http://www.dickinson.edu/nectfl/belka.html
Preface. About ten years ago, as foreign language department chair in a four-year state university, I came under considerable pressure to add American Sign Language (ASL) to our traditional offerings. This pressure came through office visits by advocates of ASL, articles in the student newspaper, and a constant stream of requests by "impartial" students who wanted to interview me for research papers. Although aware of the politically-charged nature of the issue and of great student interest in ASL courses, I took a more "enlightened" and "principled" stand and resisted the pressure. As a result, ASL courses were introduced in the communications department, and the foreign language department waived university foreign language requirements for students who met the legal description of hearing impaired.
However, in 1994, Utah joined the ranks of private institutions and state educational systems that mainstream ASL. The legislature mandated that state institutions offer ASL courses which would meet foreign language requirements (Senate Bill No. 42, 1994 General Session). Since then, ASL has been housed in the foreign language department. Existing ASL courses have been re-numbered to correspond to first- and second-year foreign language courses, and students now learn functional skills in ASL through a proficiency-based program.
These developments still beg the question of whether or not ASL is a foreign language. If it is not, should it meet foreign language requirements? This article explores some of the complexities in what appears to be a simple question. It refers to the historical oppression of the deaf, reviews the development of American Sign Language and its defining value to proponents of deaf culture, mentions other language systems used by the deaf--specifically comparing ASL and English, posits the arguments for ASL as a foreign language, and, finally, examines what a hearing student learning ASL as a second language might gain and lose by selecting ASL over a traditional language like German.
Being deaf. The mind relies on receiving sensory perceptions to interpret and understand the outside world. Sight is the most highly developed human sense, but hearing is more essential in establishing contact with fellow humans. Although general contact is possible through the tactile senses, mind-to-mind contact is possible only through a system of symbols which, for most humans, consists of sound symbols. The sounds used, and the order in which they are presented, are completely arbitrary. To be understood, patterns of sound must have consistent meaning in the context in which they are uttered.
A child is not born with a language, but every child is born with an innate intelligence that allows it to learn any of the ca. 3,000 languages currently being spoken on earth (Stross 1-3). The mind recognizes that family members emit predictable sound patterns during the performance of repeated tasks. Children learn a spoken language by replicating the sounds associated with the action, and they are rewarded by family members when the utterance matches the situation.
Although a deaf child born into a hearing family recognizes facial expressions and gestures accompanying human behavior and possesses a mind capable of categorizing sensory perceptions, that child cannot possibly learn a language system based on sound. Nor can the mind of a deaf child replicate sounds it cannot hear, even if the vocal tract is healthy and functioning. In the United States, one child in a thousand is born deaf (Dolnick 46) and "only five to 10 percent of Deaf children have Deaf parents" (Shelly and Schneck 21). Put another way, fully 90 to 95 percent of all deaf children are born into hearing families. Moreover, fewer than 10 percent of these children are able to perceive enough sound to enable them some chance of learning to speak a language (Dolnick 39).
Historically, deaf children were thought to be mentally retarded and were subject to humiliation and mistreatment. Trapped in a world of silence, they were often hidden away or placed in mental institutions. However, the capacity for language, i. e., the ability to communicate through a system of visual symbols, was demonstrated whenever deaf people came into contact with each other. This natural sign language created by the deaf is unrelated to signed languages created by hearing people for special circumstances. (1)
American Sign Language and Deaf Culture. As early as 1500, an Italian doctor found that the deaf could be taught to associate written words with objects. Juan Pablo Bonet of Spain published a book ca. 1620 on simplifying the alphabet and teaching "Mutes to Speak." In the late 1750's or early 1760's, a young French priest, Charles Michel de l'Epée, was concerned about the spiritual salvation of the deaf and founded a school for deaf children. Aware that they communicated through signs, he became a champion for sign language, despite criticism by his contemporaries. In the late 1770's, the first public school for the deaf was founded in Germany. Samuel Heinicke, the school's founder, disagreed with his French contemporary and taught his students to speech read and speak German (Shelly and Schneck 19-24). His work marked the beginning of the debate, continuing today, on whether deaf children should learn a manual language or be taught oral skills to facilitate integration with the speaking community.
ASL originated after Thomas Hopkin Gallaudet returned from an educational sojourn in France with an experienced teacher of the deaf, Laurent Clerc. Together they founded the first U. S. "permanent school for Deaf students" in Hartford, Connecticut in 1817 (Shelly and Schneck 24). For the next fifty years or so (1817-1867), Clerc taught his manual method to teachers from deaf schools throughout the country. The method spread, and new signs continued to be added. "In 1867 every American school for the deaf taught in ASL; by 1907 not a single one did" (Dolnick 50).
This abrupt change in methodology can be attributed to the well-intentioned efforts of influential educators like Horace Mann and Samuel Gridley Howe. They discovered while traveling in Germany that German deaf students could understand and speak German, while American deaf students had no oral skills in English. Howe founded a school for the deaf using the oral method in the late 1860's. When Alexander Graham Bell became a strong advocate for the oral method, it sounded the death knell for teaching the deaf in a language that was natural for them (Shelly and Schneck 25-26). In an attempt to force deaf children to learn oral English skills, the use of sign was forbidden in the classroom. However, the majority of children could not successfully learn oral skills and continued to communicate with each other through sign.
Communication through signs not only survived the classroom ban, but it continued in use through the 1970's when "total communication" began to be accepted in schools for the death, and manual systems that more closely followed English spoken forms were invented and taught (Shelly and Schneck 260). Among the deaf, these invented manual languages were considered "refined" (Eastman 10) while their natural language (ASL) was considered a "low language" (Eastman 25).
In 1960, a hearing professor of English at Gallaudet, William C. Stokoe, published the first linguistic study of ASL (Cokely and Baker xv). He apparently was the first scholar to use the term ASL during a five-month stay in England studying how British sign language "differs from and is similar to American sign language" [emphasis added] (Eastman 21). Stokoe's linguistic studies in ASL led to a gradual introduction of ASL in the classroom at Gallaudet, first as a graduate course on its structure in 1970 (Cokely and Baker xvi), then as an undergraduate course for credit in 1978, and finally recognition of ASL in 1979 "as a viable means of communication which may be used in classes" (Cokely and Baker xix).
Recognition and study of the language by the professionals who taught deaf students were the first steps to deaf "pride." Just as blackness became a source of pride and identity in the civil rights movement, ASL, the natural language of deaf Americans, became a source of pride for the deaf. Public awareness of the "movement" came in 1988, when Gallaudet College students revolted at the appointment of Elisabeth Anne Zinser, "the only hearing person of the final three candidates" as president of Gallaudet (Shelly and Schneck 37). Under the focus of national media attention, students and faculty successfully opposed the appointment.
Even today, universal support of ASL does not exist. The overwhelming majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents who desire to assimilate them into their world. However, because most deaf children cannot develop sufficient oral skills in English to make this assimilation possible, an inevitable conflict occurs as to which language is in the best interests of the children. Deaf "extremists" claim that hearing parents are unfit to raise deaf children, primarily because they are unable to communicate with them in their natural language (ASL). They view attempts to assimilate deaf children into the hearing world of their parents and siblings--whether through language, main-streaming in schools, or medical procedures enabling them to hear--as further proof that hearing humans consider deaf humans inferior, in need of "fixing" (Dolnick 37-53). A view of "deafness" as a sort of "ethnicity" is reflected in publications where "Deaf" is capitalized like other proper adjectives denoting nationality. More moderate deaf leaders encourage hearing parents of deaf children to study the issues in order to understand better problems of the deaf (Dolnick 51).
Some scholars believe that avid support for ASL as the natural language of the deaf, as an affirmation of their humanness, and as a refuge from the isolation they experience in the hearing community, has led to a Balkanization of the deaf community. Deaf children of deaf parents who sign ASL enjoy the high end of social prestige in the orthodoxy of deafness. Those who have learned speech and try to assimilate into the hearing culture are called "oral," and those deaf who believe that ASL is not the best language for the deaf to learn are labeled as "think-hearing" (Wilcox and Wilcox 65).
Although no official records exist, ASL appears to be the primary language of a large percentage of the deaf in the United States and Canada. The Wilcoxes quote one report estimating that there were 550,000 people in 1994 whose hearing loss was severe enough to preclude hearing speech. A second report estimates the number of fluent speakers of ASL in 1987 at "between 100,000 and 500,000" (Wilcox and Wilcox 13). Not all deaf people use ASL as their primary language. To help their children assimilate into the dominant culture, hearing parents often elect alternative signed systems more closely related to English.
Other language systems used by the deaf.
Finger spelling . Signs exist for each letter of the English alphabet and for numbers. Use of this signed alphabet does not constitute a signed language. It would be as unnatural and as tedious for the deaf to spell each word as it would be for anyone else. An experienced finger speller needs about twice as long to spell a word as to speak it. However, finger spelling is employed in all signed systems (including ASL) for those words for which there is no sign (Shelly and Schneck 10).
Signing Exact English . SEE was developed in 1972 by a deaf woman who had deaf parents and a deaf child. This system consists of a sign-for-word translation of English, follows English word order, and also has signs for prefixes and suffixes. It was the favored sign system in deaf schools until most recently (Shelly and Schneck 260).
Signed English . Developed in 1973 at Gallaudet University, this system contains "3,500 sign words and 15 sign markers" and uses English word order. It is less complex and comprehensive than Signing Exact English (Shelly and Schneck 260).
Pidgin Sign English . Pidgin Sign English occurs naturally when hearing learners of ASL use English syntax in their signing order. Even expert ASL interpreters are forced to employ Pidgin Sign English because it is almost impossible to keep the interpreting pace and still put ASL in its accustomed sign order (Shelly and Schneck 9).
Oral systems used by the deaf include: speech (lip) reading, cued speech, and speech.
Speech (Lip) Reading . To help deaf students decipher what people are saying, they are taught to watch the mouth to see what sounds are being produced. Unfortunately, only about 25% of sounds are produced where they can be seen, and only half of them can be distinguished from other sounds produced in the same positions (Shelly and Schneck 10). Studies in England have shown that deaf signers with ten years of training are no more accurate in lip reading than a typical person on the street. In simple sentences, only three or four words out of ten can be guessed (Dolnick 39-40).
Cued Speech . This method "was developed in 1966 by Doctor Orin Cornett" (Shelly and Schneck 10). Using "eight hand shapes in different positions near the mouth," the speaker can remove the ambiguities in speech reading. The observer knows from the hand shapes, for example, that the speaker is saying "bat" rather than "pan." Within twenty hours, hearing parents of deaf children can learn the hand cues accompanying the English that they are speaking (Dolnick 48). Hand cues performed in conjunction with the spoken words supply enough visual information for a deaf child to learn the English language word for word. Many deaf people oppose the use of the hands for gestures that do not "convey some kind of visual meaning." For them cued English is "nonsense use of the hands" (Padden 96).
Speech . Most deaf people cannot learn to articulate English speech sounds well enough to be understood by the general public. Success at speech is dependent upon how profound the hearing loss is (Dolnick 47-48).
... sign language is really beautiful and I would like to have been there in sweetmind's place and to have a talk with her using sign language