Urban and rural sign language in India

A comparison is presented of Indian urban and rural sign languages of the deaf. The structures of both languages are designed for efficient communication but have developed differently in response to different sociolinguistic environments. The urban form transmits information primarily by means of appeal to a shared linguistic code; the rural form mainly by appeal to communal nonlinguistic knowledge. Both languages employ effective and appropriate means given their environments. The relationship between language usage and structure is explored. (Sign language, deafness, India) Hymes (1972, 1974) argued that language must be studied within the framework of its social context and function; that the divorce of language structure from language use enables linguists to build models of grammar but not of language. In this article, I explore the relationship of structure and use in two languages of the deaf in India. In urban India, a unified and relatively standardized language is used by members of the educated, middle-class deaf community. The rural deaf have no exposure to the urban form but employ what the urban deaf call rustic sign. I use the terms Urban Indian Sign Language (UISL) and Rural Indian Sign Language (RISL) to distinguish these two languages. I propose here that structural differences between UISL and RISL result from differences in the sociolinguistic environments in which they are embedded and in the uses to which they are put. Studies of local and regional sign languages have become relatively frequent in recent years. Often, these languages are described in terms that suggest a quasi-linguistic status. They are referred to as "context-dependent" (Washabaugh, Woodward, & DeSantis I978) and "iconic" (Brito I984;