British Sign Language (BSL) is the sign language used in the United Kingdom (UK), and is the first or preferred language of some deaf people in the UK; there are 125,000 deaf adults in the UK who use BSL plus an estimated 20,000 children. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands, body, face and head. Many thousands of people who are not deaf also use BSL, as hearing relatives of deaf people, sign language interpreters or as a result of other contact with the British deaf community.
Read more about British Sign Language: History, Usage, Learning British Sign Language
Famous quotes containing the words sign language, british, sign and/or language:
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made mea bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isnt dignified doesnt worry me.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The symbolic view of things is a consequence of long absorption in images. Is sign language the real language of Paradise?”
—Hugo Ball (18861927)
“The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.”
—Edward Gibbon (17371794)