Cover next page > title: Seeing Language in Sign : The Work of William C. Stokoe author

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Page And in a declaration that would have made Alexander Graham Bell proud, Myklebust proclaimed:
Although speechreading has limitations as compared to auditory language, we must assume that it is the most suitable receptive language system when deafness is present. If speechreading were taught as the basic language, the deaf child would learn to comprehend the spoken word through this means, and it would constitute his basic inner language system.
He would "think" in words, but not in auditory words. Nor would he think in visual-tactual ideographic images such as characterize the language of signs. His inner language would consist of words as they appear on the lips when spoken.
Instead of vowel and consonant sounds, instead of pitch, inflection, and intonation, his words would consist of movement, form, shape, color, and other visually observable characteristics and attributes. For those who wondered whether sign could ever be used to teach speech and lipreading, Myklebust warned that
The manual sign language used by the deaf is an Ideographic language. . . . An Ideographic language characteristically uses apart of the object to represent the whole object. There are many examples of this in the sign language. Essentially it is more pictorial, less symbolic and as a system is one which falls mainly at the level of imagery. Ideographic language systems, in comparison with verbal symbol systems, lack precision, subtlety, and flexibility. It is likely that Man cannot achieve his ultimate potential through an Ideographic language, inasmuch as it is limited to the more concrete aspects of his experience. Comparatively, a verbal language is more abstract. Moreover, an adequate language system must include a written form. Although most Ideographic forms of language can be written, it is highly impractical to do so. In the case of the sign language it seems impossible to devise a written form. William Stokoe devised such a form in his Dictionary of
American Sign Language.]The manual sign system must be viewed as being inferior to the verbal as a language.36
Finally, in a chapter entitled "Interest Patterns, Aptitudes,

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