No need to apologize for your vagueness. It's a vague subject with equally vague answers. I've actually already thought a lot about those questions, and have even tried to look for some answers. A number have been works have been written on the subject of the impact of a new writing system on purely oral cultures, but those findings are not directly applicable to this situation, since the deaf community is bilingual (by this I don't mean that every member of the community is bilingual, but there are two languages in use within the community), and one of the languages already makes use of a writing system. What I need, but have yet to find, is a study that looks at a community, which speaks language x, whose children are educated and literate in language y, and is introduced to a written form of language x. Does anybody know of any?
But here's what I've come up with so far..
1) Development of a written register. Like you were saying, people don't write like they speak. I expect that the written register will use a wider variety of sentence constructions and vocabulary words. (ie. it's, like, one thing, for like, a 'valley girl' to, like, say the word 'like', like, a thousand times in any given conversation, but it's, like, altogether different for her to, like, write them all down) Which leads to my second point,
2) Increased vocabulary. When I speak, I use only a fraction of the vocabulary words that I know. The great majority of them only get used when I write. ASLers are already proficient a creating new signs for words they don't have or don't know, the development of a writing system will encourage this trend.
These first two points taken together, would lead to the third..
3) Increased status of ASL. In bilingual communities, it is rare to find that both languages share an equal status. One language is generally more prestigious than the other. In this case, it is easy for English to claim superiority since it has a writing system, whereas ASL does not. Take TiaraPrincess' comment, for example (sorry, tiaraprincess, for making an example of you! >_<).
TiaraPrincess, would seeing ASL in books change your opinion?
Johnesco, have you got any more ideas or predictions?
I'm also not too sure that ASL even has a lower status in the deaf community, it certainly does in hearing America, as do all minority languages. Although I can name a handful of deafies who have labelled ASL as being a 'primitive' language, is this opinion at all widespread? And while we're on the topic, are there any status-related issues amongst the signed languages (ie. ASL > CSL, LSF > LSQ, BSL > Auslan, etc)?
