Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind
by: Margalit Fox
List Price: $15.00
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Dewey Decimal Number: 419
EAN: 9780743247139
ISBN: 0743247132
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: August 05, 2008
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Sales Rank: 267592
Studio: Simon & Schuster
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Imagine a village where everyone 'speaks' sign language. Just such a village -- an isolated Bedouin community in Israel with an unusually high rate of deafness -- is at the heart of Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind. There, an indigenous sign language has sprung up, used by deaf and hearing villagers alike. It is a language no outsider has been able to decode, until now.
A New York Times reporter trained as a linguist, Margalit Fox is the only Western journalist to have set foot in this remarkable village. In Talking Hands, she follows an international team of scientists that is unraveling this mysterious language.
Because the sign language of the village has arisen completely on its own, outside the influence of any other language, it is a living demonstration of the 'language instinct,' man's inborn capacity to create language. If the researchers can decode this language, they will have helped isolate ingredients essential to all human language, signed and spoken. But as Talking Hands grippingly shows, their work in the village is also a race against time, because the unique language of the village may already be endangered.
Talking Hands offers a fascinating introduction to the signed languages of the world -- languages as beautiful, vital and emphatically human as any other -- explaining why they are now furnishing cognitive scientists with long-sought keys to understanding how language works in the mind.
Written in lyrical, accessible prose, Talking Hands will captivate anyone interested in language, the human mind and journeys to exotic places.
Average Rating: 
Rating:
- FascinatingThis is a fascinating book. I am not a linguist but love language and this book was insightful and ... Read More
Rating:
- The History and Linguistics of Sign LanguageThough marketed as an insider look at an isolated sign-language-speaking Middle-Eastern village, this ... Read More
Rating:
- Fabulous Informative Book!Do not be misled by this boring title, the book is amazingly well written and presents complex subject ... Read More
Rating:
- A FASCINATING BOOK ABOUT SIGN LANGUAGEI bought this book after it caught my eye in the window of a local book store. (It cost half as much on ... Read More
Rating:
- The Forbidden ExperimentTalking Hands is one of the most informative and compelling books on linguistics I've ever read. Margalit ... Read More
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Copyright ©2003, Mark Carey.