Talk:Old Kentish Sign Language

Existence

There is absolutely no evidence that this sign language ever existed. It is mere speculation based on some discussion in a book by Nora Groce on Martha's Vineyard Sign Language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.82.61.13 (talk • contribs)

Could you elaborate? i guess you are talking about this book about Martha's Vineyard Sign Language:

• Groce, Nora Ellen (1985). Everyone here spoke sign language: Hereditary deafness on Martha's Vineyard. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674270401.

I haven't read it but I believe that the author suggests that a sign language was brought to New England from Kent by a group of related families with a high degree of hereditary deafness, whose descendents developed Martha's Vineyard Sign Language. OKSL has also been identified by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (see the Ethnologue entry), and listed in Gallaudet University's sign languages page.

However, I did find this quote: "There has been the suggestion that the sign language [that emerged on Martha's Vineyard] would have been some form of “Old Kentish Sign Language”. This needs to be treated with caution because no deaf people were part of the original migration from Kent, and nothing is known about any specific variety of signing used in Kent." (From Multilingualism: The global approach to sign languages, by Bencie Woll, Rachel Sutton-Spence and Frances Elton, in "The Sociolinguistics of Sign Languages", Edited by Ceil Lucas, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521791375).

What do you suggest is changed on this article, if anything? ntennis 04:02, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I've now added the quote from Woll et al. ntennis 05:05, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for adding this. I realise that the term 'Old Kent/Kentish Sign Language' has appeared in Ethnologue and elsewhere but there actually is no evidence to my knowledge that it ever existed. As you said, you've not read Groce (1985) yourself. In fact, I think this is widely the case amongst those who believe that such a sign language actually existed. If you look closely at the original suggestion she made, you will see that it is mere speculation. Adam Schembri, UCL.

Thanks for the information! Please edit the article if you think it is incorrect. I will also try to have a look for the book and check the other sources. ntennis 01:31, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of this article

I read this article and thought it was all speculation with the references used to support notability all being speculative themselves. I then checked on this talk page and found the above comments by editors who also thought this language may not even have existed. I then checked online for references and all I could find was the same references used here that do only confirm that the existence of the language is speculative. Based on the fact that there is nothing to verify the languages notability I suggest this article is deleted. Even as a speculative language, notability is not established by any sources. Any comments welcome before I start the deletion process. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:46, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

• Comment, reason for PROD removal

I have found some other sources that discuss Groce's hypothesis about the origins of congenital deafness and sign language on Martha's Vineyard. I think this is a valid topic to have a Wikipedia article on, as readers may come across the name 'Old Kentish Sign Language' and want to find out more about it (as Adam Schembri states above, it is included in Ethnologue, and this article includes the Ethnologue entry as a reference).
There are several reviews of Groce's book that discuss her suggestions - they could certainly be added as references to Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, but in that they discuss the plausibility of a sign language existing in Kent, which emigrants to America took with them, they are relevant to an article about the putative 'Old Kentish Sign Language'. (The reviews include Scientific American Vol. 256, No. 3 (March 1987), pp. 27-29 [1], American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 89, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), pp. 466-467 [2] , and Journal of Social History Vol. 21, No. 2 (Winter, 1987), pp. 346-348 [3].)
Other sources also refer to Groce's hypothesis and the evidence from Pepys, including the article 'Dumb O Jemmy and Others: Deaf People, Interpreters, and the London Courts in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries', in Sign Language Studies Vol. 8, No. 3 (Spring 2008), pp. 226-240 [4], which is also a clear description of what evidence is available about signing in Britain over the 18th and 19th centuries (mainly from records of the London Central Criminal Court, but defendants, plaintiffs and witnesses came from other parts of Britain too). That article describes early signing as most often "home sign", developed by a deaf person and their family, workmates, etc, to enable communication, but not established, not passed from generation to generation or used by a large group, etc. However, it also makes the point that home signs are often the starting point for new sign languages when deaf people come together. This article further states that the servant Pepys observed was most likely using a form of home sign, and that there appears to be no evidence to confirm Groce's conjecture.
Its discussion of evidence about signing in Britain - the earliest evidence being from 1575, and only sporadic references during the 17th century, the relevant period for the emigrants from the Weald in Kent to America - makes clear that it's unlikely that any evidence exists at all, either to prove or disprove the existence of Old Kentish Sign Language. However, it does also make clear that home signing did exist at that period in some families/work situations including deaf people.
The fact that there's no evidence that any deaf people were part of the original migration is also discussed - the congenital deafness in Martha's Vineyard often appeared in some members of a family and not others, and it's entirely plausible that two emigrants had the recessive genes for deafness, that some of their children were deaf, and also that at least some emigrants knew home sign for use with deaf family members who did not emigrate, at all or in the original migration, and used that with children born deaf in America. Also, there is evidence of deaf emigrants arriving from Kent in New England before the move to Martha's Vineyard.
So I propose keeping the article, although revising it to reflect wider discussion than is presently represented in it, particularly where the second para appears to make definite statements about Pepys' servant living in the same community as the Martha's Vineyard emigrants, and about sign language being widespread there. RebeccaGreen (talk) 14:31, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your thorough explanation. I would agree to keeping the article with some changes being made. I do not have access to the references you mention, which are subscriber only. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:39, 3 March 2019 (UTC)