SASL Newsletter - Fall 2018 Issue Issue 11 - Fall 2018 | Page 15

This biography of the founder of deaf
education in the U.S., the first since E. M.
Gallaudet’s 1887 effort, examines Gallaudet’s
life as an evangelical reformer whose work in
sign-language education for the deaf was part
and parcel of his activism in otherwise
remarkably reactionary causes, all intended to
uphold a white, Protestant nation.
How
Gallaudet’s cheerleading for African American
deportation was associated, in his mind, with
his support for sign-language education is
considered.
Along the way, Sayers discusses 18 th -
century theories of language and language
acquisition that posited language as a simple
encoding system for the mental world with
which God has endowed us at birth. When
Gallaudet adopted these reductive theories
wholesale in his formative years, they were
already outmoded, but they won his
approbation and became lifelong fixtures of his
worldview, not least because they reinforced
his own religious beliefs in creationism and in
the essential linguistic aspect of Divine
Revelation. Gallaudet’s own published writings
on childhood language acquisition and on the
language of signs are reviewed, with attention
to these factors.
Other topics discussed include Francis Green on both the Braidwoods and de l’Épée;
Dugald Stewart on the errors of oralism; the deafblind children James Mitchell and Julia Brace;
Charlotte Elizabeth Phelan’s teaching methods; methodical signing at both the Paris and Hartford
schools; Alice Cogswell’s sign-language competency in Lydia Huntley’s classroom prior to her
meeting with Laurent Clerc in 1816; Gallaudet’s hopes for missionary use of sign language;
attempts of the early oralists Samuel Gridley Howe and Horace Mann to publicize Prussian
methods in the U. S.; and Gallaudet’s experiments with using sign language to communicate with
people he regarded as primitive humans, such as the Muslims who rebelled on the Amistad.
Sayers, E. E. (2018). The life and times of T. H. Gallaudet. Lebanon, NH: ForeEdge/UP of New England.
To purchase the book, visit the website at www.upne.com/1512600513.html
The Power of ASL
15
Fall 2018 – Issue 11