Chapter Eleven: Deaf Gain

Chelsee Patterson 11/10/21

Deafness and Rhetoric

Chirologia focuses on natural expression of hands / their meaning

No compelling reason that people should talk

Chironomia focuses on art of rhetoric

Pathomyotomia focuses on facial muscles, movements, expression

Philocophus focuses on deaf people, sign language, proposed school for the deaf

Gestures are universal language of humane nature

Gesture deaf people have in common with hearing people

Gestures are as valid as the tongue and they are 'mind of the body'

Tongue is the 'power of eloquence and reeason'

Number of gestures exceeds 'numerical store of words'

In religion, the body is superior to the tongue

Speech cannot function properly without gestures

two instruments: speech and hand

Bulwer accused of being overly utopian and idealistic

IIf people didn't move in one way or another, they'd be like plants

Sign language can be used as a pathway to learning to read, write, talk

Deafness and Rhetoric

Abbé de l'Epée of France pioneered deaf education

By the time Abbé was finished, general opinion had started to imagine it feasible

Bulwer - 1st British person write emphatically about deafness / sign language

Bulwer - "Found father of British sign language research"