DeafBlind Communities May Be Creating a New Language of Touch

By Andrew Leland--May 12, 2022

https://www.**newyorker**.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/deafblind-communities-may-be-creating-a-new-language-of-touch?position=5&utm\_medium=email&utm\_source=pocket\_hits&utm\_campaign=POCKET\_HITS-EN-RECS-2022\_05\_14&sponsored=0

A quote to suggest what this article is about:

Today, most DeafBlind adults have heard of Protactile’s call to place touch at the center of their lives. Clark, who has become a leader in the movement, compared it to the Deaf Pride movement of the nineteen-eighties, when more Deaf people began speaking A.S.L. in public, insisting that hearing people gesture back. A few hundred people use Protactile’s communication practices daily—a very small group. Still, several linguists have come to believe that, among some of its frequent users, Protactile is developing into its own language, with words and grammatical structures that have diverged from those of A.S.L. “I am totally convinced that this is no tweak of A.S.L.,” Diane Brentari, one of the premier linguists of sign language, who teaches at the University of Chicago, told me. “This is a new language.” Clark believes that Protactile has the potential to upend centuries of DeafBlind isolation. “It’s an exciting time to be DeafBlind,” he has written. “The single most important development in DeafBlind history is in full swing.”