Sign Language Group Defends Using Hooked Nose Gesture For ‘Jew’
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — A Belgian government-recognized organization caring for people with hearing impairments defended the inclusion in its sign language dictionary of a hooked nose gesture for the word “Jew.”
The Flemish Sign Language Center offered the defense in a statement Wednesday, following protests about the gesture by the European Jewish Association over its including in the dictionary, which is made up of videos and hosted on a website belonging to the University of Ghent.
The statement also said the videos depicting the gestures have been online for years and were not recently added. Notwithstanding, the Center added the words “negative connotation” to the two videos depicting a long nose, and side curls. Other videos for the same word included beard gestures.
The dictionary has a “descriptive” goal rather than a “normative” one, the authors of the statement wrote, explaining they seek only to catalog and display the accepted gestures of sign language in Flemish rather than instruct speakers on how to use gestures and which ones to use.
Some dictionaries include offensive words such as “negro,” and “pejoratives,” the statement read. “Users of the language are given the opportunity to look them up.”
Some variants of sign language include a beer belly gesture for Belgium, references to skin color for black people and narrow eye gestures for Asians, the statement said.
“It may be viewed as derogatory in 2019, but these gestures, which date some time arrears, were not intended to offend,” the statement also said.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
