Recent Perspectives on American Sign Language

Harlan L. Lane, Francois Grosjean

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781134991761
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Writing & Presentation Skills

Published in 1989, Recent Perspectives on American Sign Language is a valuable contribution to the field of Cognitive Psychology.

1
Myths About American Sign Language¹

Harry Markowicz

La Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris

American Sign Language is often described in the following ways: It is a universal language whose grammar is poor compared to that of spoken language; its vocabulary is concrete and iconic; it consists of gestures accompanied by facial expressions. The intent of this chapter is to show that these descriptions do not correspond to the observations and linguistic analyses of languages in the visual/manual modality.

Myth: Sign Language is Universal

It has often been said that sign language is a universal language—easy to learn and therefore available to anyone for worldwide communication. This suggestion was made also by early writers on sign language, such as the Abbé de l’Epée, the French priest who founded public education for the deaf late in the 18th century, and Remy Valade, who wrote the first grammar book on French Sign Language in 1854. These authors believed that sign language imitates objects and events and presents them as they occur in nature, just as an artist paints the scene in front of him. According to Epée and Valade, sign language is a natural language that unites deaf people everywhere in the world. They suggested that if hearing people learned to communicate in sign language, the world would have an excellent, ready-made universal language.

Even a brief look at the known sign languages of the world invalidates this contention. American Sign Language, British Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language, Danish Sign Language and other sign languages differ from each other as much as spoken languages differ. A deaf traveler is no more able to understand the sign language of the country he is visiting than is the hearing traveler able to understand the spoken language. Deaf people do, however, enjoy some advantages in their efforts at international communication.

First of all, because they lack a certain inhibition about using gestures and because they are masters at pantomime, deaf persons from different cultures are usually able to communicate their basic needs to each other better than hearing people who speak different languages. In situations where there is no shared language, deaf persons act out and even describe a person or a thing without resorting to either spoken or sign language. They communicate among themselves with remarkable ease, although with reduced efficiency and less speed than in their own languages. It is this gestural communication that gives the impression that the deaf have a common sign language.

In some essential ways, deaf people often share more life experiences with deaf people in other countries than they do with the hearing people in their own country. The similar world view and values that result from membership in a common minority group may play a greater role for mutual understanding than previously supposed, and a shared language may be less important.

In addition, certain sign languages, just like some spoken languages, are historically related. In this way, communication is facilitated across national boundaries. French Sign Language (FSL) was brought to the United States in the early 19th century, where it mixed with the sign language used by deaf Americans previously (Woodward, 1978). This mixture became the standard sign language in the United States and parts of Canada. Today, although they differ greatly from each other, ASL and FSL share some of the same signs and grammatical features.

Myth: Reality Must Be Word-Based

American Sign Language is often criticized for being “conceptual” rather than “word-based.” ASL is in this respect no different from spoken languages, because the principal function of language is to convey concepts. However, in a sign language, concepts are represented by signs rather than words. ASL is not a code for English. It is an independent language in which the signs directly represent the concepts.

Sign language is the primary language for the majority of deaf adults, the one used in their everyday lives, outside of work. It is the principal unifying force for the deaf community, the main symbol of identification among its members (Markowicz & Woodward, 1978). Because only a very small percentage of deaf children have deaf parents, sign language is transmitted from generation to generation in the schools for the deaf, in particular in residential schools. The socialization of deaf children takes place essentially in these institutes (Meadow, 1972). Sign language is the native language for the majority of deaf children who grow up in residential schools, whether or not they have deaf parents or can express themselves orally.

Just like members of other minority groups, the deaf have varying contacts with English, depending on their competence in that language. A deaf person chooses the appropriate language according to the situation. To communicate with hearing people who have some knowledge of sign language, a pidgin is used—signed English that combines the syntax of English with a sign vocabulary. Thus, we find the classical situation of diglossia, characterized by a continuum of varieties between ASL and signed English. However, in this situation the pidgin is considered to be the prestige variety (Stokoe, 1970). Because the pidgin is used in formal contexts (such as at a conference or on TV) and to converse with nonmembers of the deaf community, it is easy to understand how many hearing people mistakenly concluded that it is a manual/visual code for a spoken language.

Myth: Signs are Glorified Gestures

To a person unfamiliar with ASL, signs may appear to consist of random hand and body movements accompanied by various facial expressions. However, to speak of signs as glorified gestures, as is sometimes done, indicates a serious misconception. The analogy would be to describe a spoken language one does not know, as “noises” made with the mouth.

Linguists find striking similarities between the structure of spoken and sign languages in spite of the difference in transmission.

Signs are made by combining simultaneously handshapes, orientation of the palms, movements of the hand(s), and their location on or near the body (Stokoe, 1960). There are formational rules that specify the possible combinations for signs in ASL. Combinations that violate the rules are considered to be impossible ASL signs, although they may occur in other sign languages. It is noteworthy that the users of sign language are as unconscious of the rules of their language as those who use a spoken language.

Using old sign language dictionaries and films made by the National Association of the Deaf in 1913, researchers have compared present-day ASL with earlier stages of the language. Regular patterns of change have been observed and described by linguists (Frishberg, 1975). Regional, social, racial, and sexual variation in ASL is distributed in regular patterns, similar to the patterns observed in English (Woodward & Erting, 1975).

Myth: Sign Language is Iconic

Sign language is frequently described as iconic or picturelike. There are several points to keep in mind when considering the question of iconicity of signs.

First, signs for the same concepts are different in different sign languages. Second, if signs were really iconic, hearing people would be able to understand deaf people’s signing with only limited instruction. As the experience of students of sign language shows, learning to communicate in ASL requires as much time, effort, and motivation as is necessary for becoming fluent in a spoken language.

Third, signs that appear iconic when they are made in isolation are often unrecognizable by a nonsigner when they occur in a sign conversation. This results not only from the fast rate of signing, but also from the modification of signs that takes place when signs are made in sign sentences.

Fourth, iconicity does not appear to play a role in the acquisition of ASL by children. At the time a young child learns the sign MILK, a milk carton or bottle is probably his or her only experience of its source. The child may not learn until years later that the milk is obtained from cows by milking them. Thus the iconic element of the sign MILK is completely lost on the child.

Fifth, signers often offer “explanations” for signs. If each sign had a single explanation, the argument for iconicity might appear somewhat more favorable. But, even a brief look will show that some signs have several “etymologies.” Take for example, the sign AMERICA, which has four widely used explanations; they cannot all be true etymologies. Popular etymologies of this type are often totally unrelated to the real history of the sign.

Although iconicity in signs is often exploited in poetic expression and also for coining neologisms (Klima & Bellugi, 1979), it does not seem to play a major role in ASL communication among native signers.

Myth: Sign Language is Concrete

One of the most popular myths about sign language is that although ASL can express concrete concepts, it is restricted in its capacity to deal with abstract ideas. However, as in oral languages, sign language has the flexibility and the creative processes necessary to invent new vocabulary as it becomes needed.

Users of ASL have a lot of contact with written and spoken English. Thus, they are able to draw on the very large vocabulary of the English language. English words are borrowed into ASL by means of fingerspelling. Battison (1978) has shown that certain often-fingerspelled words become part of the ASL vocabulary through regular patterns, in much the same way that words are borrowed from one oral language to another.

Other procedures for creating new signs have also been described, such as compounding or giving a new meaning to an existing sign. In both cases, a systematic modification of the sign takes place. Another way is to invent a sign based on a mimed representation (Klima & Bellugi, 1979).

ASL includes many signs for abstract ideas such as LOVE, FAITH, BELIEF, and TRUST. Although some signs have an iconic element, they function as symbols just like spoken words. When we read in a newspaper article that “The U.S. Fleet is sailing in the Mediterranean,” in our mind we conceive correctly a fleet of large steel ships powered by oil-burning engines. Given what we know about modern naval warfare, we do not imagine that the U.S, Navy has acquired an armada of sailboats! We can abstract away from the original meaning of the word “sail” and assign to it a new meaning that applies to ships without sails. In the same way, even a sign that shows some iconic element is not restricted to its original meaning. As the need arises, signs take on new meanings.

ASL has ways of expressing nuances just as spoken languages do. There are no limitations on what can be handled in ASL except those set by the choice of topics normally discussed in that language by the members of the deaf community. The assumption that ASL is limited to informal exchanges because of inherent deficiencies in its vocabulary or lack of structural complexity is without basis.

Myth: ASL is Ungrammatical

Word-for-word translations from one language to another often result in ungrammatical or meaningless sentences as illustrated by the following French sentences.

1.	Il fait chaud.
	It makes warm.	(It is warm.)
2.	Tu me manques.
	You me miss.	(I miss you.)

On the basis of these examples, it would be foolish to suggest that the French language is ungrammatical.

The opinion that ASL is ungrammatical, or lacks a grammar, usually results from a sign-for-word translation of ASL into English. It is based on the assumption that ASL must be structured exactly like English. However, ASL is an independent language with its own grammar and its own vocabulary, and both are unrelated ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introductory: Myths About American Sign Language
• 2. Linguistic: The Linguistic Description of American Sign Language
• 3. Psycholinguistic: Psycholinguistics of Sign Language
• 4. Developmental: The Acquisition of Sign Language
• 5. Neurolinguistic: Cerebral Asymmetry for Sign Language: Clinical and Experimental Evidence
• 6. Sociolinguistic: Some Sociolinguistic Aspects of French and American Sign Languages
• 7. Historical: A Chronology of the Oppression of Sign Language in France and the United States
• Author Index
• Subject Index