Charles de Épée, father of sign language

Charles-Michel de l’Épée was born to a wealthy family in Versailles, the seat of political power in what was then the most powerful kingdom of Europe. He studied to be a Catholic priest but was denied ordination as a result of his refusal to denounce Jansenism, a popular French heresy of the time. He then studied law but, soon after joining the Bar, was finally ordained—only to be denied a license to offi Though Épée’s original interest was in [[religious educa[[publice Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris, which Épée had founded, began to receive government funding. It was later renamed the Institut St. Jacques and then renamed again to its present name: Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris. ds of education have spread around the world, and the Abbé de l’Épée is seen today as one of the founding fathers of deaf education.

After Épée’s death, he was succeeded by the Abbé Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard, who became the new head of the school.

The Instructional Method of Signs (signes méthodiques)

The Instructional Method of Signs is a real educational method emphasised using gestures or hand signs, based on the principle that “the education of deaf mutes must teach them through the eye of what other people acquire through the ear.” He recognised that there was already a signing deaf community in Paris but saw their language (now known as Old French Sign Language) as primitive. Although he advised his (hearing) teachers to learn the signs (lexicon) for use in instructing their deaf students, he did not use their language in the classroom. Instead, he developed an idiosyncratic gestural system using some of this lexicon, combined with other invented signs to represent all the verb endings, articles, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs of the French language.

In English, Épée’s system has been known as “Methodical Signs” and “Old Signed French” but is perhaps better translated by the phrase systematised signs. While Épée’s system laid the philosophical groundwork for the later developments of Manually Coded Languages such as Signed English, it differed somewhat in execution. For example, the word croire (“believe”) was signed using five separate signs—four with the meanings “know”, “feel”, “say”, and “not see” and one that marked the word as a verb (Lane, 1980:122). The word indéchiffrable (“unintelligible”) was also produced with a chain of five signs: interior-understand-possible-adjective-not. However, like Manually Coded Languages, Épée’s system was cumbersome and unnatural to deaf signers. A deaf pupil of the school (and later teacher), Laurent Clerc, wrote that the deaf never used the signes méthodiques for communication outside the classroom, preferring their own community language (French Sign Language).

Although Épée reportedly had great success with this educational method, his successes were questioned by critics who thought his students were aping his gestures rather than understanding the meaning.^{[citation needed]}in the commert