This is not the first instance of linguistic oppression. As the psychologist Ursula Belugi pointed out, there were at least two previous known instances in human history: the suppression of the teaching of French in Prussian-occupied Alsace after the Franco- Prussian war, and of the teaching of Polish in Prussian-occupied western Poland during the same period. Let us say, however, that the rage which the Alsatians and Poles had then felt can hardly surpass the intensity of the feelings of the deaf about their own sign language, since to them it is also their lifeline toward self-fulfillment, and without it life to them is a living death. The vital importance of this language has long been recognized. Thus nearly a century ago a writer commented:
... the greatest thing needful is to wake up the mind, to make it flow with life-the life of the soul. How is this achievable but with the language of signs? This strange yet wonderful language possesses in fact almost the power of an autocrat over the mind tied and bound by the fetter of deafness; it waves its magic wand and the fetters fall off - it acts the part of nursing mother, and behold the passive intellect is awakened to the power of understanding. (R. Patterson, American Annals of the Deaf, Vol. XXIII, 1878, p. 20.)The vividness, immediacy and dramatic impact of this language are reflected in the following excerpt from an anonymous article in The Arkansas Optic, circa 1910:
It is the language of the soul; it stirs the heart to the deepest depths of pathos; it convulses the frame with the merriest peals of laughter. I have seen again and again some Demosthenes of the deaf carry his audience in the sweep of one fleeting moment from the agony of burning tears to the delight of enraptured smiles. (Brochure, Boston Society of the Deaf, printed by Herman Schultz. Boston, 1910.)And Arnold H. Payne in 1937 acclaimed sign language as "far more expressive, facile and beautiful than the English of Shakespeare and the Bible." (Quoted by Edmund Critchley, in The Language of Gesture. London: E. Arnold, 1939.)
These particular qualities of sign language are illustrated by the following recent anecdote about a man who became interested in learning it:
But there is one thing he said that I will never forget. He wanted me to sign a poem of song so that he could got an idea of how the deaf enjoy them. I chose "The Star-Spangled Banner..."When I was through he stared at me for a while and then said: "I've heard it so many times but never understood it with feeling and meaning until now." (As narrated by Ed Holonya to Toivo Lindholm, in The Deaf American, September, 1970, p. 17.)