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Sign alphabet exhibition – Didascolocophus
By H Dominic W Stiles, on 2 July 2013
Didascolocophus : or the deaf and dumb mans tutor, to which is added a discourse of the nature and number of double consonants: both which tracts being the first (for what the author knows) that have been published upon either of the subjects. Oxford, printed at the Theater, 1680 by George Dalgarno 1680
Dalgarno (c.1616–1687) was born in Aberdeen but spent much of his life teaching at a private grammar school in Oxford. In Didascolocophus, (‘teacher of the deaf’) Dalgarno fits the language of the deaf into his general scheme for a theory of signs, what he calls ‘sematology’.
Etymology: < Greek σηματ-, σῆμα sign + -logy
Dalgarno’s knowledge of and work on ‘brachygraphy’ – shorthand – brought him into contact with some of the people who later formed the nucleus of the Royal Society, such as Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury and John Wallis, who devised a method for teaching deaf people.
Dalgarno was buried in the parish of Mary Magdalen, Oxford.
David Cram, ‘Dalgarno, George (c.1616–1687)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7023, accessed 2 July 2013]
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