Module 4.2

Deaf children and language

One of the pieces of evidence that Stephen Pinker cites in support of his contention that language is a specific form of knowledge - an instinct - comes from what happened in Nicaragua during and immediately after the Revolution in that country - a revolution which brought schooling not only to large numbers of ordinary children, but also for the first time to deaf children. You may consult the BBC web-site where there is an account of the film that they made of what happened. Another account by a linguist working with the children will be found here. You can also find a story on Nicaraguan sign-language in the New York Times Magazine.

The Nicaraguan experience is important and exciting to linguists because it allowed them to follow the process by which a pidgin can become a language. (A source for information about pidgins and Creoles is the Creolist Archives FAQ. Look at how creolists distinguish between pidgins and Creoles, and then look at 'creolisation'.) What seems to be clear is that while adolescents were able to invent a rather crude system of hand signals, the younger children took this system and turned it into a fluent, complex and well-structured language.