Paget Gorman Sign System

The Paget Gorman Sign System, also known as Paget Gorman Signed Speech (PGSS) or Paget Gorman Systematic Sign Language is a manually coded form of the English language, designed to be used with children with speech or communication difficulties, such as deaf children.

PGSS was originally developed in Britain by Sir Richard Paget in the 1930s, and later by Lady Grace Paget and Dr Pierre Gorman. The system uses 37 basic signs and 21 standard hand postures, which can be combined to represent a large vocabulary of English words, including word endings and verb tenses. The signs do not correspond to natural signs of the Deaf community.

The system was widespread in Deaf schools in the UK from the 1960s to the 1980s, but since the emergence of British Sign Language and the BSL-based Signed English in deaf education, its use is now largely restricted to the field of speech and language disorder.

External links

* [http://www.pgss.org PGSS homepage]
* [http://www.signonline.org.uk/sign_linguistics/bsl/paget_gorman_sign_system.php Sign Online - PGSS] , with video examples of PGSS