Sign Language: moving people to participate

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By the time Jonathan Lambert, who was deaf, arrived in 1694 as one of the earliest settlers on Martha's Vineyard, most of the residents of the small island community knew a form of sign language they brought from their common ancestral home, the Weald. This isolated rural region in the English county of Kent once had an unusually high incidence of deafness due to its small population, and marriage patterns that perpetuated the inheritance of the deafness gene. The early Vineyarders brought with them their customs (and their genes), and before long deafness was relatively common in their community. Vineyarders were almost 40 times more likely to be born deaf than the average mainland Americans.

The last hereditary deaf person in Chilmark, the 'center' of deafness on the Vineyard for many generations, died in 1952, but some old-timers recalled the Martha's Vineyard Sign Language in use as recently as the 1980s. Because everyone on the island knew their special form of sign language, deafness was not considered a disability. Indeed, few deaf people were ever thought of as 'deaf', but were rather known for profession or their physical attributes such as 'a farmer', 'blond-haired', 'tall', etc. And many of the deaf Vinyarders were quite prosperous.

Though recent evidence suggests that sophisticated sign languages developed independently in many communities like the Weald, a French abbot by the name of Charles Michel de l'Epee claims credit for developing modern sign language. He opened a school for the deaf in Paris, in 1755, and his French Sign Language was brought to Hartford, Connecticut in 1817 later forming American Sign Language, possibly influenced by Martha's Vineyard Sign Language.

In a world full of options, how do you inspire people to attend your trade show, seminar, concert, or internal development program? More challenging, how do you encourage involvement, engagement, and participation? Effective communications can make a difference.

Throughout our nearly quarter century of helping organizations achieve their goals, we have developed communication programs that move people to participate in the offerings from organizations of diverse scale and scope start-up to centenarians. Explore our client credentials, learn more about how we think, follow the trail below to more information about Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, or contact us to learn how we can help you build effective communications systems.

For more information

Groce, Nora Ellen. Everyone here spoke sign language: hereditary deafness on Martha's Vineyard. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Wrixon, Fred B. Codes, ciphers & other cryptic & clandestine communication: making and breaking secret messages from hieroglyphics to the Internet. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc., 1998.

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