A quick post in response to a request…
In British Deaf history, the figure of the missioner is a complicated one, and will not be examined here. Except to say that in training hearing people to sign and ultimately interpret, these historical pastoral–social service workers deserve credit for recognizing linguistic principles of British Sign Language. Eventually, I will focus more on their theories, methods, and attitudes about L2 instruction in academic writing. For now, here are some fun things!
Rev. Thomas Henry Sutcliffe (1907-1996) lost his hearing and learned BSL as an adult. He afterward published and worked vigorously for the recognition of the community, and the language. In his 1954 booklet Conversation with the Deaf, he enumerates various features of what he called “gestures,” or signs and classifiers. See how he observed indexing, non-manual markers, depictions, instrumental classifiers, synecdoche references, etc. And this is only a fraction of his insights!
In his memoirs, the Rev. Percy Corfmat (1914-1990) revealed he was chosen as the first full-time RADD interpreter in 1938. He grew up signing, but in this 1961 letter to William Stokoe, he confessed some ambivalence about the legitimacy of his parents’ language “gestures and signs”. In other writing, Corfmat describes signs in usage among various categories of Deaf people, and strategies for effective interpreting along the continuum with English. His request below confirms that missioners were seeking academic sources to inform their work, and wanted to apply linguistic principles to what would eventually be known as BSL (Brennan, 1975).
But Brennan (1975) was not the first to name the manual communication used in various dialects throughout the UK. The Rev. Alan G. K. F. Mackenzie (1911-1997) was the son of a Deaf missioner. In 1966, he reviewed a copy of Stokoe, Casterline and Croneberg’s A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles which had been published the previous year. Again, he did so in order to share the new findings with his colleagues, and improve their understanding and practices of working among Deaf people. Mackenzie never proselyted “E.S.L.—English Sign Language” like Fant, another Deaf preacher’s son, later would with “Ameslan”. Suffice it to say that neither stuck (notwithstanding any differences with fingerspelling and signing in Scotland and Wales), but update your research, folks! Rev. Mackenzie made one of the first known published attempts at labeling BSL.
Brennan, M. (1975). Can deaf children acquire language? An evaluation of linguistic principles in deaf education. American Annals of the Deaf, 120(5).
Corfmat, P. (1990). Please sign here: Insights into the world of the deaf. Worthing: Churchman.
Fant, Jr., L. J. (1972). Ameslan. Silver Spring, MD: National Association of the Deaf.
Mackenzie, A. F. (1966). Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles. Deaf Welfare, 4(6).
Stokoe, W. C., Casterline, D. S., & Croneberg, C. G. (1965). A dictionary of American Sign Language on linguistic principles. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok Press.
Sutcliffe, T. H. (1954). NID Booklet number 491: Conversation with the deaf. London: National Institute for the Deaf.