Sign language as a part of autism culture
Iâve been thinking about this for a long time now and spoken to many, autistic people and they were overwhelmingly like-minded which led me to write this. In this post I want to speak about the role and advantages of sign language within the autism culture and I kindly want to ask you to spread these words because it is important to me and maybe it becomes important to you and many others.Â
Sign languages (there are over hundred sign languages with even more dialects on this planet) are fully evolved and independent languages that just work with a different modality, that is within the visual range because it is largely used by deaf/Deaf people. Signs, body language, mimic and visemes are used as âphonologicalâ units to express all the meanings one can do with spoken languages.
This post is about how sign language in general is something that offers a lot of advantages for the autism community and should be seen as a part of the autistic culture and community and Iâd like to see it more supported.Â
The most striking argument in favour of sign language for autistic people is when they are non-verbal. A lot of research has been conducted and they all point out that even non-verbal children can use sign language to express their urges, feelings and wishes. It can also help them with acquiring spoken language so that they become more verbal. In many more modern approaches sign language is already used in therapy with big success. Thus, for many non-verbal children sign language is a more natural and suited language than spoken language.
General problems with language
But even verbal autistic people often encounter episodes where they become non-verbal. Many others report about a general unability to articulate their inner feelings and thoughts properly to the outer world and also many autistic people tend to use gestures first when they want to indicate something whereas language kicks in later.Â
To give a personal example to illustrate this:
There are phases (sometimes triggered by tiredness, bad moods, panic, fear, euphoria etc.) where I become almost non-verbal. My speech becomes slurry, I canât find the words, my pitch level is monotonous and high, I am struggling with the correct pronunciation of words, I canât form whole sentences, I mumble and sometimes canât speak at all or just repetitive phrases.
I also have the problem to express inner feelings. I can have panic attacks while being with others and them not noticing anything because I canât convey inner moods or feelings by language. I also canât explain most of my autistic experiences going on my head because I cannot articulate and phrase them.
And last but not least I have problems with using spontanous language, for instance when I want to indicate something such as a red traffic light or some danger I can only point to it or make at the utmost strange sounds. Language always comes in some seconds later. (This may all be related to my delayed speech development but is nevertheless well known by many other autistic people.)
I heard from the majority of cases like these that sign language helped them (me included). In non-verbal episodes they could fall back to sign language and still communicate sufficiently in emergency situations or when needed. They also perceived sign language as another mode of expression that was independent from their unability to express feelings so that they could sign about things that they wouldnât be able to phrase by speaking. And with sign language they also had a tool to express meaning more spontanously when needed instead of just pointing at things.
Auditory processing disorder
Many autistic people also have an auditory processing disorder where it becomes very hard to understand spoken language when the circumstances for its perception arenât perfect, like in a noisy environment, on the phone, a mumbling person etc. Maybe not for a phone call but for the other cases sign language is very useful to help these people to understand language even in circumstances where they canât understand spoken language properly.Â
The ease of conversation in sign language
A big relief for many is that in sign language conversations you donât look in the eyes of your opponent but at his mouth in order to detect the visemes (the forms that the lips make), whereas most of the signs are perceived in the visual periphery.Â
Given that most people with autism would not learn sign language as their mother tongue there is the fact of learning this language deliberatedly. And this fact makes many conversations easier. First of all, you have a constant topic with your course peers, small talk would be, thus, a little less awkward and hard. And many other sign language experienced autistics also agree that conversation with deaf/Deaf people in sign language are way more comfortable and enjoyable. Furthermore it is very often the case that talks in foreign languages are less awkward because the demands for those conversation are different (working with language and practising it) and not about making it socially perfect.Â
Advantages of the visual modality
Most autistic people are easily sensory overloaded. This mostly happens outside the comfort zone, for instance on the streets, in the public, with a lot of people and noises around you etc. Many cope with the input stimulus by wearing ear plugs or ear/headphones to block the uncontrolable auditory input by silence or controlable music as a way of stimming. Meeting people in the public that you know can be a pain in the ass because you have to unplug your ears in order to communicate. Not only is your possible auditory processing disorder kicking in and cumbering the communication but also is the surrounding noise overloading you. But with sign language you can leave your ear plugs in and donât have to leave your autistic comfort zone completely for communication.Â
Learning body language and facial expressions
As mentioned earlier, most people with autism would go the way of learning sign language as a foreign language. And in sign language body language and mimic are very important because they are grammatical tools to make questions, negations, direct speech and a whole bunch of other things. But that is why sign language (i. e. learning sign language) is actually very useful for people with autism because in the courses you learn body language and mimic from the scratch. You learn when to use which facial expression, which different ways there are to raise your eyebrows and what they mean and how you express disbelief and affirmation by body language. In sign language these things are very well structured, they are systematically, predictable, not intuitively blurred but well defined and explicit and well practised in the course so that everybody can learn it. That is a huge advantage for people that have problems with producing body language naturally or perceiving it correctly.
As with deaf/Deaf people it is the modality that counts. First of all, there are over hundred sign languages with even more dialects to choose from. In some cases, however, a manually coded language could be useful, too. When children are non-verbal it might be advisable to teach a manually coded language to give them a language that is very similar to the spoken one, so that they can learn the spoken language more easily. But in all cases it should be noted that a natural language (natural sign language, or manually coded version of a natural language) should be used because they are learnt more easily and have proven to be efficient for everything you want to express.
There is still a long way ahead because most people donât know any sign language and so it is hard to find situations where you can actually use this language that appears to be more natural for your demands of a language in many occasions. That is why it is so vital that not only autistic but also allistic people learn sign language, not only to make the world more accessible for deaf/Deaf people (which would be a very pleasant side effect) but also to facilitate communication for people from the autistic spectrum among themselves and between the autistic and allistic world.
When something appears to be so useful as this for a certain group of people with a disability (or special needs if you donât like the d-word) it should be made more public, more adopted by the community itself and structures should be created to ease this process.
Sign language teachers should be informed or trained about autism and how to integrate people with it into the course. (Especially paying more attention to the acquisition of body language and facial expressions as linguistic ways of meaning and to the slightly different motives of learning sign language.) If you are visting a sign language course I can recommend to tell your teacher about your autism, your motives and what you wish to learn from her/him.
That would be it from me now and these were just some major pros I wanted to present. There are of course many more reasons why it can be very advantageous for autistic people to use sign language.
If you reached this point I am very happy you made it so far, thank you a lot. I would be very interested in hearing about your feelings, thoughts and experiences concerning this topic and hope for constructive discussions. Cheers.
