2 VISIBLE LOGIC: SIGN LANGUAGE AND PRONOUNS

If you visit Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, you may encounter students who have developed an unlikely skill: They may walk around campus while holding their smartphone with one hand and silently chatting with the other hand. They are Deaf students, and Gallaudet is the only university in the world in which all classes are taught in sign language—in this case, American Sign Language (ASL). And just as in any other college, students spend much time on their smartphones; but to talk, they use silent videos rather than sound. While sign language involves both hands, fluent signers can recover information from just the dominant hand (left or right, depending on whether the signer is left- or right-handed). Hearing visitors at the university might miss out on some of the academic information, but if so, that's because their knowledge of sign language isn't quite up to the task, not because of the language itself. ASL can convey any subtleties or technical notions one wishes. In fact, along certain dimensions, sign languages are more expressive than spoken languages—they are ‘super languages’ of sorts, as we will see.