American Sign Language is noted for being a mainly conceptual language, which makes it unusually close in representation of the idea behind the sign. Sacks learns of several incidents of hearing people thinking in Sign. The hearing parents of a deaf child have learned ASL, and use it not only to converse but also to conduct family business. The Deaf population on Martha�s Vineyard once soared so high that one in four people were Deaf. As a result, everyone on the island was fluent in both Sign and English. Sacks heard of one old hearing lady who signed when she was thinking to herself, and literally even signed in her sleep. Because it is so conceptual and straighforward (ie. lacks devices to confuse ideas), Sacks concludes that Sign Language is a �fundamental language of the mind.�
Sign is distinct from spoken languages in two major ways. The first is that it makes full use of three-dimensional space. A sign�s position relative to the body may express or clarify the idea a signer is communicating. Movement can alter the meaning of a sign. How the sign is expressed serves to qualify actions or nouns. For example, one can sign �all day� without emotion to mean that something was going on for the full extent of the day, but if the signer shows effort, uses facial expression to show aggravation, and draws out the motion of the sign, it means a tedious activity dragged on and on all day long. Three-dimensional space can also be used to display objects in relative position to each other, which in turn creates a more vivid and detailed scene for the viewer. The linguist William Stokoe noted that only signed languages have this advantage of four dimensions, �the three spatial dimensions accessible to a signer�s body, as well as the dimension of time.�
The second major difference between signed and spoken language is that signed languages are more readily accessible to children. Partly because Sign is mainly conceptual and partly because infants develop muscle control long before they can control their vocal chords, parents and their children can communicate through signing before the child learns to speak. Children exposed to Sign from the start generally have a working vocabulary at three years of age. Signing also advances the ability of hearing children to pick up English, or any other language, as they are already exposed to language and basic syntax.
Although Sign has unique advantages over spoken languages, there has been a long push for deaf people to learn to speak. In Europe, especially in Germany, it had seemed important for deaf people to be able to function in society so that they could manage their estates properly. However, the ability to speak seemed more vital to estate management than education, so the education for the Deaf in Germany tended to stress learning speech, not Sign. France took a different approach, and taught Deaf students in sign so that they could be well-educated. Speech lessons took so much of the Deaf student�s time and effort that there was no way the student could also gain general education, and therefore speech was not stressed in the French methods. Germany�s victory over France in Alsace-Lorraine altered preconceptions about Deaf education. War had proved Germany was the superior country, so Europe hurried to adopt German methods and ways of thinking, including the emphasis on Deaf people learning to speak. Christians and Darwinists alike believed that since the vast majority of humans spoke and heard, humans were meant to speak. Thus, Deafness came to be viewed pathologically, as a malady to be fixed, rather than as a way of life. Alexander Graham Bell was also a firm advocate of speech over sign, and with his expanding wealth and reputation he became a strong influence in the education sphere. Bell�s influence along with the growing trend towards speech and not Sign caused the Milan conference in 1880 to throw its whole weight behind abandoning Sign and emphasizing speech among the Deaf. Adolf Hitler, in his quest to �purify� the white race, sought to wipe out Deaf people themselves. Even in the last decade, technology has made it possible for deaf people to hear some sounds via cochlear implants. The Deaf community sees it as a threat to their culture because it smacks of the belief deafness is a bad thing, a condition to be fixed.
William Stokoe, a linguist who became fascinated by Sign while working at Gallaudet, made a study of ASL and compiled a dictionary of signs. He found that, contrary to popular belief, ASL has every component necessary and is indeed a language. His book advocating ASL as a language was published in 1966, in the midst of a time of challenging the status quo, and thus a movement formed to support his idea. Sign language regained its �acceptable� status, and once again education became the main goal behind teaching the Deaf.
Even though Sign has made a comeback and once again the Deaf have a superb educational system, there is a bit of residual prejudice about the capabilities Deaf people. In 1988, the students and faculty at Gallaudet led a revolt against the board of trustees because they had chosen Dr. Zinser, a hearing woman, as president for the university over two Deaf candidates. There had never been a Deaf president in the university�s history, which reflects the idea that the Deaf needed to be cared for by the hearing. The strikers felt that only a Deaf president could possibly understand and appropriately address the needs of the student body. The Deaf have always been in danger of losing their identity to the mandates of the hearing majority, and their awareness of that history was visible to those who observed the strike. Gallaudet�s students and faculty demanded to be lead by one of their own, and were incensed by Chairman Jane Spilman�s comment that �the deaf are not yet ready to function in the hearing world.� After a week on strike, Dr. Zinser was forced to resign and King Jordan, a Deaf board member, accepted his appointment at president. Gallaudet�s struggle for identity had united the global Deaf community, and the victory proved to the world that the Deaf are indeed capable of functioning in a hearing society.