Timothy Reagan
There is a worldwide proliferation of classes and programs in sign language as second and additional languages (L2/Ln) in education institutions today compared to at least a century ago. This is made possible by the countries’ recognition of sign languages as a second, foreign, or world language where learners take for academic credit at schools. However, sign languages sit uncomfortably in general discussions of language, politics, and ideology. Their status with respect to such issues as nationality and nationalism, ethnicity, culture, and identity is problematic, with political implications for the teaching of sign languages as L2/Ln to largely hearing learners who do not have direct connection with the DEAF-WORLD.
This chapter looks at the politics of L2/Ln sign language pedagogy. The politics of L2/Ln sign language pedagogy hinge on the politics of national language policy and planning as these relate to minority languages in general and sign languages in particular, including the unique nature of language rights for those whose dominant language is a sign language. The history of sign language as L2/Ln is closely tied to the history of deaf education. The motivations for learning L2/Ln sign languages and teaching strategies in sign language, including motivations and teaching strategies, by hearing people is examined. Following this are suggestions for future legitimacy in the teaching of sign languages and research and pedagogical practices in L2/Ln sign language pedagogy.
Countries develop language policy and planning (LPP) to determine the creation, selection, status, recognition, codification, distribution, allocation, and elimination of languages, including majority and minority languages, for its inhabitants within its politico-geographical boundaries. Writing about language policy, Tollefson has observed that,
Language policy is a form of disciplinary power. Its success depends in part upon the ability of the state to structure into the institutions of society the differentiation of individuals into “insiders” and “outsiders” … To a large degree, this occurs through the close association between language and nationalism. By making language a mechanism for the expression of nationalism, the state can manipulate feelings of security and belonging … the state uses language policy to discipline and control its workers by establishing language -based limitations on education, employment, and political participation.
1991: 207–8
According to Tollefson (1991), LPP, in particular the selection and use of languages, is a function of nationalism that is grounded on the ethnicity and cultural identity of its people, with effects on the recognition, scope, and implementation of majority and minority languages within the countries, and on the education, employment, and political participation of its inhabitants.
Formal education efforts entailing LPP became increasingly common as new countries chose official languages, developed indigenous languages, prepared educational materials to provide children with schooling in their mother tongue(s), and invested in different kinds of media to promote national languages (see Cooper, 1989; Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997). LPP also includes foreign and world languages other than the mother languages. Countries construct LPPs to determine which languages other than their mother languages to offer to their inhabitants based on their value system, purposes, and aims in relation to the language communities within and other countries.
For people whose vernacular language is a sign language, the situation for LPP is even more complicated than this might suggest. Deaf people,1 those most likely to use and depend on a sign language, are both “insiders” and “outsiders” in the cultural and linguistic societies which surround them at the same time, in a way that is arguably unique among cultural and linguistic groups. This is so because of the nature of the deaf community, and the ways in which its norms and language transmit across generations.
Minority communities of signing deaf people have coexisted with larger, dominant communities of hearing and speaking individuals throughout human history. The fact that the vast majority of deaf individuals have hearing parents, and that the parents will also have hearing children, is an important and extremely unusual aspect of both cultural deafness and sign language. Unlike other cultural and linguistic groups, the transmission of both deaf culture2 and sign language most often takes place transgenerationally, that is, it occurs within a generation from child to child, rather than intergenerationally, from parents to children (Holcomb, 2013; Leigh, Andrews, & Harris, 2018). Yet, sign language is used by signing deaf communities and is closely tied with deaf identity. This is an important point, which becomes pronounced when sign language is officially recognized as a language in a country, and this creates increased pride by signing deaf communities for the acceptance of their language and social identities. A case in point is American Sign Language (ASL) when it was recognized as a language not only through linguistic and scholarly research but also by members of the American Deaf community. As Padden and Humphries have explained,
The recognition of sign language, not by linguists or scholars, but by Deaf people themselves, was a pivotal moment. While Deaf people had been aware that their sign language met their needs and provided them with an aesthetic pleasure that only languages can provide, the realization that sign languages were equal to yet uniquely interesting among human languages brought to Deaf people a sense of vindication and pride,
2005: 157, my emphasis
The issues of LPP, the majority populace’s use of spoken languages in society, the coexistence of signing deaf people communities with hearing communities, and the transgenerational nature of sign language and Deaf culture transmission provide the context for the LPP regarding sign language as a L2/Ln and L2/Ln sign language pedagogy to learners who are largely hearing and do not have direct connection with the DEAF-WORLD.
In the past two decades, a growing number of scholars have focused on issues concerned with LPP issues related specifically to sign languages (see Reagan, 2010). Although for the most part grounded in the traditional work on LPP, this scholarship has identified a number of ways in which LPP for sign languages is unusual or even unique in comparison to that of spoken languages (see Eichmann, 2009; Rayman, 2009; Reagan, 2010; Turner, 2009). The difference between LPP studies for spoken languages and for sign languages is not due solely to the different modalities employed by the two kinds of languages, nor is the fact that sign languages are virtually never written languages particularly relevant. Rather, the difference with respect to LPP for sign languages is reflected in popular (albeit erroneous) views about the nature of sign languages and to deficit views of both sign languages and deaf people.
Much of the LPP focus on sign languages around the world has been concerned with gaining some sort of official or semi-official status for the sign languages of different national deaf communities. Such status planning efforts have been quite successful, and an increasing number of countries have granted just such recognition either constitutionally or legislatively. The nature of official recognition of sign languages varies from one country to another, as does the relative strength of the legislation involved. Some kinds of official recognition are much stronger in terms of their potential impact on the deaf community than are others. Most commonly, official status for a sign language serves three purposes: (1) a symbolic (but nevertheless important) recognition of the legitimate status of sign language as the vernacular language of the deaf community; (2) a guarantee of the linguistic rights of sign language users, both in the judicial and legal process and in other social service contexts (e.g., the provision of sign language interpreters); and finally, (3) a commitment to use sign language in the educational domain with deaf children. It is important to note that the second and third purposes are often met prior to the official recognition of a sign language, as a result of more disability-oriented legislation. Thus, we can see that the recognition of a sign language as an official language, although intended by its advocates to promote a positive view of sign language and deaf people, may also involve the continuation of elements drawn from a medical or pathological perspective of deafness (see Corker, 2000; Reagan, 2011).
Many of the countries of the European Union (EU) have been at the forefront of moves to recognize national sign languages (see Timmermans, 2005). Finland was the first country to recognize its sign language, and there are a number of countries in the EU that have constitutional recognition of their national sign languages, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and Slovakia. In most other EU countries, recognition of sign language, while not constitutional, is nevertheless largely in place through other kinds of enabling legislation. In addition, the European Parliament passed a Resolution on Sign Languages in June 1988, which recognized the legitimacy and importance of sign languages, and specifically asked member states to remove obstacles to the use of sign language. In Europe outside of the EU, comparable legislation exists in a number of other countries. Elsewhere, constitutional recognition of national sign languages has been achieved in Ecuador, New Zealand, Uganda, and in Venezuela. In a host of other countries, such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia, Cuba, Iran, Ireland, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey and Zimbabwe, sign languages are recognized in non-constitutional ways.
Although discussions and debates about the official status of sign languages are for the most part positive developments, not only are they based on deficit views of both sign language and deaf people, but they are not without other risks as well. Just as dominant national languages are virtually never the only languages spoken in a country, so too there are generally a variety of different sign languages in a country. At the national level, only one such sign language is likely to be recognized; we find only British Sign Language, German Sign Language, Russian Sign Language, Israeli Sign Language, and so on, but no mention of the fact that there is considerable variety in sign language use in each of these national settings. Perhaps the clearest case of this phenomenon is that found in the Arabic-speaking world, where local, regional and national sign languages have been the target of efforts to create a common, standardized “Arabic Sign Language” in recent years (Abdel-Fattah, 2005). Thus, linguistic hegemony and imperialism takes place in the world of sign languages just as they do in the world of spoken languages. The success of a national sign language all too often means a threat to the survival of local and community sign languages (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000).
As in most other national settings, what we find is less than a full commitment to the recognition of sign language and the linguistic human rights of its users. As Krausneker notes,
The key issue within [the] demands [of deaf people] has been the request for linguistic rights, which one might even call linguistic human rights …. Participation in public life, the media, politics, and so on is therefore rather difficult. It is not that deaf people cannot participate because they have an auditory problem; rather, it is because the majority are unfamiliar with the language that deaf people use and interpreters are rarely provided. In the field of social and political work, deafness-related issues are generally dealt with in the confined area of “disabilities,” which ignores the important linguistic question of the status and rights of sign languages.
2000: 142
There is substantial literature that is devoted to issues of language rights and linguistic human rights, and questions about such rights play an increasingly significant role in discussions related to LPP. In the case of sign languages, there is also an extensive and well-documented concern with the linguistic rights of deaf people (see Batterbury, Ladd, & Gulliver, 2007; Murray, 2015).
The primary way in which issues of language rights differ from the norm in the case of deaf-signing people has to do with the issue of meaningful access to the dominant language in society. Tollefson has commented that,
The policy of requiring everyone to learn a single dominant language is widely seen as a common-sense solution to the communication problems of multilingual societies. The appeal of this assumption is such that monolingualism is seen as a solution to linguistic inequality. If linguistic minorities learn the dominant languages, so the argument goes, then they will not suffer economic and social inequality. The assumption is an example of an ideology which refers to normally unconscious assumptions that come to be seen as common sense … such assumptions justify exclusionary policies and sustain inequality.
1991: 10
Although the idea of a single, shared dominant language as a “common-sense solution” to linguistic diversity is problematic under the best of circumstances, when applied to the case of deaf-signing people, it is not simply problematic, but absurd. Access to spoken language is profoundly difficult to acquire for most deaf people, and distinguishes the deaf population from other minority language populations in a key, and highly relevant, way.
The challenge here is that in the political framework language rights in the context of sign languages may be based either on the more common disability-rights model of deafness (the more common model), or on a civil rights-oriented model of deafness. Although fundamentally the two paradigms of deafness are incompatible on a variety of philosophical and ideological levels (see Hoffmeister, 2008; Ladd, 2005), in the real world of politics and practice, and given the dominance of the hearing world and its commitment to the pathological conception of deafness, it the disability-oriented perspective that predominates:
Although the disability label seems inappropriate for the Deaf-World, its members have not aggressively promoted government understanding of its ethnicity and of the poor fit of the disability label. As a result, the majority’s accommodation of the Deaf has come under a disability label and Deaf people must in effect subscribe to that label in order to gain their rights in access to information, in education, and other areas. This is the Deaf dilemma: retain some important rights as members of their society at the expense of being mischaracterized by that society and government, or surrender some of those rights in the hope of gradually undermining that misconstruction.
Lane, 2005, quoted in Komesaroff, 2008: 111
In other words, what takes place is that for the purposes of accessing education and resources, the deaf community sometimes find itself foregoing, to some extent, its claim to linguistic human rights for rights grounded in a disabilities paradigm in order to ensure that the needs of deaf people are met. This is hardly surprising, of course, given the relative status of the deaf community vis-à-vis the hearing world, a fact that creates further confusion with respect to discussions about language rights.
The political framework pertaining to LPP for sign languages in education is its recognition, status, and distribution as an academic subject. Countries, LPP on indigenous, non-mother languages has effects on L2/Ln pedagogy. The countries’ LPP for sign languages shape its locations in educational institutions, acceptance as foreign or world languages where learners take for academic credit at the pre-collegiate and collegiate institutions, and pedagogical practices, including the configurations of classroom settings; types of courses; purposes, curriculum, and teaching in the courses; learner population; and teachers and teacher qualifications. In addition, changes in a country’s LPPs for foreign and world languages also generate changes in L2/Ln pedagogical practices.
One of the interesting aspects of an examination of L2/Ln teaching with respect to sign languages is that the literature in the field is overwhelmingly concerned with the teaching of English to deaf learners, rather than with the teaching of sign language to hearing learners (Pichler & Koulidobrova, 2016). The focus in this chapter is precisely on the teaching of sign languages to hearing individuals, an area about which there is some (albeit limited) scholarly work in the field (see, for example, Jacobs, 1996; Kemp, 1998; McKee & McKee, 1992; Quinto-Pozos, 2011; Rosen, 2015; Wilcox & Wilcox, 1997). As Quinto-Pozos (2011) has observed, while there are many similarities between teaching spoken languages and teaching sign languages, there are also some significant differences. Many of these differences remain in need of study, which are “the possible role of the socio-political history of the Deaf community in which ASL teaching is situated, linguistic differences between signed and spoken languages, and the use of video and computer-based technologies” (Quinto-Pozos, 2011: 137).
In the following, we use the case of American Sign Language (ASL) in the United States as an example of the effects of a country’s LPP on sign language as a foreign or world language, and how changes in a country’s LPP shape pedagogical practices in L2/Ln languages, although for the most part the situation in other parts of the world were comparable. We examine the history of American LPP and its effects on L2/Ln pedagogy of American Sign Language.
The status planning for ASL in the United States is a complex case. The legal and constitutional status of ASL at the federal level in the US is unimpressive when placed in a broader international context. The US Constitution is silent on the matter of an official language (though English is obviously the de facto official language of the country), but a growing number of states do recognize English as their official language. In terms of sign language in the US, there is no constitutional recognition of ASL at the federal level, but at the state level legislation differs significantly, falling into a number of different categories. Among the different kinds of legislation currently in place, the three most common are those that simply recognize ASL as a language, those that recognize ASL as a foreign language, and those that recognize ASL exclusively for educational purposes. Although such legislation may well be important in increasing the opportunities for hearing learners to study ASL as a foreign language, it also sends a powerful message about the need to establish, by legislative fiat, the recognition of the legitimacy of ASL as a language.
What is seen here is a basic confusion between general educational rights and fundamental language rights, and this confusion is grounded in a lack of understanding of sign languages and the communities that use them. This confusion does not mean that there have not been cogent and articulate calls for the recognition and manifestation of language rights for signing people. In the US, one of the most powerful examples of such calls has been that provided by Siegel, who argues that:
The right to communication and language requires the protection of the US Constitution … the First and Fourteenth Amendments to our Constitution mandate that … deaf and hard of hearing children have that which virtually every other American child takes for granted – the right to exchange ideas and information in school … a right to access and develop communication and language.
2008: xiii‒xiv
The role of sign language in America has been, and remains, profoundly political and ideological in nature.
There are different “eras” in the American LPP for ASL as L2/Ln. Each “era” is marked by a certain constellation of attitudes and views on deaf people, community, culture, and sign language that can be explained by the LPP model. The nature, purposes, and practices of the teaching of sign languages as L2/Ln in the United States has, since the nineteenth century, also been closely tied to the pedagogical practices and competing philosophies found in the history of deaf education. Almost since the inception of formal, institutionalized schooling of deaf children in the nineteenth century, there were deep divisions about goals, methods, and “medium of instruction” (see Moores, 1987; Nomeland & Nomeland, 2012; Reagan, 1989; van Cleve, 1993; Winefield, 1987). The field is largely bifurcated between those who advocate the use of signing in the education of deaf children (historically known as “manualists”), and those who reject the use of signing and advocate instead intensive training in speech and lip-reading (commonly known as “oralists”) (see Lane, 1984; Moores, 1987; Paul & Quigley, 1990; Baynton, 1997).
In spite of the competing philosophies, however, since the establishment of the earliest schools for the deaf in the early nineteenth century, hearing teachers of the deaf were taught to sign. Early teachers of the deaf were largely hearing who have had no prior connection with deaf individuals. They used ASL with the deaf children at earliest schools for the deaf. Parents and siblings, members of religious institutions (i.e., churches and seminaries), and others who worked in close contact with deaf people also learned ASL. Typically, the instruction in ASL received by hearing learners was provided by either deaf people themselves or by CODAs,3 although neither group was in any meaningful sense trained or prepared to teach a language, let alone a specific sign language. The curriculum, such as it was, often consisted of the manual alphabet, numbers, a limited sign vocabulary, and (though less commonly) certain grammatical features (though of contact sign or the equivalent of a manual sign code rather than of ASL itself). However, the teaching of ASL was not typically seen as “true” L2/Ln teaching or learning. In short, the teaching of ASL in this period was laissez-faire in nature, varied from place to place and individual to individual, and based on a disability model; hearing people learn ASL to “help” deaf individuals communicate and receive education for largely religious purposes (Lane, 1984).
This laissez-faire approach to the teaching of ASL as an L2/Ln continued well into the twentieth century. Community education programs, often taught in schools for the deaf as well as to some extent in colleges and universities, began to appear, targeting learners who had some special interest in acquiring ASL such as parents and other relatives, friends, future teachers of the deaf, and social workers, counselors, and psychologists employed in settings in which some of their clients would be deaf. Such courses were generally non-credit in nature, and continued to use individuals as instructors who could sign but who were largely not trained as language educators. Curricula varied extensively, yet they cover manual sign codes and sign vocabularies, and none existed that would constitute a real equivalent to a more typical foreign language curriculum. The teaching of ASL reflected the general, and widespread, view that although it might be a useful communicative tool in some situations, it certainly did not constitute a “real” language in a strong sense (see Reagan, 2016, 2019), and that its teaching did not require serious thought or consideration, let alone formal training, policies, and practices. In addition, attempts to create ASL classes for credit at pre-collegiate and collegiate institutions were met with derision by education authorities, who viewed ASL as not a language but a manual representation of English, that the Deaf community does not represent a foreign country, and that there is no written tradition in Deaf culture and hence unworthy of study (Rosen, 2015).
This predominantly laissez-faire approach to the teaching and learning of ASL as an L2/Ln that was based on a disability model began changing in the last decades of the twentieth century towards a language-rights approach based on a civil-rights model. Since the late twentieth century ASL is offered not only at schools for the deaf but also general education schools, colleges, and universities for academic credit. The disability model has evolved to the current civil rights model, and ASL is offered at the schools in a language rights approach with a view that language is culture, that deaf people are a part of the world’s peoples and cultures, and that sign language is a legal right for deaf people.
Arguably, the single most important factor in these changes was the publication of Stokoe’s monograph, Sign Language Structure, in 1960 [1993]. Stokoe argued that ASL was not an inferior alternative to spoken language, as was widely believed, but rather a full and vibrant human language in its own right. In the past half century, a growing body of linguistic evidence, not only on ASL, but also on a host of other sign languages as well, has more than proven most of Stokoe’s fundamental insights true (see Brentari, 2010; Valli et al., 2011). By the late 1970s, scholarly work began to appear that suggested that signed languages are not only full and complete human languages, but contain unique features that could further inform linguistic research on a host of topics – not the least of which were universal grammar (Lillo-Martin, 1991; Sandler & Lillo-Martin, 2006), comparative and historical linguistics (Shaw & Delaporte, 2015; Supalla & Clark, 2015; Wittmann, 1991), sociolinguistics (e.g., Lucas, 1989; Schembri & Lucas, 2015), the diglossia that are found in virtually all the signing communities (Brennan & Colville, 1979; Lee, 1982; Lucas & Valli, 1990), lexicography (McKee & McKee, 2014; Zwitserlood, 2010), psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics (Corina & McBurney, 2001; Hickok, Love-Geffen, & Klima, 2002; McGuire et al., 1997), and language policy and language planning (Eichman, 2009; Hult & Compton, 2012; Quer & Quadros, 2015; Reagan, 2010, 2011). Much of this linguistic work had direct and important implications for the teaching of ASL and other sign languages as L2s.
In addition, public education laws in the US such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandated that deaf children be mainstreamed into public general educations schools and to encourage them to learn how to speak and hear so they can be integrated in the general society. As Rosen (2015) reported that in time, such efforts did not meet the goal, and the increased presence of signing deaf children had resulted in the interest by high school learners to learn ASL so they can communicate with deaf peers, and in taking ASL for foreign language credit. ASL scholars and the Deaf community met with education authorities, which resulted in the recognition of ASL as a language to be used with deaf children in deaf education classrooms and offered in general education classrooms where hearing learners can take to meet world or foreign or world language requirements for degrees and diplomas.
Consequently, in the past decades, there has been increasing interest at both the Pre-K‒12 and university settings in studying ASL (Rosen, 2015). By mid-twentieth century, ASL teaching as L2 occurred in community education programs at colleges and universities, mostly for no credit, to learners who were interested in learning ASL so they can communicate with their families and individuals who are deaf at work, and as a part of requirements for teacher trainers, social workers, vocational rehabilitation, with people who work with the deaf. Since late twentieth century, L2 ASL teaching and learning are offered at colleges and secondary and middle schools where ASL is offered for foreign language credit. As Quinto-Pozos has noted,
American Sign Language (ASL) has become a very popular language in high schools, colleges, and universities throughout the U.S., due, in part, to the growing number of schools that allow learners to take the language in order to fulfill a foreign or general language requirement … The number of learners enrolled in ASL classes has increased dramatically, and there are … more instructors of ASL at the present time than ever before.
2011: 137
As reported in The Standards for Learning American Sign Language, a part of the American Council on Foreign Languages’ Task Force is to develop national foreign language standards, and there is an exponential increase in the number of K-12 schools that offer ASL (ASLTA, 2019). In addition, the Modern Language Association (2010) reported that in post-secondary institutions witnessed 600% growth in enrollment in ASL courses between 1998 and 2006, and 16% from 2006 to 2009. Public school enrollments have increased by close to 43% between 2004 and 2008.
With respect to the actual teaching of ASL as an L2/Ln, the contemporary situation is far better than it has ever been. As is true of virtually all other commonly taught languages (and many less commonly taught languages) in the United States, there are national ASL standards which were developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in partnership with the American Sign Language Teachers Association (ASLTA) (see National Standards Collaborative Board, 2015). These national standards are reflected either formally or informally in many of the textbooks available for the teaching and learning of ASL (e.g., Cassell, 1996; Newell et al., 2010; Zinza, 2006). L2/Ln ASL curricula follow developments in spoken languages and theories of linguistics, learning, and teaching (Rosen, 2010). The curricula moved from the collections of images and signs, to grammar and dialogues. The curricula began in the 1960s with translations and correspondences between ASL and English sentences such as ABC Phrase Book (Fant, 1983) and A Basic Course (Humphries & O’Rourke, 1994), which have evolved into the linguistic approach in the 1980s with the “Green Books” series (e.g., Baker-Shenk & Cokely, 1980; Cokely & Baker-Shenk, 1980), and now the communicative approach with the “Signing Naturally” series (e.g., Lentz, Smith, & Mikos 1988). The field of L2/Ln ASL pedagogy have become professionalized with the establishment of a national organization, ASLTA, which is “dedicated to the improvement and expansion of the teaching of ASL and Deaf Studies at all levels of instruction” (ASLTA, 2019), and holds annual conferences as well as offering four levels of certification for teachers of ASL (Provisional, Qualified, Certified, and Master levels). In addition, different states have different certification requirements for ASL teachers. Some states accept ASLTA certification, some require ASLTA certification, and others offer their own certifications. Typically, states also require either a bachelors or a masters degree, and the completion of an accredited teacher education program. The teaching of ASL as a L2/Ln has currently become a professionalized endeavor and is fully comparable to the teaching of other foreign or world languages.
Although the growth in interest and enrollments in ASL is impressive, and is certainly a positive development, there are remaining political issues in L2/Ln sign language pedagogy. First, the percentages of growth with respect to the number of learners actually studying the language can be somewhat misleading: the National K-12 Foreign Language Enrollment Survey Report in 2017 indicated that only 1% (roughly 150,000 learners) of all learners enrolled in foreign language classes in the US were studying ASL. Further, the growth in ASL enrollments has also led to a predictable backlash, especially among some foreign language educators, often for reasons that go beyond mere “turf” (see Reagan, 2016). Indeed, the resistance to ASL in public education at all levels has often been grounded in ignorance and misunderstandings about its status as a “real” language (see Reagan, 2016) and the state legislation related to ASL in the US has, at the very least, helped to address such problems.
Second, lest one think that learners studying ASL are taking an “easy out” and avoiding the difficulties of learning a foreign language, recent research suggests that acquiring ASL may actually be somewhat more difficult than learning a foreign spoken (see Jacobs, 1996; McKee & McKee, 1992). Kemp has emphasized that:
Like all languages, [ASL] is not mastered easily beyond a basic level. Mastery requires extensive exposure and practice. Presently, there is no consensus on where ASL might fall on a learnability continuum for native English speakers. Nonetheless, … learning ASL should be approached with respect and with the knowledge that mastery only occurs over a substantial period of time.
1998: 255
Indeed, as Jacobs (1996) has pointedly suggested, learning ASL is a case of learning “a truly foreign language.”
Third, as more hearing people have begun to learn ASL, complications have started to arise with respect to issues of access to ASL. The role of ASL in the construction of deaf identity, then, is quite complex. It is clearly a necessary condition for deaf cultural identity, but (as is demonstrated in the cases of hearing individuals who use it fluently) not a sufficient condition for group membership. Indeed, for non-group members, use of ASL can somewhat paradoxically present significant challenges to one’s credibility and status as a sympathetic outsider, and it is far from uncommon to find deaf people who seek to “protectively withhold from hearing people information about the DEAF-WORLD’s language and culture” (Lane, Hoffmeister & Bahan, 1996: 71). As one leader in the deaf community reports,
I have asked a number of Deaf individuals how they feel about hearing people signing like a native user of ASL. The responses are mixed. Some say that it is acceptable for hearing people to use ASL like a Deaf person on one condition. The condition is that this hearing person must make sure that the Deaf person knows that s/he is not Deaf. Some people resent the idea of seeing hearing people signing like a native ASL user. Those who are resentful may feel sociolinguistic territorial invasion by those hearing people.
Quoted in Schein & Stewart, 1995; 155
Although there may be different attitudes in the DEAF-WORLD about hearing people learning ASL, it is important to note here that there is really no debate in the community about what might be called the “ownership” of ASL. It is clearly a possession of deaf people. In short, the only question about which there may be some ambiguity is whether hearing people should be encouraged to learn ASL, versus some other kind of “contact signing” (see Levesque, 2001).
Predicting the future is notoriously difficult and risky. There are, in fact, a fair number of quite famous predictions are remembered today precisely because they proved to be so terribly, and embarrassingly, wrong. Watson, the chairman of IBM, famously predicted that, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers,” while someone writing an internal memo at Western Union dismissed the future of the telephone in 1876 by noting that it “has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” In 1929, Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, suggested that “stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” Trying to predict the future of the politics of L2/Ln sign language pedagogy could just as easily prove to be a trap, but certain things do seem to be likely.
It is likely that as the study of the linguistics of sign languages continue to evolve and develop, the study of sign languages as L2/Ln will continue to be of interest to learners, and probably to a greater degree than it is now. There is a need to study the impact of linguistic research on the political views of sign language and deaf people, community and culture. As suggested earlier, this should be paralleled with another area that remains in need for further research, which is the socio-political history of sign language status and mechanisms for its recognition, implementation, and dissemination within the general education system, from pre-K to collegiate institutions.
It is also likely that individuals involved in pedagogical practices continue to improve the political situation with sign language as L2/Ln and create future opportunities for L2/Ln pedagogy of sign languages. There is a need to increase the distribution of the language in education institutions. This requires upgrading the respect of sign language among schools and change countries’ view of sign language as disability to sign language as culture. Deaf people should maintain control over ASL but at the same time create opportunities for hearing people to use among themselves in certain contexts and situations (cf. Rosen, 2014). They need to get hearing people to learn sign language to use it, involve themselves in deaf community, and create positive political, educational, and employment opportunities for signing deaf people at workplaces.
In spite of the above developments in L2/Ln sign language pedagogy, at the same time, regardless of what is found in linguistics, developments in the medical sciences, driven by a pathological and deficit view of deafness, will continue to seek “cures” for deafness and reduce the size of the deaf and signing population. One hopes that there is no future for eugenics, although it is not completely unimaginable, and a future in which deafness is recognized simply as another sort of human diversity ‒ a world in which, as Martha’s Vineyard once was, there is a place where “everyone here spoke sign language” (Groce, 1985).
Notes
Abdel-Fattah, M. (2005). Arabic Sign Language: A perspective. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 10 (2), 212–21.
American Sign Language Teachers Association. (2018). The Standards for Learning American Sign Language. Retrieved on December 15, 2018 from: https://aslta.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/National_ASL_Standards.pdf
American Sign Language Teachers Association. (2019). About ASLTA. Retrieved on February 11, 2019 from https://aslta.org/about/
Baker-Shenk, C., & Cokely, D. (1980). American Sign Language: A Teacher’s Resource Text on Grammar and Culture. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
Batterbury, S., Ladd, P., & Gulliver, M. (2007). Sign language peoples as indigenous minorities: Implications for research and policy. Environment and Planning, 39 (12), 2899–915.
Baynton, D. (1997). Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign Against Sign Language. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Brennan, M., & Colville, M. (1979). A British Sign Language research project. Sign Language Studies, 24 (1), 253–72.
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