Facts about British Sign Language
Fact One: What is British Sign Language?
British Sign language is a visual-gestural language which makes use of three dimensional space and the movement of hands (and other parts of the body) to convey meaning. It has its own vocabulary and syntax.
An aid to understanding British Sign Language can be helped by understating the processes of spoken language. Spoken language involves the use of the oratory faculties to produce sounds mapped against specific words and grammatical combinations. The oratory elements are then received by the auditory faculties and processed accordingly. British sign language however, makes use of the visual faculties as opposed to the auditory faculties. In the same way that spoken language makes use of rules to produce comprehensive messages, British Sign Language is also governed by a complex grammar which allows both the tangible and the non tangible to be discussed thoroughly.
Contrary to the beliefs of significant parts of the speaking population, British Sign Language is not a mixture of arbitrary signs modelled on the visual referent.
Fact Two: Who uses British Sign Language?
It is estimated that up to 70,000 individuals use British Sign Language as their first language. Clearly however, use of British Sign Language is not confined to this community of people. It is also used by families, friends and colleagues of deaf individuals and also, professionals such as British Sign Language interpreters and teachers.
Fact Three: How does British Sign Language differ from spoken language?
As mentioned above, British Sign Language makes use of visual channels, whilst spoken language makes use of auditory channels. The differences do not stop here however. Speed is also a key differentiating factor and as such, words in the spoken mode can be produced twice as quickly as signs. Even though this is the case, this does not make the communicating of British Sign Language any slower than spoken language; the reason being that the eyes can perceive multiple signals – therefore, the signs maybe combined with other movements of the face, head and body.
Read more > Facts about British Sign Language
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