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.
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