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Although sign languages have been recognized as true languages in themselves in part because of linguistic studies by William Stokoe and Christian Cuxac among others, their exact relation to oral languages remains largely unknown. The fact that sign languages are not an outgrowth of oral languages shows that they are autonomous linguistic systems and we shall see that they also remain a central element in the identity process of gestural and oralist deaf persons. With the concepts of iconicity and metonymy, we argue that gesture is more than a support or accompaniment of voice, and that the relationship between voice and gesture can actually by inverted.