The Lost Secret Sign Language of Sawmill Workers

When the linguists Martin Meissner and Stuart Philpott first started visiting sawmills in British Columbia in the 1970s, they thought they’d find workers communicating without speaking, probably with some simple gestures that contained technical information. What they discovered, though, floored them. The researchers witnessed a sign language system complete enough that workers could call each other “you crazy old farmer,” tell a colleague that he was “full of crap,” or tell each other when the foreman was “fucking around over there.”
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