Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard Paperback – April 14, 1988
Author: Visit Amazon's Nora Ellen Groce Page | Language: English | ISBN: 067427041X | Format: PDF, EPUB
Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard – April 14, 1988
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Review
When is deafness neither handicap nor stigma? When, as this remarkable book recounts, the entire hearing community learns from childhood to be bilingual in conventional speech and sign language, and when the deaf are wholly integrated into the community's social, economic, religious, and recreational life...A vivid ethnography of a hearing community's full acceptance of, and adaptation to, deafness. Groce also constructs a fascinating ethnohistory of this genetic disorder. (Choice)
Beautiful and fascinating...I was so moved by Groce's book that the moment I finished it I jumped in the car, with only a toothbrush, a tape recorder, and a camera--I had to see this enchanted island for myself. (Oliver Sacks New York Review of Books)
Brilliantly argued and lively...[Groce's] information consists of the oral history she herself garnered from some 50 witnesses, almost all more than 75 years old, and the documents in print and in manuscript that cross-check and extend their first-hand accounts. Human genetic theory, ethnographic counterparts and a clear-eyed account of social attitudes are the analytic tools that form her brief and telling work...[A] persuasive and compassionate investigation. (Scientific American)
Fascinating...Groce accomplishes much just by pointing out that "handicaps" are something a culture creates, and thus the joint responsibility of us all. That's what places this book squarely within the best tradition of anthropological writing, and makes it both moving and encouraging. (Village Voice)
Beautiful and fascinating...I was so moved by Groce's book that the moment I finished it I jumped in the car, with only a toothbrush, a tape recorder, and a camera--I had to see this enchanted island for myself. (Oliver Sacks New York Review of Books)
Brilliantly argued and lively...[Groce's] information consists of the oral history she herself garnered from some 50 witnesses, almost all more than 75 years old, and the documents in print and in manuscript that cross-check and extend their first-hand accounts. Human genetic theory, ethnographic counterparts and a clear-eyed account of social attitudes are the analytic tools that form her brief and telling work...[A] persuasive and compassionate investigation. (Scientific American)
Fascinating...Groce accomplishes much just by pointing out that "handicaps" are something a culture creates, and thus the joint responsibility of us all. That's what places this book squarely within the best tradition of anthropological writing, and makes it both moving and encouraging. (Village Voice)
About the Author
Nora Ellen Groce, a cultural and medical anthropologist, received her doctorate from Brown University. She is currently a Fellow at the Family Development Study, Children's Hospital, Boston, and in the Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School.
Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard Paperback – April 14, 1988
- Paperback: 169 pages
- Publisher: Harvard University Press (April 14, 1988)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 067427041X
- ISBN-13: 978-0674270411
- Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10 in Books > Textbooks > Medicine & Health Sciences > Allied Health Services > Audiology & Speech Pathology
- #11 in Books > Medical Books > Allied Health Professions > Audiology & Speech Pathology
- #11 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Specific Demographics > Disabled
This is one of my favorite books of all time. Originally written as an ethnographic study, it is also completely readable for a non-professional popular audience. Basically, it is the story of the islanders of Martha's Vineyard, a large island off the coast of Massachusetts. The islanders originally came from the same 2 or 3 boatloads of colonists from England, by way of Boston and Scituate, from a region in Kent which already seems to have had a high incidence of hereditary deafness. Due to the geographic isolation of the island, recessive genes for deafness, which were already prominent in the original Kentish colonists, came increasingly to the fore. As the proportions of islanders who happened to be deaf gradually increased, what was the islanders' answer? Not shunning the deaf. Far from it. Rather, a tradition arose that EVERYONE on the island, deaf or hearing, simply learned sign language as children!
This book is full of fascinating little anecdotes, about how island society worked to include its deaf members. For example, we learn about families and friends, some deaf and some hearing, who would regularly sit next to each other in church. The hearing members would sign the sermons to their deaf friends. Or, sometimes groups of people who could hear perfectly well might be together, for whatever reason, and they might happen to converse by signing just as much as in spoken English. Everyone spoke both languages.
Some of my favorite parts of the book focus on the benefits of signing. For example, perhaps two neighbors wanted to converse, while being separated by 200 yards of noisy space, made vocally impenetrable by sounds of surf and sea.
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