I feel as though Oralism and sign language in the deaf community is defiantly impacted on how they view the world. I feel that it is to an great extent because they are focusing and experiencing things in a different way then they must when communicating in another way.
One thing that supports this view is the Sapir Worf Hypothesis. This hypothesis states that language effects the way we view the world, it effects our experience. I fully agree with this. For example in different languages there is different structures and word order, giving more importance to something over another. This influences the way we view the importance of things. Sign language is no different. It is a language of it's own, and to function as a language there must be a certain "grammatical" order to how signing is set up. I cannot personally sign sign language so i do not for a fact if there is an order to signing that makes words more importance, like we do in a sentence, but assuming there is I feel like it would effect Deaf peoples view on what is more important.
Signing can limit and extend thinking. Signing has more of an expressive way about it than words do. In the movie "Through Deaf Eyes" a man signed a poem. This poem if written down would only look like a list of words, unless read aloud with rhythm or artistic interpretation, one would not see them as poetic. However the signing added an extra element to the poem, enhancing these words. This poem showed how words/signs seem to have more meaning in Sign Language. Even just viewing the poem without knowing sign, you still had some small bit of explanation to what was going on.
However the limitations of signing and oralism are what the Deaf Culture seemed to be so strongly for. They feel that by signing and using oralism they are trying to fit in with the "norm" or the hearing community. By doing so they limit any views they could have of the worlds as a deaf person. What i mean by this is by using sign and oralism they are doing so to communicate with those who can hear, and they are doing so to communicate with those who can hear, and the language itself is based off of language created by people who hear and their interpretations this limits them to express how they might see things differently and also limit them to viewing the world the way the hear does through language.
Abel's view on language seems to support this view "linguistic symbols to organize experience". Words are only symbols that we use to represent experiences in our life, our world. Signing is full of symbols that are used to symbolize meaning for their experiences. However their signs are more expressive then a word is, and seem to convey a deeper meaning . The word stars vs. the symbol for the stars shown in the video are very different. Stars is a very simple word while the sign for it points then symbolizes the sparkles. It is more complex. Since I am not deaf there is no way for me to know but it is interesting to see how two different representations for the same word differ in complexity. This complexity for the word may give it more meaning or a different feel for deaf people.
My claims are that oralism and sign language does in fact give people a different view on reality, as i feel that all language does. The implications of this are that language directly affects how we see the world. Deaf people have their own language that I feel gives them a more expressive view. A counter claim to this could be that Deaf people do not have a different view on the world because language is based off of experience not visa versa. I think that language can limit our thinking, and define how we view things because grammatical structure and the difference in vocabulary or the symbols for things. It tells us what is true and false. For example in Able's book there is the issue of referential opacity, and how it is only a problem because certain contexts will not allow it. Language has limited us to thinking that such a way with certain truths and accepted structures that it effects how we think and in turn view the world. Since oralism and sign is language Deaf people are just as affected.
I feel that language does affect peoples views on the world, and sign language and oralism are affected equally.
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