Italian Sign Language (, LIS) is the visual language used by deaf people in Italy. Deep analysis of it began in the 1980s, along the lines of William Stokoe's research on American Sign Language in the 1960s. Until the beginning of the 21st century, most studies of Italian Sign Language dealt with its vocabulary. According to the European Union for the Deaf, the majority of the 60,000–90,000 Deaf people in Italy use LIS.
Language structure and language family Like many sign languages, LIS is in some ways different from its "spoken neighbor"; thus, it has little in common with spoken Italian, but shares some features with non-Indo-European oral languages (e.g. it is verb final, like the Basque language; it has inclusive and exclusive pronominal forms like oceanic languages; interrogative particles are verb final (You go where?).
A sign variety of spoken Italian also exists, the so-called Signed Italian which combines LIS lexicon with the grammar of spoken Italian: this is not Italian Sign Language, however.
Some features of LIS are typical of sign languages in general, e.g. agreement between nouns, adjectives and verbs is not based on gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) but it is based on place, that is the spatial position in which the sign is performed: nouns can be placed everywhere in the space but their position must be consistent with that of pronouns and verbs. The LIS translation of the sentence "The child speaks to the mother" appears as Child-here mother-there this-speak-that, rather than involving forms like "he, she". The voice intonation is replaced by facial expressions which mark interrogative sentences, imperatives and relative clauses. Other features of Italian Sign Language which can be found also in oral languages are: classifiers; dual, trial, quattrial and even quinquial forms in addition to the general plural; verbs inflected for person.
The most detailed analysis of a part of the grammar of LIS is by Chiara Branchini, On Relativization and Clefting: An Analysis of Italian Sign Language.Branchini, Chiara. 2014. On Relativization and Clefting: An Analysis of Italian Sign Language Berlin: De Gruyter. Laura Fedeli has described sociolinguistic features of LIS, including differences in use by gender. There are also some deafblind in Italy who use a form of tactile sign language.Checchetto, Alessandra, Carlo Geraci, Carlo Cecchetto, and Sandro Zucchi. "The language instinct in extreme circumstances: The transition to tactile Italian Sign Language (LISt) by Deafblind signers." (2018): 1-28.
History of LIS and LIS education The Romans, along with most of Europe, inherited from Greece the notion that thought corresponds with the spoken word and thereby believed that deaf-mute individuals possessed lower intelligence and ability to reason. The first time that deafness was officially recognized in law and different types of deafness were differentiated, including distinguishing it from muteness, occurred under Emperor Justinian (527-565 CE). This provided at least some deaf for the first time with legal rights, though these deaf most likely concerned those deafened postlingually (Radutzky, Elena (1993) "The Education of Deaf People in Italy and the use of Italian Sign Language" Chapter 14 in John Vickrey Van Cleve (ed.) (1993) "Deaf history unveiled: interpretations from the new scholarship" Washington: Gallaudet University Press. p. 238-9).
During the Middle Ages, these legal rights were severely restricted because the deaf could not serve feudal lords their military interests. The restrictions the deaf faced included losing the right to inheritance, to celebrate mass and to marry ( p. 239). Furthermore, two medical theories regarding deafness were common throughout the Middle Ages. One idea was that muteness was a defect of the tongue, to be cured by healing the tongue. Another idea was that the ability to hear was related to the mouth via a tube in the ear, to be cured by shouting in the mouth.
The first Italian text mentioning deaf people's ability to reason and to use their intellect, through signing or other means, was of the legal advisor Bartolo della marca c'Ancona early in the 14th century ( p. 240). This more positive look at deafness was continued with the onset of the Renaissance. The invention of the printing press and, hence, the widespread availability of books stimulated general interest in education practices and this entailed several positive developments for the deaf. ( p. 240)
The first Italian teacher of deaf pupils was Pedro Ponce de León (1520-1584 CE), a Benedictine monk. This was likely related to Benedictines their long tradition of holding silence and using signs to communicate. This was a tradition possibly dating back to the establishment of the vow of silence by St. Benedict in 529 CE in a town near Naples. In fact, the first recorded signs of this language date back to the 11th century. Interestingly, Benedictines also struggled with maintaining an 'official' set of signs for all Benedictines and with the continued arising of "unofficial" signs in the separate monasteries. ( p. 242-3)
The first Italian school for the deaf was founded by Tommaso Silvestri in the late 18th century. His teaching used a signing or manualist method inspired by the teaching practices of the famous Parisian educator of the deaf Abbé de l'Épée. Tommaso Silvestri had traveled to France and had seen the use of the signing method first hand ( p. 243). In 1793, Tommaso Silvestri wrote that signs stimulate the intelligence of the deaf and should be adopted in education.Corazza, Serena (1991) "La lingua dei Segni nell'educazione dei Sordi," L'Educazione dei Sordi, Siena:Istituto Tommaso Pendola. http://www.storiadeisordi.it/articolo.asp?ENTRY_ID=438 accessed 2 May 2011.
In Italian texts of this time, the signing used by the deaf was always referred to as la lingua dei gesti ("the language of gestures"). That is, the use of the term "language" to describe deaf their means of communication reveals the respectable status sign language was given at this time. For example, in 1857, Ciro Marzullo wrote La grammatica pei sordo-muti ("The grammar for the deaf-mute"), a textbook describing and illustrating various signs which can aid to learn written languages and parts of speech. Moreover, in 1885, D. Gaminiano Borasari, an instructor of deaf-mute in Modena, wrote Principi generali dell'istruzione del Sordo-Muto nella lingua italiana ("A Guide to the teaching of Italian language to the deaf-mute"). The headings of the first chapter are very indicative of his attitude towards the deaf: "1. the deaf-mute, though speechless, use their reason, 2. they have a language, 3. what does it consist of, and 4. the necessity of learning the language of the deaf for instructing them". This culminates in writings of that period left by deaf authors and various references to deaf. In particular, it seems that deaf were involved themselves in education for the deaf.
Notable is that only one historical deaf school was founded by a deaf person. This is notable particularly for its location, Milan, because this is where the infamous Conference of Milan was held in 1880. At the conference 164 education delegates – all hearing bar one – declared the oral method as a superior means of instructing the deaf over the manual method.
In the period after the Conference of Milan, there is no longer any mention of a "language" of the deaf. Rather, the focus shifts to teaching the spoken word and, specifically, the national language. By 1920 the program of education was still firmly oral. Nevertheless, various Associations of the Deaf were founded and the leaders of these organizations were usually deaf themselves. One of the few references to 'signing' in this period concern a reference to the Swedish mimicking language or mimicking method (linguaggio mimico o di metodo mimico), but this does not come close to the sign language referred to by Borasari or Marzullo.
Two factors have been proposed to explain the enormous influence and success of the Milan Conference in establishing the oral method. Firstly, German 'science' and thinking was very influential for Italy at this period in time and the oralist method was more established in German history. Secondly, the Italian unification (-1870) entailed nationalism and a single language was deemed as key to uniformity ( p. 237-8). For the role of language in national education see in particular Branson and Miller (Branson, Jan and Don Miller (1998) "Nationalism and the linguistic rights of Deaf communities: Linguistic imperialism and the recognition and development of sign languages," Journal of Sociolinguistics 2: 3-34. p. 5).
At the end of the 20th century, mainstreaming became very influential. Mainstreaming is trying to give deaf the same education as hearing by placing them in the same type of schools. This entailed that separate deaf education deteriorated to some extent.
Official status of LIS On May 19, 2021, Italy officially recognized LIS.
Often a first step in the official recognition of a language is the formalization of a grammar and a lexicon, the latter in the form of a dictionary. It is unclear when the first full LIS dictionary was produced, but at least by now various LIS dictionaries exist. For example, one not-for-profit foundation aimed at improving the living conditions of the deaf and deaf-blind offers a bilingual dictionary with both written Italian and visual depiction of signs in book form.Mason Perkins Deafness Fund ONLUS (2010) "Mason Perkins Deafness Fund ONLUS" http://www.mpdf.it/ accessed 1 May 2011. Another notable example is an online electronic dictionary where the meanings of all the signs are both written down in Italian and signed in LIS using video."Dizionario elettronico di base bilingue Lingua Italiana dei Segni" (Electronic dictionary based on bilingual Italian Sign Language) (2006), Istituto di Comunicazione Specialistica e Plurilinguismo EURAC Research http://elisdiz.eurac.edu/diz/ accessed 1 May 2011. This particular dictionary is a project of the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano, an independent research institute with linguistic research as one of its five main goals.EURAC (2011) "EURAC Research" European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano http://www.eurac.edu accessed 4 May 2011.
The formalization and recognition of an official grammar is, nevertheless, somewhat more problematic. Even today, people usually consider LIS "a 'grammarless' language," necessitating a scholar to write his dissertation in 2006 with the aim "to provide evidence that LIS . . . does have its own grammar" (Brunelli, Michele (2006) "The Grammar of Italian Sign Language, With a Study About its Restrictive Relative Clauses" Unpublished Master's Thesis, Venezia: Università Ca' Foscari. p. 1). That is not to say, however, that academics are generally passive in the study of LIS. Porcari and Volterra published an extensive overview of academic literature related to LIS covering all possible fields from history to psychology, revealing an active role of the academic world.Porcari, Giulia and Virginia Volterra (2006) "Bibliografia ragionata dei lavori relativialla Lingua dei Segni Italiana (LIS)" http://www.istc.cnr.it/mostralis/docs/biblis.pdf accessed 3 May 2011.