Florence (1906). "Report of the Deaf and Dumb and Industrial School in connection with the Church of England Zenana Mission, Palamcottah, South India, for 1905". Palamcottah: Church Mission Press. p.9</ref>
==Grammar==
IPSL shares grammatical features with many other deaf sign languages, including the use of space and simultaneity and the five meaningful parameters of handshape, location, orientation, movement and non-manual features such as body position, head movement and facial expression. Some specifics are described by sign language linguist Ulrike Zeshan in her study of IPSL grammar:
{{cquote|Sentences are always [[predicate]] final, and all of the signs from the open lexical classes can function as predicates. Ellipsis is extensive, and one-word sentences are common. There is a strong preference for sentences with only one lexical argument. Constituent order does not play any role in the marking of grammatical relations. These are coded exclusively by spatial mechanisms (e.g., directional signs) or inferred from the context. Temporal expressions usually come first in the sentence, and if there is a functional particle, it always follows the predicate (e.g., YESTERDAY FATHER DIE COMPLETIVE — "(My) father died yesterday").<ref>Zeshan, U. (2003). "Indo-Pakistani Sign Language Grammar: A Typological Outline." Sign Language Studies 3:2, 157-212.</ref>}}
==Popular culture==
Indian Sign language has appeared in numerous Indian films such as:
* [[Koshish]], 1972 film about a deaf couple.
* [[Mozhi]], 2007 film about the love story of a deaf and mute girl
* [[Khamoshi: The Musical]], a 1996 film about deaf and mute parents with a daughter who can hear
* [[Black (film)|Black]], a 2005 film about a blind and deaf girl
==References==
<references/>
==Further reading==
* Deshmukh, D (1997), "Sign Language and Bilingualism in Deaf Education". Ichalkaranj, India: Deaf Foundation.
* Sulman, Nasir & Zuberi, Sadaf (2002) "Pakistan Sign Language - A synopsis".
==External links==
* [http://www.geocities.com/mbs_indore/Pages/ Higher Secondary School & Multi Purpose Training Institute for Deaf] ([[Indore]], Madhya Pradesh) — a residential school run by a deaf couple and using Indian Sign Language in the classroom.
[[Category:Sign languages]]
[[Category:Languages of India]]
[[pt:Língua de Sinais Indiana]]