{"product_id":"forbidden-signs-american-culture-and-the-campaign-against-sign-language-9780226039640","title":"Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign against Sign Language","description":"\u003cp\u003eForbidden Signs explores American culture from the mid-nineteenth century to 1920 through the lens of one striking episode: the campaign led by Alexander Graham Bell and other prominent Americans to suppress the use of sign language among deaf people.  The ensuing debate over sign language invoked such fundamental questions as what distinguished Americans from non-Americans  civilized people from \"savages \" humans from animals  men from women  the natural from the unnatural  and the normal from the abnormal. An advocate of the return to sign language  Baynton found that although the grounds of the debate have shifted  educators still base decisions on many of the same metaphors and images that led to the misguided efforts to eradicate sign language.  \"Bayntons brilliant and detailed history  Forbidden Signs  reminds us that debates over the use of dialects or languages are really the linguistic tip of a mostly submerged argument about power  social control  nationalism  who has the right to speak and who has the right to control modes of speech.\"Lennard J. Davis  The Nation  \"Forbidden Signs is replete with good things.\"Hugh Kenner  New York Times Book Review\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45646887026741,"sku":"ByrdShop_0226039641","price":25.1,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780226039640.jpg?v=1781680070","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/forbidden-signs-american-culture-and-the-campaign-against-sign-language-9780226039640","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}