Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind: Margalit Fox

For many years the cognitive functions of the brain and it's relation to speech was not fully understood. The use of signed languages was considered primitive communication and the deaf were treated as dumb. In the last fifty years, linguists have begun to unravel the complexities of the different hand signs used by cultures around the world. In Talking Hands, New York Times reporter Margalit Fox travels with a group of researchers to a remote Israeli village where sign language is used by the entire population.

The village of Al-Sayyid is an isolated place in the depths of the Israeli desert. It's only in recent years that children have begun to be bussed out to local schools. Marriage to outsiders is uncommon and this isolation has led to inbreeding and a genetic propensity for deafness. Over the last two hundred years the villagers have created a rich and complex sign language that is untainted by any other in existence. The villagers gave permission for the four-person research team, plus the author to visit and test the language. The reason for the testing is because it provides the best example of a signed language that sprang up out of need and one that hasn't been influenced by any other.

The book is interspersed with chapters on the village of Al-Sayyid and chapters about the history of sign language and the cognitive natures of the brain. The richness and detail of the research is impress and the author has taken great pains to explain everything in a way that the layman can understand without dumbing anything down. This is a fascinating study of the way the human brain is programmed and how we function, even when the conditions are not what they should be.

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Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (August 21, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0743247124
ISBN-13: 978-0743247122
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