An Intelligibly Expounded Journey into Signed Languages and their Origins: Fox, M. (2007). Talking Hands. What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster. 354 pages. Hardcover. $27.00.
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: Although one would wish that authors (or their publishers) who write books about Deafness stop inventing titles that are so clearly and overly hearing-Deaf metaphoric, Talking Hands is a book one reads at one sitting. That is, at least the even chapters. Margalit Fox accompanied a team of four linguists who visited Al-Sayyid, a remote Israeli hamlet with a large incidence of hereditary deafness where both the Deaf and the hearing inhabitants of this Bedouin village spoke the indigenous sign language. Fox, a reporter/writer and a linguist herself, organized the book such that the odd-numbered chapters tell about the visit to Al-Sayyid and the work of the team, whereas the even-numbered chapters review the history and the linguistics of signed languages. These eight chapters are very readable. Fox would make an excellent teacher. In clear, intelligible language she provides a brief yet comprehensive outline of the history of views on signed languages, the history of (American) sign language research, and the most important findings of that research, finishing with the findings concerning the localization of sign language in the brain. It is elegantly written, to the point and highly accessible for laymen. However, I would not have chosen the terms “horizontal” versus “vertical” to describe an essential difference between spoken and signed languages but “sequential” versus “simultaneous” because the spatiality of signed languages involves much more than vertical piling of information. The eight chapters about visiting Al-Sayyid are interesting, but after a few chapters it is clear that not much happens except the team videotapes as many different signers as they can find. Fox combines the description of these actions with brief depictions of the inhabitants and the surroundings. Even Fox sometimes finds it difficult to keep up the strict order of chapters she has organized when she incorporates linguistic findings in the chapters about Al-Sayyid. For instance, in chapter 5 she describes how linguists discovered that languages in different stages of development have different numbers of color terms, varying from two (black and white) to eight or more, in chapter 13 she devotes eight pages to home sign, and in chapter 9 she describes how there once was a men's and a women's dialect of Irish Sign Language. These are very nice bits in the chapters about Al-Sayyid. In the final chapter, she discusses the most important findings of the team with respect to the sign language of Al-Sayyid, namely, that in two important respects it differs from what the linguists had expected. The underlying thread of the book is man's drive to catch the birth of human language and although the subtitle of the book promises a little bit more than it supplies (in a remote village where everyone speaks sign language, scientists are discovering the essential ingredients of all human language—and uncovering the workings of the human mind), the book is very worth while. For those who are well up in linguistics, this last chapter is the most interesting. For those who know little about Deafness or signed languages, the book is fascinating reading stuff, opening new horizons. And for those who are well up in Deafness and signed languages, the book is like a warm bath of recognition.
Author: A. Tellings
Institution: Radboud University Nijmegen
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2163340840