Home Sign and Sign Languages
Nancy Frishberg set out a framework for identifying and describing home-based sign systems in 1987. She states that home signs differ from sign languages in that they:
- do not have a consistent meaning-symbol relationship,
- do not pass on from generation to generation,
- are not shared by one large group,
- and are not considered the same over a community of signers.
However, home sign is often the starting point for new deaf sign languages that emerge when deaf people come together. For example, following the establishment of the first deaf schools in Nicaragua in the 1970s, the previously isolated deaf children quickly developed their own sign language, now known as Nicaraguan Sign Language, from the building blocks of their own diverse home sign systems.
Home sign also played a part in the formation of American Sign Language, which is a blend of home sign, Old French Sign Language, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language and Plains Indian Sign Language.
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—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life?—In use it is alive. Is life breathed into it there?—Or is the use its life?”
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—Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1934)