Gesture Language in Culture Contact

Abstract

Sign language or manual gesture is often used to communicate across language barriers. When such encounters are between people of very different cultural and language backgrounds, especially in conditions of first cultural contact, the question of possible human universality of understanding of gesture languge is raised. Although some anthropologists and linguists have denied this possibility, cross-linguistic and cross-cultural manual gesture and pantomimic propositional communication has been frequently reported by explorers and travelers. Gestural communication of this kind may also be a necessary first step in the acquisition of a new spoken language, where interpreters, teachers, dictionaries, and grammars are lacking. Data used are numerous reports of sign language encounters, quoted from first-hand and usually first-person journals, narratives, log books, etc., of European explorers and voyagers between 1492 and 1800. It is often possible to determine if the information exchange was successful from these accounts. Contrary to the notions of some writers, information exchange is by no means limited to communication of basic human needs for food, water, and the like; instead, conversations cover such matters as geographic intelligence, distances, directions, time required for travel, topography, information about neighboring peoples, and sometimes "ethnographic" data on religion, social organization, technology, and subsistence. Barter is usually managed in part through sign language. These reports reveal the existence of a significant behavioral phenomenon, almost wholly neglected by linguists and ethnographers, for which we possess substantial documentation during the epoch of European worldwide exploration. Such communication supports the notion that there may be a pan-human, cognitive deep structure which does not require spoken language for its social transmission when the occasion demands. AA