Since deaf people has no language, what mental language / medium do they use when they are doing the thinking?

Question

Since deaf people has no language, what mental language / medium do they use when they are doing the thinking?

Answer 1

I think some of you have misunderstood the question. What i think she meant is that because people dont use SPOKEN WORD,  what medium do they use when thinking i.e. do they mentally picture ASL signs in their heads etc. When i think, i use spoken words in my head, as do most hearing people, but deaf people cannot do this.

I dont think she was suggesting deaf people dont use A language, and certainly not suggesting that they dont think.

Answer 2

I'm not deaf and I think in images instead of words.  Most artists do.  I am an artist, so I understand this.  Why do you think Beethoven was so successful instead of giving up when he became deaf after his illness took away his ability to hear.  I have an ASL member on my team and although I can't sign, we often have the same thoughts.  A smile, frown, nod, shake of the shoulders, body language are all ways to communicate without speaking.  You should watch a person communicate in non-verbal ways.  They do show what they think without having to utter a word.  That's everyone, not just deaf.  You are really thinking to ask such an honorable question.  Most people don't think that deep.

Answer 3

Sign language.  I wish you could read my mind.

Answer 4

This is a great question and for those of you who think it insults the deaf you are the ones being ignorant. I have asked this same question to a friend who is bilingual. Do you think in english or spanish? It turns out hre answer was it depends on the situation..... my guess in this instance is that they think via sense of feel, not unlike brail. Every emotion must trigger a new mental sensation. Great question.

Answer 5

I beg to differ, deaf people do have language it's called American Sign Language and thoughts are generated in the brain and executed by using language. So deaf people sign their thoughts.

Because people are deaf does NOT mean they mentally slow, that's an old myth that needs to be eradicated. Helen Keller both blind and deaf , used finger spelling a part of sign language and went to university and obtained her degree and became one of the most influential persons with a disability in the 20th c. You need to read more about deaf culture.

Answer 6

Mental imagery.

Helen Keller signed that she imagined the color red to be like a trumpet blast.

Answer 7

WOW - of course deaf people have language, what do you think they write in. they have whatever language they learn - French, English, Korean.....

What they lack is the ability to hear and convert to the same abstract consturcts that hearing people do, but all sound language is arbitrarily defined.  Just listen to somone from New York, London, and Sidney speak to you, and they all sound different, but we all can agree on what they are saying.  The same goes for written language.  All people have the ability to develop such constructs in their own mind - no matter what they hear.

Answer 8

A whole lot of verbiage here and I think most of it misses the point. We do not think in language. Language and thought are somewhat interdependent, but are not the same thing. I do not wish to go into it with you, so read Chomsky and Pinker on language.

Answer 9

I think you'd get your butt kicked if you told a deaf person that they had no language.  Deaf people are, many times, very proud of their language and culture.

Answer 10

Oliver Sacks (the doctor the movie Awakenings was about) wrote a book about the World of the Deaf.

It's very readable and interesting (I LOVE Oliver Sacks).

You may want to give it a read.

As others have pointed out, most deaf people these days DO have language.

There are two kinds of sign language -- one's that are basically transcriptions of spoken languages, and "true" sign, which were developed by deaf people, and aren't like spoken language.

Each of these types has many languages within those two categories.

It's also important to distinguish people deaf from birth or before they learned spoken language, and those deaf later -- the latter probably still think in the language they first learned.

Even for hearing people, not all thought is thought in language.

Answer 11

I guess there is no way to really know.....now that's a deep question.

Answer 12

To start, the deaf do have language, it is called Sign Language and while there are core images common to many of the different forms, each country has its own version.

Sign Language is not processed by the visual cortex of the brain, but the speech and language centers in the left temporal lobe just like spoken speech.  It has all the characteristics of language, physically and mentally.

The thought processes of the deaf is no more different than someone who can hear other than the deaf may not have sounds to go along with the images in their mind (depending on how deaf they are...even the profoundly deaf may have some hearing.)

How do I know all this?  I have spent my entire life as a severe to profound hearing impaired individual.  I wear hearing aids, I know some sign, and I speak as my primary method of communication.  BTW, being deaf does not preclude someone from being able to speak, the speech may sound a little different but you try speaking a foreign language without an accent and see how you do.  :-)

All that said, I will say this, when it comes to the written word, the deaf sometimes have difficulty with the syntax.  There are entire words that are just not used much in sign such as the or of.  Plus the order of words can be very different in sign versus writing, so it can be difficult to convey the rules to the deaf in a way that is assimilated easily due to their personal syntax being so very different.

Answer 13

Great question, why don't you ask a deaf person ? They can tell us better than anyone else, another interesting point.. we don't actually hear our thoughts, they are in our heads, and before the deaf community learned to sign, they still had thoughts so how where those thoughts processed as well, I would love to discuss this with a deaf person.

Answer 14

first off, deaf people do have a language, Sign Language. In America it is called ASL, or American Sign Language, in which hand gestures and formations are used to communicate with deaf people. The gestures represent the same things are words do. When we hear someone speak we associate the WORD with what they are talking about. When a deaf person sees the "sign" they associate the SIGN with the same thing that we associate the word with.

Just because they are deaf does not mean they do not think process information on a totally different medium than people who speak do. Thinking that is an blatant example of ignorance

edit: "I think some of you have misunderstood the question. What i think she meant is that because people dont use SPOKEN WORD, what medium do they use when thinking i.e. do they mentally picture ASL signs in their heads etc. When i think, i use spoken words in my head, as do most hearing people, but deaf people cannot do this.

I dont think she was suggesting deaf people dont use A language, and certainly not suggesting that they dont think."

if you read the first few words of the question "Since deaf people has no language..." the asker is already assuming that deaf people do not have a language which is entirely false

Answer 15

I've sure never thought about that before, GOOD QUESTION!