Continued from page 1: Defending Signed Language in Motion
so the series was to record master signers and sign language in its purest form (Burch, 2004).
Following the resolution, NAD established a moving picture committee fund and produced a film series
from 1910-1921. Portraying deaf people as “all-American,” the selected content included sermons,
patriotic songs, jokes, and even a rendition of the Gettysburg address. The films carefully portrayed
signing deaf people as ideal citizens, white, sighted, abled, hard-working, virtuous, and patriotic while
relaying underlying messages about masculinity, femininity, womanhood, citizenship, and respectability.
After a popular run among deaf clubs, the films were put in storage and forgotten until the 1970s. After
their discovery in storage, the films were transferred to the Gallaudet University Archives for
safekeeping. Fourteen films survived, including Preservation of the Sign Language.
Deaf Studies scholar Carol Padden suggests the Veditz film offers us new dimensions of
understanding deaf history by highlighting a perennial issue that has endured across generations for
deaf people. The film captures not only what ASL looked like in the early 20 th century but also insights
into how deaf people framed debates surrounding sign language and the right of deaf people to exist
(Padden, 2004). Veditz’s rhetoric still holds much truth for advocates of sign language as the same
debates rage on in the 21 st century, showing us the cyclical nature of history and our tenuous
relationship with the past. As Padden (2004) so aptly puts it, Preservation “is the finest piece of film that
deaf people can call their own” (p. 259).
References
Baynton, D. C. (1996). Forbidden signs: American culture and the campaign against sign language. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Burch, S. (2004). Signs of resistance: American deaf cultural history, 1900 to World War II. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Padden, C. (2004). Translating Veditz. Sign Language Studies, 4(3), 244-260.
Preservation of the Sign Language by George W. Veditz (Original – 1913; Reprint – 1934)
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XITbj3NTLUQ&t=3s
The Power of ASL
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Winter 2017 – Issue 8