From Pity to Pride

From Pity to Pride: Growing Up Deaf in the Old South

Notes to Chapter 7

1. �Report ... of the Tennessee Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, 1852�, 16; �Report ... of the Missouri Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, 1857-58,� (Jefferson City, MO: J. Lusk, Public Printer, 1858), 21. Douglas Baynton makes a similar point in Forbidden Signs, 113-122. The title of this chapter is taken from the �Proceedings at the Laying of the Corner-Stone of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb� (Knoxville: Jas. C. and John L. Moses, Register Office, 1848), 14.

2. �Third Annual Report of the Commissioners of the Georgia Asylum for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb, 1852� (Cave Spring, GA: Georgia Asylum for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb, 1852), 13-14.

3. Ibid., 14-15. This approach is similar to the one employed by Virginia Trist, discussed in Chapter 4.

4. Ibid., 15-17.

5. �Report of the Board of Directors of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, 1850� (Raleigh: Thomas J. Lemay, Printer to the State, 1850), 7.

6. See Baynton, Forbidden Signs, 120-121. For another analysis of the debates about pedagogical sign languages, see Edwards, �Words Made Flesh,� 45-109 and 155-206.

7. �Twelfth Annual Report ... of the Georgia Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb, 1861,� 10.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. J. A. Jacobs, �On the Disuse of Colloquial Signs in the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, and the Necessity of General Signs following the Order of the Words,� American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb 7, no. 2 (1854), 69.

11. J. A. Jacobs, Primary Lessons for Deaf-Mutes, 1:7. The typical modern sign weather incorporates the W, but the modern sign color does not incorporate a C. Although not typically initialized, red is sometimes signed with the R handshape rather than the pointer finger. The tradition of initializing signs is older than American Sign Language. The sign language taught in France�s national school incorporated first letters. ASL, a linguistic descendant of French sign language, has maintained the practice. Laurent Clerc and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet changed many of the initialized signs from French initials to English initials. Monday was now signed with an M rather than with an L, as it was in France for the French word lundi. Green was signed with a G rather than a V for the French vert. Sometimes ASL continued to use the sign without changing the initial to the first letter of the English word. Many modern ASL words are initialized by the first letter of the French word: the sign with is made with two A hands for the French avec, the sign other with an A hand for autre, the sign good with a B hand for bon, the sign hundred with a C hand for cent, the sign search with a C hand for chercher, etc. See Joseph D. Stedt and Donald F. Moores, �Manual Codes on English and American Sign Language: Historical Perspectives and Current Realities,� in Manual Communication: Implications for Education, ed. Harry Bornstein (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1990), 1-20, especially the discussion on p. 2.