Deaf Sign Languages and Manually Coded English
MCE can be used with Simultaneous Communication — speaking and signing at the same time. This is not possible with, for example, American Sign Language, because it has a very different grammar (including word order) than English. Deaf sign languages make use of spatial relationships, facial expression, and body positioning, while MCE tends to be a linear and purely manual communication system, not to be confused with a language.
Comprehensibility of such simultaneously produced MCE has, however, been shown to be compromised in practice. While experience can improve the degree to which the information coded in English (morphologically as well as syntactically) is successfully communicated manually, there appear to be limits, and attempting to code everything (as required by the more "rigorous" manual coded like SEE) for more than very brief messages is extremely taxing on the person communciating simutaneously.
In English-speaking countries, it is common for users of Deaf sign languages to code-switch into a form of MCE when conversing with someone whose dominant language is English, or when quoting something from English. MCE is also sometimes favored by hearing people, for whom a manual version of their own language is much easier to learn than a deaf sign language.
Read more about this topic: Manually Coded English
Famous quotes containing the words deaf, sign, languages, coded and/or english:
“Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being “somebody,” to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“Every sign is subject to the criteria of ideological evaluation.... The domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs. They equate with one another. Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present, too. Everything ideological possesses semiotic value.”
—V.N. (Valintin Nikolaevic)
“It is time for dead languages to be quiet.”
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972)
“We are built to make mistakes, coded for error.”
—Lewis Thomas (b. 1913)
“I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on the simple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.”
—Bernadette Devlin (b. 1947)