Growing Up Deaf on the Vineyard
Life of a Deaf person
Politics and Economics
Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language
  by Nora Ellen Groce
History of Sign Language
Community Dynamics with Deaf People
Economics
Employment
Success
The Sea!
Killed Many Deaf Islanders
Deaf did not
whale hunt
Wealthy Implies Inheritance
Chopped Wood
Built Stone Walls
Haying
Men
Women
Sewing
Housekeeping
Babysitting
Fancy Ironing
Deaf People = $$$
Bank Statements and Census Records Prove It!
Nathaniel Mann: Richest Man in Chilmark
But the elderly and widows had trouble making ends meetp
Politics
Town Affairs
Deaf Active in Government
Notable Positions Held:
Office Fence Viewer (His partner, the office fence listener, was blind)
School committee member
Highway Surveyor
Justice blind,
not deaf
Legal Responsibility
All but one Deaf Islander Responsible
for Legal Affairs
Bought Land,
Signed Contracts,
Made Depositions
and Wills in Own Name
Example: Man inherits a large share of his parents estate, his family didn’t consider him to be able to make important decisions regarding his well being b/c he was a deaf mute, uneducated, incapable of writing his own name. Judge ruled insane. (deaf neighbor signed petition and deaf older brother became his guardian)

Deafness During Childhood
Deaf Children and Hearing Children Same Advantages
Since the town’s population was very stable, everyone knew someone who was deaf, and this led to a widespread knowledge of sign language

Sign language could be used for deaf children to learn to communicate at an early age, eliminating any communication problems.
Advantages MV
Sign language was firmly embedded into the culture of the town.; therefore, there was on language of social barrier.
parents readily accepted the child’s deafness, everyone spoke sign language, the availability of role models, the support of the deaf community, and the knowledge of how to manage everyday problems.
Disadvantages Elsewhere
parents had to learn to accept their child’s disability, struggle to master sign language, and find their way through a complicated special education system.
Growing Up
Education
Schools for the deaf received state funding, and were able to have better standards of education than the schools for hearing children did
The deaf could also attend school even if their parents could not pay for it, so they spent more time in the education system
Hearing people often went to the deaf to ask them to explain articles in newspapers or legal documents.
Marriage
Deaf people in Martha’s Vineyard got married much more frequently than deaf people in the nation as a whole. 80% of deaf people there got married, while only 45% got married in the entire country. Furthermore, only 35% of the deaf married other deaf people, as opposed to the nationwide rate of 79%. 
Bilingualism and acceptance of the disability contributed to this discrepancy.
Deaf people also reproduced at the same rate of hearing people in the town, due to their social and economic ability to support a larger family.
Attitudes Toward Deafness
Vineyarders had no clear understanding why deafness was on island and not sure why passed from one generation to next

One informant claimed:
“The only time that I ever thought about it was when I read an article in the Boston Paper.  I thought it was so funny they should write about it in the paper…It struck me funny that they should have an article, because to me, you know, it was something very ordinary…” (51-52)

Overall hearing people’s attitudes towards the deaf were positive and deaf people saw their problem as a small nuisance rather than a grave problem
Sign Language on the Island
The up-Island community, and earlier the down-Island as well, was bilingual in English and sign language
Learning The Language
They Learned as Naturally as they did English
The rate at which deaf children acquire a vocabulary, if they are signers, is virtually identical to the rate of hearing children, and by the age of 5 both have acquired a vocabularies of over 1,000 words
A deaf child that is not exposed to sign language, and is only given oral instructions, only has a functional vocabulary of a dozen or so words by age 5
none of the informants remembered any formal education - used so often in practice
Difficulties in Communication
Minimal
Some had to ask for help signing individual words
There was no indication of the use of written notes; but by the nineteenth century all but one deaf Vineyarder could read and write English, probably learning it as a 2nd language
One informant remembered:
“Oh, I could talk the sign language, get along with them in pretty good shape-most everybody could.  I never learned the alphabet, but, ah, most individuals knew the signs” (58)

Competency of Hearing Signers
Some hearing Vineyarders might have used rough form of sign language
...And believed they were better at the language then they thought
The informants also stated that there was no difference in the types of signs or their order when used by deaf Islanders talking among themselves and by hearing individuals with the deaf
On the Island however, the only distinction made was that when talking to a hearing person who was not very fluent in the language the deaf person would sign more slowly 
Evidence:
Informants stated no difference between English grammatical Structure and Sign Language - Yeah Right!
When a Deaf Person would speak with a non fluent hearer, the person would sign more slowly
Scholars Confusion
-Until recently, sign languages were considered to be derivatives of spoken languages.
Early scholars tried to study “the” sign language by looking at one particular sign language system.
-An area of difficulty was that sign languages were confused with sign “systems,” the gestures used by hearing people in place of spoken language.
-A sign language, by comparison, is generally the first language of the person who uses it and differs in grammar, syntax, expression and idiomatic usage from the spoken language used by hearing members of the same community.
Development of
-Only 10% of those born deaf have deaf parents.
-most hearing parents have no prior knowledge of deafness and are forced to develop their own systems of communications, or “home signs,” with their isolated deaf children (with varying degrees of success).
-In terms of age and complexity of the language and extent of bilingualism, Martha’s Vineyard was 12 generations deep on the Island itself, and Kentish antecendants may have gone even further back.

-Hereditary deafness is one of the most common Mendelian traits, and disease, such as iodine deficiency (which in some cases results in early deafness) has been endemic in some regions for centuries.
-Groce says that in places where deafness is not uncommon, some form of sign language will always develop.
-Wherever there are enough deaf people over time to systematize and pass along a language from one generation to the next, a mature, comprehensive sign language may develop.
-Travelers have rarely written about these visual forms of communication and until recently, few scholars thought sign languages worthy of attention.

-How complex these languages are, how effective they are in allowing deaf individuals to express ideas/understand what is going on in their community, and whether hearing individuals try to learn these languages depends on a number of factors;
-number of people in the community
-length of time in which deaf individuals have been in the population
-community status of the deaf people
-attitude of hearing individuals toward those who are deaf.

-Until recently, many people believed that the sign languages used in educational institutions for the deaf in the West were relatively young, based on a French Sign Language ‘invented’ at one of the first schools for the deaf, which was established in Paris in the 1760s.
-Before the founding of institutions, the deaf rarely gathered together, and as institutions began only in Europe in the mid-18th century, sign languages therefore must be relatively young.

-It has frequently been assumed that sign languages have all the weaknesses of a young language;
-no grammatical categories or function words
-few lexical items
-most of them are imitative or descriptive
-no syntax in the sense of spoken languages
-Another common misconception is that American Sign Language (ASL) can be traced back only to 1817, the year French Sign Language was introduced at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford.
 -James Woodward hypothesized that FSL could not have been transmuted so quickly into a recognizably different language known as ASl except by “creolization” (cultural interchange) with one or more established indigenous American sign languages.

British Sign Language
-P. Bonet in 1620 wrote that sign language was a “natural” or “universal” language, citing as proof that “when mutes happen to meet who never saw each other before, they can understand each other, using the same signs.”
-“Mutes” may have lived close to each other, and the “natural language” may have been a shared regional sign language.
-Even today, English sign language is noted for its large number of dialects.

this diversity comes from the fact that in schools for the deaf, sign language was strictly limited or forbidden altogether, so a uniform language did not develop, but the diversity of dialects also points to a very long period of isolated regional development.
Vineyard Sign Language: 19th Century
-When deaf Island children began to attend school in Hartford in the 19th century, Island sign language seems to have acquired some aspects of the emerging American Sign Language.
-For the first several decades after the founding of the American Asylum, the single largest group of deaf children seems to have been from Martha’s Vineyard.
-The second largest group of students over the years was from the Sandy River area of Maine; these children were descendents of the people who had emigrated from Martha’s Vineyard less than a generation earlier.
-Vineyard Sign Language resembled American Sign Language in many ways; the reason for this may be that some features of ASL were taken from Vineyard Language.

Daily Life
Church
-Most Islanders attended Church services regularly
-Deaf Individuals would sign their entire testimony without translation
-If anyone missed a part of the sign, someone sitting near them could translate it.
-The only concession to deafness would be that individuals would stand at the front of the room so that everyone could see them sign 
-Practice seemed to occur regularly for years (John Adams, 1821)

Day to Day
-Little need for translators in daily life
-Everyone who had even a little interaction with the towns of West Tisbury or Chilmark could “speak” well enough to get by. 
-In the event that a person could not understand sign language there was always someone to help them.

Sign Language Hearing by Islanders
-Hearing Individuals were so used to using sing language that many would sign even when there were no deaf individuals around
-Signing in places where talking was discouraged also occurred regularly
-Sign Language was used among bilingual Islanders to discuss non-Islanders.
-Many used Sign Language when distance became a factor.
-Fisherman used Sign Language to communicate on the water
-Code Switching from speech to sign often occurred

Social, Community, End
Social Life
Mingled Everywhere -
Home, General Store, 
Church, Parties
Community Events
Everyone attended the events
...even the once a year Tidsbury Fair between Up and Down Islanders
The Last Deaf Vineyarders
Summer People upset Social Patterns
Eugenicists Cried Inbreeding!
The Islanders Became an Attraction
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