Words in Hand

Hello and welcome to a series of video tapes of British Sign Language, BSL, the language the deaf people use throughout Great Britain. Our main aim, in this series, is to give you an opportunity to see fluent BSL in use and through seeing everyday examples of the language, we hope that you will gain insights into the nature of sign language. You will be able to see the ways it is like spoken languages, such as English, but also the ways that it is different from other languages. Of course, we know that is difficult for deaf people to communicate naturally when we're giving them strong lights, pointing cameras at them and they’re nervous, but we think that you’ll agree that when you watch the deaf people on these tapes telling jokes, telling stories, having conversations and discussions, that they really are communicating in a relaxed way. What's more, that we think that they are enjoying themselves and we hope that you’ll enjoy watching them as well. I think you might become as fascinated as we are, here in the research team, by the amazing richness and complexity of BSL.

The people you will see on these video tapes are only a few of the deaf people who've helped us and are still helping us in our work. So before we go any further, I'd like to say a big thank you to all those deaf people throughout Scotland, in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, who've helped us to understand so much more about their language. Although we're hoping that these tapes will give you a lot of information about sign language, they're not aimed directly at teaching people BSL. This is because we know that, as with any other language, if you want to learn BSL, then you yourself must have direct contact with the people who use this language as their main language; in other words deaf people. However, the tapes can give you the opportunity to do something that's not easy to do in face-to-face conversation or mixing in a deaf club, and that's the chance to sit, watch, observe and absorb what is happening.

We hope that this experience will give those people who feel a little bit nervous about communicating with deaf people the confidence to try. When we meet deaf people we are, of course, learning more, not just about their language, but about their community and their culture. We know that language and culture are very closely linked and we hope that these tapes will give you some understanding of the culture of deaf people. By signing about their interests, their experiences, their education and so on, the deaf people on these tapes are inviting us into their world. We hope that you’ll join us in accepting that invitation. However, these videotapes are not only meant for hearing people, we also hope that many deaf people will watch the tapes and perhaps Gerry can explain why he thinks deaf people themselves might be interested.