What do you think?
Rate this book
Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind
Imagine a village where everyone "speaks" sign language. Just such a village -- an isolated Bedouin community in Israel with an unusually high rate of deafness -- is at the heart of "Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind." There, an indigenous sign language has sprung up, used by deaf and hearing villagers alike. It is a language no outsider has been able to decode, until now.A "New York Times" reporter trained as a linguist, Margalit Fox is the only Western journalist to have set foot in this remarkable village. In "Talking Hands, " she follows an international team of scientists that is unraveling this mysterious language.
Because the sign language of the village has arisen completely on its own, outside the influence of any other language, it is a living demonstration of the "language instinct," man's inborn capacity to create language. If the researchers can decode this language, they will have helped isolate ingredients essential to all human language, signed and spoken. But as "Talking Hands" grippingly shows, their work in the village is also a race against time, because the unique language of the village may already be endangered.
"Talking Hands" offers a fascinating introduction to the signed languages of the world -- languages as beautiful, vital and emphatically human as any other -- explaining why they are now furnishing cognitive scientists with long-sought keys to understanding how language works in the mind.
Written in lyrical, accessible prose, "Talking Hands" will captivate anyone interested in language, the human mind and journeys to exotic places.
Because the sign language of the village has arisen completely on its own, outside the influence of any other language, it is a living demonstration of the "language instinct," man's inborn capacity to create language. If the researchers can decode this language, they will have helped isolate ingredients essential to all human language, signed and spoken. But as "Talking Hands" grippingly shows, their work in the village is also a race against time, because the unique language of the village may already be endangered.
"Talking Hands" offers a fascinating introduction to the signed languages of the world -- languages as beautiful, vital and emphatically human as any other -- explaining why they are now furnishing cognitive scientists with long-sought keys to understanding how language works in the mind.
Written in lyrical, accessible prose, "Talking Hands" will captivate anyone interested in language, the human mind and journeys to exotic places.
354 pages, Hardcover
First published August 21, 2007
42 people are currently reading
2680 people want to read
About the author
Margalit Fox
6Ìýbooks317ÌýfollowersMargalit Fox originally trained as a cellist and a linguist before pursuing journalism. As a senior writer in The New York Times's celebrated Obituary News Department, she wrote the front-page public sendoffs of some of the leading cultural figures of our age. Winner of the William Saroyan Prize for Literature and author of three previous books, "Conan Doyle for the Defense," "The Riddle of the Labyrinth" and "Talking Hands," Fox lives in Manhattan with her husband, the writer and critic George Robinson.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 102 reviews
May 1, 2010
Behind the bleak, brown cover of Talking Hands is a book brimming with color and information. Similarly, a relatively new language -- a signed language that is unlike any other -- has been blossoming for the last seventy years amidst the sand in al-Sayyid, a Bedouin village in the Negev desert of southern Israel. In this village of approximately 3,500 a genetic form of deafness has been thriving as a result of frequent intermarriage. Today, about 150 villagers are deaf, but these people do not live isolated, marginalized lives, a common fate for deaf people throughout history. Rather they are fully-functioning members of their society and they owe much of this freedom to al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ASBL), a language that sprang up about seventy years ago when ten deaf villagers were brought together and consequently formed a simple contact pidgin.
This language was presumably very simple, virtually without grammar, an amalgam of gestures and signs, mostly nouns, thrown haphazardly together (though we will never be certain: all ten first-generation signers are dead). The second generation, however, were the real magic makers, morphing their parent's grammarless gestures, somehow, into a simple, yet fully-functioning language. Today, the members of this second generation are in their thirties and forties, raising the third generation of signers, who range from infancy to young adulthood. Not only the deaf children but also a large percentage of their hearing brothers and sisters, learn ABSL as a first language. So, unwittingly, these villagers have create a world that many deaf people have pined for, where deaf people are on the same level as hearing people and no one is singled out because of their deafness.
This village, as it turns out, offers a fascinating, even tantalizing opportunity for linguistics. At least as long ago as Noam Chomsky many linguists have been lusting after something, a thought experiment so taboo that it has come to be known as the Forbidden Experiment: essentially, put a bunch of kids together, with no linguistic input save for perhaps a few basic words and see what they make. This could help answer many important questions, chief among them, "How are languages formed?", "What are newborn languages alike?", and "Just how fundamentally similar are languages?" Al-Sayyid has offered a natural opportunity to answer those questions without the risk of forming a roving pack of feral children.
This book is the product of Margalit Fox, a New York Times reporter who, in 2004, decided to shadow a group of four linguists as they went on a research trip to al-Sayyid. The linguists' tools were basic -- just a laptop computer that showed a series of pictures and some video, designed to elicit basic vocabulary and syntax respectively -- but the data they collect will surely keep them busy for the rest of their careers. After the first chapter, "In the Village of the Deaf," Fox spends the next chapter discussing sign language in general. In the following chapters she follows the same pattern, alternating between discussing ASBL in particular and signed language in general.
ABSL is of great interest to many academic disciplines and Fox at least touches on all: anthropology, psychology, genetics, physiology, and of course the many aspects of linguistics. In her attempt at revealing ABSL Fox discusses the results of so many scientific studies, drops so many interesting tidbits she can't help but make her readers all a bit brighter. And I couldn't help but write a about some of them. Already I see this review as rather wordy, more didactic than critical; it is all Mrs. Fox's doing.
Really, this is a great book for anyone -- you need not know anything about sign language or even language in general. It is a colorful, fact-filled book that never made me want to skim. With this in mind, and with the relative popularity of language books in the present day, I can only wonder why this book has not found more of an audience.
This language was presumably very simple, virtually without grammar, an amalgam of gestures and signs, mostly nouns, thrown haphazardly together (though we will never be certain: all ten first-generation signers are dead). The second generation, however, were the real magic makers, morphing their parent's grammarless gestures, somehow, into a simple, yet fully-functioning language. Today, the members of this second generation are in their thirties and forties, raising the third generation of signers, who range from infancy to young adulthood. Not only the deaf children but also a large percentage of their hearing brothers and sisters, learn ABSL as a first language. So, unwittingly, these villagers have create a world that many deaf people have pined for, where deaf people are on the same level as hearing people and no one is singled out because of their deafness.
This village, as it turns out, offers a fascinating, even tantalizing opportunity for linguistics. At least as long ago as Noam Chomsky many linguists have been lusting after something, a thought experiment so taboo that it has come to be known as the Forbidden Experiment: essentially, put a bunch of kids together, with no linguistic input save for perhaps a few basic words and see what they make. This could help answer many important questions, chief among them, "How are languages formed?", "What are newborn languages alike?", and "Just how fundamentally similar are languages?" Al-Sayyid has offered a natural opportunity to answer those questions without the risk of forming a roving pack of feral children.
This book is the product of Margalit Fox, a New York Times reporter who, in 2004, decided to shadow a group of four linguists as they went on a research trip to al-Sayyid. The linguists' tools were basic -- just a laptop computer that showed a series of pictures and some video, designed to elicit basic vocabulary and syntax respectively -- but the data they collect will surely keep them busy for the rest of their careers. After the first chapter, "In the Village of the Deaf," Fox spends the next chapter discussing sign language in general. In the following chapters she follows the same pattern, alternating between discussing ASBL in particular and signed language in general.
ABSL is of great interest to many academic disciplines and Fox at least touches on all: anthropology, psychology, genetics, physiology, and of course the many aspects of linguistics. In her attempt at revealing ABSL Fox discusses the results of so many scientific studies, drops so many interesting tidbits she can't help but make her readers all a bit brighter. And I couldn't help but write a about some of them. Already I see this review as rather wordy, more didactic than critical; it is all Mrs. Fox's doing.
Really, this is a great book for anyone -- you need not know anything about sign language or even language in general. It is a colorful, fact-filled book that never made me want to skim. With this in mind, and with the relative popularity of language books in the present day, I can only wonder why this book has not found more of an audience.
August 12, 2016
Talking Hands is in part the story of the development of sign languages around the world, and in part an exploration of the development of language and how that might have occurred in human history. The little Bedouin settlement which is the main case study is a place where a sign language has arisen independently of other sign languages, and its development has mirrored that of the development of spoken languages in ways which may reveal important things about the way the human brain handles language.
Most of the neurological stuff wasn’t new to me, and it’s definitely on a level any reader can appreciate; it doesn’t go into massively technical terms, or dissect vast case studies about the way injuries affect the brain, etc. The historical context of sign language and how people treated deaf and dumb people in the past was newer for me. I wasn’t aware, for example, that for ages people � even deaf people � considered sign language inferior because it lacked the sort of grammar people recognised. It was even suppressed in favour of cumbersome sign language which followed word-for-word the pattern of spoken language, ignoring the potential for a spatial grammar.
Margalit Fox comes across as a science writer rather than a scientist, making the book very accessible � either on its own, or as a complement to more in-depth works about language like Steven Pinker’s. I didn’t find it as fascinating as her book on decrypting Linear B, but her writing is clear and concisely informative, and I enjoyed reading the book. I wasn’t always sure about the way she characterised actual people; I wouldn’t find some of those descriptions very flattering/respectful� but she did write it with the approval and help of the team working in the Bedouin village, according to her introduction, and it’s never disrespectful about disability or intelligence.
Most of the neurological stuff wasn’t new to me, and it’s definitely on a level any reader can appreciate; it doesn’t go into massively technical terms, or dissect vast case studies about the way injuries affect the brain, etc. The historical context of sign language and how people treated deaf and dumb people in the past was newer for me. I wasn’t aware, for example, that for ages people � even deaf people � considered sign language inferior because it lacked the sort of grammar people recognised. It was even suppressed in favour of cumbersome sign language which followed word-for-word the pattern of spoken language, ignoring the potential for a spatial grammar.
Margalit Fox comes across as a science writer rather than a scientist, making the book very accessible � either on its own, or as a complement to more in-depth works about language like Steven Pinker’s. I didn’t find it as fascinating as her book on decrypting Linear B, but her writing is clear and concisely informative, and I enjoyed reading the book. I wasn’t always sure about the way she characterised actual people; I wouldn’t find some of those descriptions very flattering/respectful� but she did write it with the approval and help of the team working in the Bedouin village, according to her introduction, and it’s never disrespectful about disability or intelligence.
March 28, 2017
Among the most thorough overviews of ASL and signed languages in general. The book blurb focuses on the "Deaf colony" in Bedouin, but Fox focuses the majority of the book on historical and linguistic backgrounds of Sign. Since most of the research nowadays focus on ASL, the book is fairly ASL-centric (which was fine by me since I was interested in ASL specifically, but might turn off some readers.)
Nevertheless, Fox does a stupendous job of combing the very complicated history of signed langauges, particularly ASL, which is full of pedagogical biases of differen times in history, and seamelssly incorporating linguistic theory. Her prose manages to be accessible, yet detailed and accurate. That's not an easy feat when you have to combine Noam Chomsky, obscure linguistic research, and oralism.
Highly recommended for anyone who is interested in signed langauges in general or ASL specifically.
Nevertheless, Fox does a stupendous job of combing the very complicated history of signed langauges, particularly ASL, which is full of pedagogical biases of differen times in history, and seamelssly incorporating linguistic theory. Her prose manages to be accessible, yet detailed and accurate. That's not an easy feat when you have to combine Noam Chomsky, obscure linguistic research, and oralism.
Highly recommended for anyone who is interested in signed langauges in general or ASL specifically.
March 10, 2018
Ughhh oh my word, this is such a boring book! This just needs to be made into a documentary if it hasn’t been already and let that be good enough. Dry, dry, dry. This book is a minute by agonizing minute account of a trip to a remote village where lots of deaf people reside and have their own sign language. Also lots of textbook-style discussion of linguistics. Giving 2 stars for the concept alone and for some interesting parts about language development studies.
January 28, 2011
This book has interesting data and a lovely human story, so much to recommend, but if I wasn't a current student of ASL, it would never have been finished. The author has a slow way of making her point with not quite enough examples and a pace that crawls. Every once in a while, she entertains brilliantly, as in this early quote. Speaking about linguists in the early part of the development of their science, she describes them:
"Looking back, one can almost imagine them stalking through the wild with specimen bottles and outsize nets, in determined pursuit of the Ojibwa adverb or the Cherokee pronoun."
In it's favour - and maybe this part of the review should have been first - I must say that this book became an essential part of my ASL education. A year and a half in with one year left, my teacher has been slowly introducing us to the properties of ASL that make it it's own language, separate and unique, from English. But as a hearing person, it is difficult to turn my understanding of language upside down. And honestly, I thought she was just being picky.
Until this book, I was trying to copy and emulate each lesson, but it wasn't sinking in. Now the word order, the verb agreement, the extra pronouns, facial expressions, Wh-words at the end of the sentence, the fact that I should throw English and my voice out as I walk in the door make sense to my hearing addled brain. My teacher and deaf co-workers have both commented on the recent improvement in my signing. Thanks so much, Marg!
"Looking back, one can almost imagine them stalking through the wild with specimen bottles and outsize nets, in determined pursuit of the Ojibwa adverb or the Cherokee pronoun."
In it's favour - and maybe this part of the review should have been first - I must say that this book became an essential part of my ASL education. A year and a half in with one year left, my teacher has been slowly introducing us to the properties of ASL that make it it's own language, separate and unique, from English. But as a hearing person, it is difficult to turn my understanding of language upside down. And honestly, I thought she was just being picky.
Until this book, I was trying to copy and emulate each lesson, but it wasn't sinking in. Now the word order, the verb agreement, the extra pronouns, facial expressions, Wh-words at the end of the sentence, the fact that I should throw English and my voice out as I walk in the door make sense to my hearing addled brain. My teacher and deaf co-workers have both commented on the recent improvement in my signing. Thanks so much, Marg!
July 9, 2013
I was led to this book after having read Fox's book, The Riddle of the Labyrinth. Talking Hands, while apparently written to a general audience (why else devote so much text to the history of ASL and linguistic terminology), is best appreciated by those with more than a nodding acquaintance with linguistics and/or a strong interest in sign language. I found it quite interesting for the most part, but eventually it became much more than I wanted to know as a someone merely curious.
November 29, 2024
It's difficult to rate this book, because it's not what it claims to be. The cover and the introduction focus on the Al-Sayyid Beduin Sign language, but in reality this topic only occupies 5% of the book at best. And I just don't really get why was ABSL included at all, as the book itself is really interesting! I have some basic knowledge of sign languages but didn't know most of the things in the book.
It's a book about sign languages on the example of ASL with some reports from the frankly uninteresting linguistic visits to the ABSL village. After the second time the author was describing houses and children signing words shown to them I started skipping and honestly didn't miss anything. Man, even the chapters supposedly dedicated to ABSL just end up talking about ASL instead...
If you are interested in ABSL, just read the very last chapter before the afterword and some wiki article. That one chapter was the only one with some specific information about the current stage of ABSL, I'm not even kidding.
It just seemed to me that the author travelled with those linguists but somehow failed to get enough linguistic material to make up a book, and instead used it as a way to talk about sign languages overall. Again, it's not just using ABSL as some kind of a marketing tactic, the author did the visits, but there's nothing to their descriptions.
It was a very bizarre read, as the ABSL section is almost non-existent, but I did really enjoy everything else. The language is accessible for people not in the field (although why try to prove that sign languages are real languages after already have done it for dozens of times??), goes into less spoken about topics, experiments etc. Just skip the Al-Sayyid parts until the last chapter and you're getting an amazing read!
It's a book about sign languages on the example of ASL with some reports from the frankly uninteresting linguistic visits to the ABSL village. After the second time the author was describing houses and children signing words shown to them I started skipping and honestly didn't miss anything. Man, even the chapters supposedly dedicated to ABSL just end up talking about ASL instead...
If you are interested in ABSL, just read the very last chapter before the afterword and some wiki article. That one chapter was the only one with some specific information about the current stage of ABSL, I'm not even kidding.
It just seemed to me that the author travelled with those linguists but somehow failed to get enough linguistic material to make up a book, and instead used it as a way to talk about sign languages overall. Again, it's not just using ABSL as some kind of a marketing tactic, the author did the visits, but there's nothing to their descriptions.
It was a very bizarre read, as the ABSL section is almost non-existent, but I did really enjoy everything else. The language is accessible for people not in the field (although why try to prove that sign languages are real languages after already have done it for dozens of times??), goes into less spoken about topics, experiments etc. Just skip the Al-Sayyid parts until the last chapter and you're getting an amazing read!
December 24, 2020
2020 bk 384. I wish I had this book available back in the early 1980's when I began my career as a middle school librarian in a building to which the students with hearing impairments were assigned. But this book would not have been possible in the 1980's - for that time was a black hole in the history of American Sign Language and its use. I remember the teacher for the hearing impaired pulling the ASL books off of the shelves (including the Native American signs book) and telling me to put them away as all of her students were to be taught lip reading. This book does more than tell the history of ASL and most other sign languages around the world, it goes into the linguistics and work done to show that sign is a language complete with grammar, syntax, specific to spatial ideas, and all other complexities of a language. The historical and linguistics information is centered around a small village in Israel where a Bedouin community with a high rate of deafness has created its own sign language, distinct from other signing. As a team of linguists work with the villagers to identify the language, they are in a race against time as the 4th generation is now being taught Israeli sign in school. A well thought out look at sign, from the local to world wide. Oh - and there is an International Pigeon Sign used for international get togethers! I learned a lot of new things with this book.
April 7, 2022
While the story of the Arab village was interesting, it was used more as a jumping off point to examine the history and development of signed languages around the world, as well as a discussion about language in general. A couple sections I breezed through quickly because the concept was explained, and then the author went on for pages explaining and reexplaining it. But those sections were the exception. The information was very accessible and engaging. I learned a lot reading this and thoroughly enjoyed it.
October 9, 2021
This was fascinating. I love linguistics and the book is chock full of that. Some things I already knew, such as the order languages gain color words, but there was tons of information that was brand new to me. I liked the structure of the book with the descriptions of the signing village alternating with the more theoretical chapters. Nice, clear descriptions of the signs highlighting the parts relevant to the discussion at hand. It did get a little repetitive at points, but held my attention through to the end.
June 3, 2024
Absolutely fascinating! Very well-written, exploring deaf culture, history, sign language structure, and so much more.
July 30, 2024
Absolutely fascinating! My only complaint is that I wanted lengthier chapters on al-Sayyid! If you're interested in sign language and psychology of language, I would recommend this!
June 22, 2017
This is a fantastically accessible book for anyone interested in the history of American Sign Language, signed languages, and to a lesser extent, languages in general.
Personally, I was primarily interested in the history of ASL and it's struggle to be accepted as a "real" language. So I was pleased that the author did an excellent job of balancing the history of ASL with the relatively recent discovery of an isolated signed language in a remote Bedouin village. Additionally, she was able to use the ASL history sections to demonstrate why the linguists were so excited to observe and document the spontaneously created Bedouin sign language. This also underscored nicely the implications that, that nascent language holds for the understanding of human language acquisition in general.
The only quibbles I had about the book were mostly minor. The author choose to bypass the whole Deaf vs deaf distinction decided to use "deaf" throughout. She reasoned that since the Bedouin community is largely a signing village (regardless of audiological status) they really don't have a distinct "Deaf culture"; true enough. However, that's not accurate in the US where there is a really is a Deaf culture. Nonetheless she continued to use "deaf" throughout.
Second, as a hearing ASL user I've read many glosses of ASL -> English. But the style used in the book was a little strange that lead to re-reading those spots 3-4 times. Like I said, minor quibbles.
Personally, I was primarily interested in the history of ASL and it's struggle to be accepted as a "real" language. So I was pleased that the author did an excellent job of balancing the history of ASL with the relatively recent discovery of an isolated signed language in a remote Bedouin village. Additionally, she was able to use the ASL history sections to demonstrate why the linguists were so excited to observe and document the spontaneously created Bedouin sign language. This also underscored nicely the implications that, that nascent language holds for the understanding of human language acquisition in general.
The only quibbles I had about the book were mostly minor. The author choose to bypass the whole Deaf vs deaf distinction decided to use "deaf" throughout. She reasoned that since the Bedouin community is largely a signing village (regardless of audiological status) they really don't have a distinct "Deaf culture"; true enough. However, that's not accurate in the US where there is a really is a Deaf culture. Nonetheless she continued to use "deaf" throughout.
Second, as a hearing ASL user I've read many glosses of ASL -> English. But the style used in the book was a little strange that lead to re-reading those spots 3-4 times. Like I said, minor quibbles.
February 13, 2008
What grabbed me from the cover: "In a remote village where everyone speaks sign language..."
I was actually more fascinated by the sociological implications, but they're pretty straightforward -- there's no stigma against deafness, which is inherited by a decent number of the villagers; all hearing folk are bilingual, they intermingle, intermarry... Margatlit Fox explores instead how the linguistics of Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language have implications on cognitive science.
She presents ABSL as the result of the closest we can come to the Forbidden Experiment: if children were raised with no external linguistic input, would they still develop language? As the deaf don't directly pick up speech, they're considered to be similarly isolated. And sign language can, in fact, be considered a full-fledged, distinctive language, with its own morphology and syntax -- and also some shared traits that seem to arise universally.
It's an interesting read, but tends to stick to linguistic basics for the layperson. I was unfamiliar with how these pertained to sign languages, but had already learned the principles. I mostly enjoyed this for its tracing of the history of certain sign languages, and its warm perspective on the people being studied.
I was actually more fascinated by the sociological implications, but they're pretty straightforward -- there's no stigma against deafness, which is inherited by a decent number of the villagers; all hearing folk are bilingual, they intermingle, intermarry... Margatlit Fox explores instead how the linguistics of Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language have implications on cognitive science.
She presents ABSL as the result of the closest we can come to the Forbidden Experiment: if children were raised with no external linguistic input, would they still develop language? As the deaf don't directly pick up speech, they're considered to be similarly isolated. And sign language can, in fact, be considered a full-fledged, distinctive language, with its own morphology and syntax -- and also some shared traits that seem to arise universally.
It's an interesting read, but tends to stick to linguistic basics for the layperson. I was unfamiliar with how these pertained to sign languages, but had already learned the principles. I mostly enjoyed this for its tracing of the history of certain sign languages, and its warm perspective on the people being studied.
June 13, 2022
Thoroughly enjoyed this book! Appreciated how the author alternated the focus of each chapter; the first chapter chronicled their experiences meeting the deaf people in Al-Sayyid and researching the emerging Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language, then the next chapter would tie into the previous chapter by discussing language acquisition and learning for both sign language and spoken language in a framework that was mostly accessible to anyone with a basic understanding of language acquisition and learning.
Using this book now as the core component of my Language Acquisition & Learning course that I’m teaching and centering concepts, such as baby talk/sign, first language acquisition, etc. around it.
Using this book now as the core component of my Language Acquisition & Learning course that I’m teaching and centering concepts, such as baby talk/sign, first language acquisition, etc. around it.
April 30, 2012
Excellent book. Even with my minimal ASL and layman's interest in linguistics I just could not put this book down. I enjoyed every page. It is both history and ethnographic studies and linguists! A fascinating look at how we communicate and what it means to have the ability to communicate, whether that is with our voice, our hands or some other medium. As humans we need to, we have to, we want to and we like to communicate with one and other. A wonderful book. Margalit Fox does a wonderful job in conveying the depth, history and sometimes controversial aspects of oral language vs. signed language.
May 15, 2018
Fascinating subject matter, but the author spent too much time trying to convince the readers of something that was pretty obvious early on - that sign language is an actual language. I often felt like I was re-reading sentences the author had already used. The middle third of the book was very repetitive/pedantic and felt like a few chapters were unnecessary. I skimmed some of those parts just to get through.
April 23, 2019
The only serious complaint I have towards this book is the way that the author so highly talks about dodgy and disreputable linguist Noam Chomsky, to the point of calling the contemporary era of linguistics the Chomsky era.Ìý Aside from this notable misstep, the author does a great job of discussing a particularly mysterious community with a high deaf population, and manages to weave this story into a larger story about how it is that people create languages in the first place, which proves to be a very deeply interesting question well worth discussing and something that I must admit is an interest of mine.Ìý As this is the second book by the author that I have read, it has become rather notable that the author has such a strong interest in issues of communication and in the languages that people use to communicate with others.Ìý As communication happens to be a great interest of mine, this book provided a great deal of insight into how it is that communication is hard-wired into the brain and manifested in different ways based on the particular environment, and also the way that indigenous sign languages show a consistent set of principles that allow them to be well-understood that appear to take advantage of space and motion rather than the verbal elements that make up other languages.
This book of almost 300 pages is made up of seventeen chapters and other materials that combine to tell a compelling story about a remote village and deaf culture and the formation of languages, all of which are quite interesting subjects.Ìý The first few essays look at the author's trip to a remote Bedouin village in Israel where a large percentage of the population (at least 4% or so) are deaf and where everyone speaks sign language.Ìý The author weaves in the story of linguists attempting to decipher this language and gain insights into the language-building capacity of people while simultaneously preserving its state as much as possible in the face of the influence of Israeli Sign Language, which many of the younger generation is learning with other interesting stories as well.Ìý For example, some of the book's material deals with the origins of ASL and the tug of war between those who advocate speaking with the hands and those who want deaf language to be an imitation of spoken English, which is much harder for the deaf to learn, apparently.Ìý Also, the author uses the discussion of the spontaneous generation of local sign languages around the world as an entrance into discussing the neural program that apparently exists within the mind that allows languages to be created from pidgins into creoles whether spoken verbally or through one's hands.
And I must admit that I find the author's approach to be compelling and the subject matter to be deeply interesting.Ìý While I am not personally familiar with deaf culture or politics on a personal level, I do come from a family where I and others have been hard of hearing in some aspects (I have high frequency hearing loss in my left ear at present, and other members of my family have suffered from even more serious hearing loss).Ìý I also have a deaf friend with whom I occasionally communicate via translation from those who are better at ASL than I am.Ìý Beyond that, though, my own deep personal interests in language and communication are well served by a book that demonstrates how it is that human beings are almost compelled to reach out across the void that separates them from others and strives to build some aspect of communication with those around us, be it by gestures that become formalized into a language or whether it is through the creation of creole languages.Ìý Likewise, the book contains some poignant discussions of brain damage and its effects on sign language users, a rather sad aspect.Ìý There is a great deal of interest here if one has an interest in language and communication as well as the deaf.
This book of almost 300 pages is made up of seventeen chapters and other materials that combine to tell a compelling story about a remote village and deaf culture and the formation of languages, all of which are quite interesting subjects.Ìý The first few essays look at the author's trip to a remote Bedouin village in Israel where a large percentage of the population (at least 4% or so) are deaf and where everyone speaks sign language.Ìý The author weaves in the story of linguists attempting to decipher this language and gain insights into the language-building capacity of people while simultaneously preserving its state as much as possible in the face of the influence of Israeli Sign Language, which many of the younger generation is learning with other interesting stories as well.Ìý For example, some of the book's material deals with the origins of ASL and the tug of war between those who advocate speaking with the hands and those who want deaf language to be an imitation of spoken English, which is much harder for the deaf to learn, apparently.Ìý Also, the author uses the discussion of the spontaneous generation of local sign languages around the world as an entrance into discussing the neural program that apparently exists within the mind that allows languages to be created from pidgins into creoles whether spoken verbally or through one's hands.
And I must admit that I find the author's approach to be compelling and the subject matter to be deeply interesting.Ìý While I am not personally familiar with deaf culture or politics on a personal level, I do come from a family where I and others have been hard of hearing in some aspects (I have high frequency hearing loss in my left ear at present, and other members of my family have suffered from even more serious hearing loss).Ìý I also have a deaf friend with whom I occasionally communicate via translation from those who are better at ASL than I am.Ìý Beyond that, though, my own deep personal interests in language and communication are well served by a book that demonstrates how it is that human beings are almost compelled to reach out across the void that separates them from others and strives to build some aspect of communication with those around us, be it by gestures that become formalized into a language or whether it is through the creation of creole languages.Ìý Likewise, the book contains some poignant discussions of brain damage and its effects on sign language users, a rather sad aspect.Ìý There is a great deal of interest here if one has an interest in language and communication as well as the deaf.
February 28, 2021
This is the best non-fiction book that I've read in a while. It's absolutely gripping and enlightening. I've found sign language fascinating for a while, and this book digs into the history and evolution of sign language, weaving forward and back in time, while also addressing the social dimension and how signing fits in (or doesn't) with various societies. The book is written in a very engaging and accessible way.
One of the things I learned from this book was that there are hereditary kinds of deafness, which is how an isolated community can end up with an unusually large percentage of deaf members, as in the village investigated by the linguist team in this book. I was also fascinated by the claim that languages (signed or spoken) with multiple color words *always* follow a specific progression in adding new color distinctions: white/black, then red, then yellow or "grue" (green + blue), etc. I am not sure I agree with all of the claims made here about what constitutes "grammar", but I'm not an expert and the book is enjoyable and informative either way.
I was particularly fascinated by the studies of stroke victims who've lost some aspects of language production or comprehension. It turns out that deaf signers exhibit the same patterns as hearing folks. For example, damage to the left side of the brain impacts language generation, and damage to the right side affects spatial reasoning. One surprise was that damage to the right side does NOT affect the ability to sign; the brain appears to encode this in the left (language) side and not the right (spatial reasoning) side, even though it is a spatial activity. However, the ability to pantomime (and the book clarifies how this is different from signed language) does seem tied to the right brain. Very cool.
There's also a wonderful travel/exploration aspect of the book, and you come away with a bright impression of deserts and goats and mint tea.
One major theme of this book is that studying how sign language is created, without the undue influence of other languages, can give us insights into the core of our human language abilities: what is inborn and what is learned? I think it's equally interesting to consider the ongoing evolution of our languages. They are never "done". Rather than lamenting the fact that Al-Sayyid's sign language is being influenced by adding signs from Israeli Sign Language, it seems more interesting to study which signs are being adopted or modified and why. There's certainly more to learn!
One of the things I learned from this book was that there are hereditary kinds of deafness, which is how an isolated community can end up with an unusually large percentage of deaf members, as in the village investigated by the linguist team in this book. I was also fascinated by the claim that languages (signed or spoken) with multiple color words *always* follow a specific progression in adding new color distinctions: white/black, then red, then yellow or "grue" (green + blue), etc. I am not sure I agree with all of the claims made here about what constitutes "grammar", but I'm not an expert and the book is enjoyable and informative either way.
I was particularly fascinated by the studies of stroke victims who've lost some aspects of language production or comprehension. It turns out that deaf signers exhibit the same patterns as hearing folks. For example, damage to the left side of the brain impacts language generation, and damage to the right side affects spatial reasoning. One surprise was that damage to the right side does NOT affect the ability to sign; the brain appears to encode this in the left (language) side and not the right (spatial reasoning) side, even though it is a spatial activity. However, the ability to pantomime (and the book clarifies how this is different from signed language) does seem tied to the right brain. Very cool.
There's also a wonderful travel/exploration aspect of the book, and you come away with a bright impression of deserts and goats and mint tea.
One major theme of this book is that studying how sign language is created, without the undue influence of other languages, can give us insights into the core of our human language abilities: what is inborn and what is learned? I think it's equally interesting to consider the ongoing evolution of our languages. They are never "done". Rather than lamenting the fact that Al-Sayyid's sign language is being influenced by adding signs from Israeli Sign Language, it seems more interesting to study which signs are being adopted or modified and why. There's certainly more to learn!
January 28, 2017
The fact that I have now read all of the linguistic books written by Margalit Fox is a little sad. She is a complete master. In Talking Hands, Fox manages to ingratiate herself into a sign language linguistic group studying Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL). Her depictions of Bedouin life in Al-Sayyid are, in and of themselves, worthy of a book. But Fox chooses to use alternate chapters to explore the history of signed languages and sign language linguistics. Her writing is never obtuse, but she manages to go more deeply into the subject than I thought possible in a book for the layreader. I had always known that ASL is a "true language" and "not English," through working with Deaf activists, but I never really had insight into what that meant. Fox exhaustively presents the evidence that ASL is a language (and ABSL and ISL and dozens of other sign languages) and then expands into exploring the consistent phenotypes between sign languages (they all have three types of verbs: agreeing verbs, moving verbs and plain verbs! They all have symmetry in their movements if both hands are used. They all constrain hand shapes.)
She then takes the whole thing a step further to explain what the study of sign languages in general, and village signs in specific, mean to our understanding about language. She talks about Chomsky and the discovery of language as an innate human skill, that will inevitably develop. She talks about the maturation of language over time (did you know that different languages have variable numbers of colors identifiable? And that, for instance, if there are three color words they will always mean white, black and red?)
Fox is scientifically thorough and thoroughly entertaining. I learned so much from this book and enjoyed every minute.
She then takes the whole thing a step further to explain what the study of sign languages in general, and village signs in specific, mean to our understanding about language. She talks about Chomsky and the discovery of language as an innate human skill, that will inevitably develop. She talks about the maturation of language over time (did you know that different languages have variable numbers of colors identifiable? And that, for instance, if there are three color words they will always mean white, black and red?)
Fox is scientifically thorough and thoroughly entertaining. I learned so much from this book and enjoyed every minute.
May 24, 2021
There was definitely a lot more to learn about sign languages around the world that I didn't know, and I'm glad the book corrected a lot of my preconceived notions. The history of the formation and nuances of sign languages around the world fascinated me, as did the individual story of the town the book revolves around. However, a decent portion of the book dealt with specifics of grammar and other semantics in regards to both sign languages and spoken languages, and if you aren't a professional linguist, you might, like me, find some of these chapters boring.
Read
February 28, 2025For a number of reasons I’m very glad this book exists and that people are researching the worlds� signed languages and writing about them. I just didn’t find it particularly fun to read. The subject matter seemed better suited to an academic paper or a long form journalism. I did learn a lot about the specifics of ASL grammar and idiosyncrasies. I appreciated learning some context for ASL and seeing how it compares to other signed languages. Ultimately, I found it quite cumbersome to read but I’ll keep it on my shelf for reference.
April 9, 2020
Fascinating detail on the origin, evolution and nature of language really taking advantage of cognitive sciences. Hard to imagine how the art of discerning the details of a visual language but perseverance, patience and attention prevail. Not too much linguistics and largely comprehensible to the lay reader, but most interesting is the Bedouin village - wish there was more. Excellent work, Margalit Fox!
November 4, 2020
A good example of why you should never judge a book by its cover. This book isn't just a book about sign languages; it's a book about language as a whole and what secrets sign languages reveal about the universality of language. As someone more interested in general psycholinguistics than sign languages, Talking Hands was a perfect mix of general linguistics and sign languages. The author also writes in elegant, yet non-pretentious prose that I enjoyed very much.
July 29, 2021
While i love sign language and linguistics. This book was very hard to get through for me.
The author kept jumping back and forth between explaining linguistic aspects and telling stories about stoke and Gaulladete to the village and there research. She didn't get as into the research and about the bedouin sign language as much as i had wanted. It seemed to be 1/3 or less of the content in this book.
The author kept jumping back and forth between explaining linguistic aspects and telling stories about stoke and Gaulladete to the village and there research. She didn't get as into the research and about the bedouin sign language as much as i had wanted. It seemed to be 1/3 or less of the content in this book.
Read
August 8, 2023A fascinating visit to a community with integrated signing and speaking communication. Skillfully interspersed are chapters on the history, evolution, and neurobiology of sign languages. Recommended.
This documentary looks interesting: .
"Joyful" square on the card.
This documentary looks interesting: .
"Joyful" square on the card.
December 3, 2023
I've read a few of Fox's other books, and found them very enjoyable. This one was alright; TBH I was expecting something a little different. I thought this book would focus more on the people and history of the village of Al-Sayyid, but it was more about linguistics, language, and how people learn language. Which is fine, but wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be. Expectations aside, this was an interesting and informative read.
March 7, 2019
I'm an ASL linguistics nerd, so I loved the rich information about ASL. It probably has too much detail for some people, but I loved the switch between the current (at the time of writing) research project and the history of ASL research. If you are skeptical about the validity of sign languages, this book should quell your doubts.
April 7, 2020
If linguistics fascinates you, this is a jackpot. Fascinating and enthralling to discover the undiscovered. Isolated and remote signed languages are the missing link to the studies of how languages develop and the human’s built in need to connect and communicate with the community in which they live.
May 12, 2020
This was pretty good. It was a lot of review for me since I already did my Bachelor's in Applied Linguistics, but it was interesting to see everything placed in the context of sign language. The author was able to cover a lot of material without making anything too dense. I'd definitely recommend this.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 102 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.