Gestures In American Sign Language

At the very beginning of chapter seven in Nonverbal Communication in Human Interaction, there is a quote by Edward Sapir in which he talks about how no one truly knows how gestures work, which is quickly countered by noting that his view would likely be different if he were alive today. “But unlike language, gestures received relatively little scholarly attention until the last part of the 20th century.” (Knapp, Hall, & Horgan, 2014, p. 199) It is interesting to note that American Sign Language also wasn't accepted as an official language until the 1960’s. American Sign Language was established in the early 1800’s, but up until the second half of the twentieth century, it was seen as a primitive form of communication that was not capable of communicating complex thoughts and ideas. Today, there is the understanding that American Sign Language, amongst other sign languages, are in fact true languages which have their own syntax and grammar.

As speakers of English, a verbal language, we tend to think of gestures as a form of nonverbal communication. But, to people whose first language is a visual sign language, the gestures they make are verbal. They also have what are called “non-manual markers” which change the meaning of a hand sign, depending on another visual cue, such as a tilt of the head, raising or lowering of the eyebrows, or shaping the mouth in a certain way. This, to me, seems to be their alternative to what we would call a nonverbal