Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe Before 1600: A Survey of Sign Lexicons and Finger Alphabets Prior to the Rise of Deaf Education

Abstract

Visual-kinetic communication systems - ancient finger numbers, medieval and Renaissance finger alphabets, conventionalized 'coverbal' gesture systems for oratory and the theater, the Roman pantomime, monastic sign lexicons, and the elusive possibility of natural sign languages - have all received the scholarly attention that has turned up the few surviving primary texts from the period before 1600. The extant documentation indicates that many visual-kinetic systems were sporadically in use among the general (i.e., hearing) population to a degree almost unimaginable to post-Renaissance societies such as ours that popularly associate 'gesture languages' with the deaf. In detail, however, the texts are often difficult to interpret, not only because of their scarcity and generally highly allusive nature, but also because of modern historians' often unproductive or misproductive approaches to them. This survey is meant to provide an overview of the textual evidence and a foundation for both sign language linguists and historians of the deaf education to analyze and interpret more accurately and usefully the extant evidence for visual-kinetic communication systems before the rise of Deaf Education.