The body knows the body asks: The sign language birth’s curious case (con Maria Garcea)

It’s 1753, and Charles-Michel de L’Épée was living in Paris then. He was then an anonymous priest who happened to know by chance two young deaf people able to “communicate” with him through visual-gestural communication. For the time, it was more unique than a rare event. The priest was ascertained by the mother of the young girls that their tutor had died, so he decided to take care of their education. It must be said that, at the time of the events, the priest was practically ignorant about the Deaf culture. Therefore, L’Épée was devoid of any specific preparation about deafness. By failing to obtain suggestions from an institution meant to deal with deafness in Edinburgh, he essentially learned throughout his training. He devised a solution that proved to be as new as effective. As himself declares in one of his texts, he was able to count especially on what he had learned by the philosophy about the relationship between language and intelligence, about the fact that the bond which exists between ideas and sounds is no more natural than that which may exist between the same ideas and visual characters. In other words, faced with the problem of ensuring access to knowledge for individuals affected by deafness, L’Épée conceives the unprecedented solution of doing so starting from deafness itself as a condition that historically had been able to produce protolanguages through the visual-gestural concept. Since the addressees of his intervention would have been the deaf people, he was convinced that it was precisely from them that he should have learned the rules of interaction between being born and living among speakers and the need to be themselves and recognise themselves as their similar. He decided that the path to follow would have been outlined by the “natural language” of the deaf people, by the sign language, which people used spontaneously among themselves and to make themselves understood by deaf people. It was a solution as “creative” as unexpected. Above all, it was a great source of inclusion by which we would have a lot to learn today. It is not to be underestimated that it was designed from what real deaf bodies asked and knew how to do.

Siamo nel 1753 e a Parigi viveva Charles-Michel L’Épée. Si tratta di un prete allora sconosciuto a cui capitò di conoscere per caso due sorelle sorde che si dimostrarono in grado di “conversare” con lui attraverso una comunicazione di tipo visivo-gestuale. Per l’epoca era un evento abbastanza raro. In effetti, i sordi vivevano per lo più una vita di isolamento e certamente non ricevevano alcuna istruzione. L’Épée quindi – che nel frattempo aveva appurato tramite la madre delle due giovani che il loro istitutore era deceduto – decise di occuparsi personalmente della loro educazione. Si tratta di un momento molto importante nella storia delle scienze del linguaggio e della mente. Dopo secoli in cui la sordità era stata considerata una condizione di inferiorità ineliminabile, L’Épée mostra che essa è, al contrario, una circostanza adatta a mostrare che esiste una via di accesso alla facoltà di linguaggio e all’intelligenza alternativa alla parola. Più precisamente, egli progetta un metodo di educazione dei sordi che valorizza la loro lingua naturale, vale a dire la lingua dei segni. È ad essa che dobbiamo l’inizio della storia culturale della sordità. Si tratta di un fatto molto interessante e significativo: il protagonista di questa importante svolta nella storia umana e culturale dei sordi è il corpo senza suoni che vuole e offre segni.