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Inside Gallaudet - Gallaudet University
For over 100 years, linguists have studied dialects of spoken languages. This included investigations into African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which has resulted in many books including African American Vernacular English, by John Rickford. Studying sign language dialects is newer, and so far has included a look at tactile sign used by deaf-blind signers.
“All languages, if they have enough speakers, have dialects—regional or social varieties that develop when people are separated by geographic or social barriers,” Rickford writes in his 1999 book.
Black deaf signers, particularly in the American South, experienced just such separation, a group of Gallaudet researchers say.
Can the same kind of unique features that have been identified for AAVE be identified for Black ASL, to show that it is a distinct variety of ASL? This is the question that these researchers asked themselves. They have begun to answer this question, and several others, in a first-of-a-kind research project called The History and Structure of Black ASL.
By the close of the project in 2011, this project will have investigated the geographical and social factors that led to the creation of a distinct dialect, created video documentation of the language, identified unique features of Black ASL, and shared the findings with hundreds of linguists and members of the deaf community. The researchers also plan to produce a book and DVD.
The research, which is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, is a collaboration between Department of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies Associate Professor Carolyn McCaskill; Department of Linguistics Chair Ceil Lucas; graduate research assistants Roxanne Dummett, Joseph Hill, and Randall Hogue; University of California, Davis professor Robert Bayley; and community representative Pamela Baldwin.
The work began with site visits in North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Virginia. There, they recorded conversations and interviews with two sets of subjects: people over 55 who attended segregated deaf schools, and those under 35 who attended deaf schools after integration.
"One group of deaf ASL users had a unique experience separate from the others, and during that experience of segregation, developed its own linguistic signature," said Dr. McCaskill. This experience included lack of access to equal educational opportunities, and, for many, no educational opportunities at all. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia had segregated schools or departments that separated black students. These schools and departments were more likely to emphasize instruction in sign language, while most schools for white students used the oral method. Rules regarding the race and hearing status of teachers were also different, resulting in more deaf teachers in many schools for black students.
While some of the variations in Black ASL may have come from black deaf schools, they also came from the community itself. They include Black ASL signs from deaf families and home signs from hearing families. Within the schools and within the larger black deaf community, a unique dialect grew and thrived.
Black ASL has some significant variations, the researchers learned. “Preliminary findings show that Black ASL signers may prefer two-handed signs to the one-handed versions of signs like ‘want,’ ‘now,’ ‘still,’ and ‘enjoy’,” Lucas said. “It also looks like they prefer the forehead versions of signs like ‘know,’ ‘don’t-know,’ and ‘if,’ as opposed to the lowered forms of these signs.” These conclusions are still tentative, the researchers stress, but they do see a rich and distinct language in Black ASL.
In addition to the linguistic data, said Lucas, they collected a valuable set of stories about life in the black deaf community. Subjects described their experiences of arriving their deaf schools for the first time, and reminisced about signs they have seen drift out of use.
Lucas believes this work is truly the first of its kind. "This amount of data in this many sites, this systematic study of Black ASL; nothing like it has been done before," she said.
As they continue to analyze their research, the team members have been approached to present their findings. At Gallaudet, they have presented at the National Black Deaf Advocates' (NBDA) Eastern Regional Conference, as part of the VL2 Educational Lecture Series, and the Black Deaf Expo. They have also been part of the Sociolinguistics Symposium in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and New Ways of Analyzing Variation in Houston, Tex. Future invitations will bring their findings to the American Dialect Society Conference in San Francisco, Calif., and they hope to present in other venues.
For over 100 years, linguists have studied dialects of spoken languages. This included investigations into African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which has resulted in many books including African American Vernacular English, by John Rickford. Studying sign language dialects is newer, and so far has included a look at tactile sign used by deaf-blind signers.
“All languages, if they have enough speakers, have dialects—regional or social varieties that develop when people are separated by geographic or social barriers,” Rickford writes in his 1999 book.
Black deaf signers, particularly in the American South, experienced just such separation, a group of Gallaudet researchers say.
Can the same kind of unique features that have been identified for AAVE be identified for Black ASL, to show that it is a distinct variety of ASL? This is the question that these researchers asked themselves. They have begun to answer this question, and several others, in a first-of-a-kind research project called The History and Structure of Black ASL.
By the close of the project in 2011, this project will have investigated the geographical and social factors that led to the creation of a distinct dialect, created video documentation of the language, identified unique features of Black ASL, and shared the findings with hundreds of linguists and members of the deaf community. The researchers also plan to produce a book and DVD.
The research, which is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, is a collaboration between Department of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies Associate Professor Carolyn McCaskill; Department of Linguistics Chair Ceil Lucas; graduate research assistants Roxanne Dummett, Joseph Hill, and Randall Hogue; University of California, Davis professor Robert Bayley; and community representative Pamela Baldwin.
The work began with site visits in North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Virginia. There, they recorded conversations and interviews with two sets of subjects: people over 55 who attended segregated deaf schools, and those under 35 who attended deaf schools after integration.
"One group of deaf ASL users had a unique experience separate from the others, and during that experience of segregation, developed its own linguistic signature," said Dr. McCaskill. This experience included lack of access to equal educational opportunities, and, for many, no educational opportunities at all. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia had segregated schools or departments that separated black students. These schools and departments were more likely to emphasize instruction in sign language, while most schools for white students used the oral method. Rules regarding the race and hearing status of teachers were also different, resulting in more deaf teachers in many schools for black students.
While some of the variations in Black ASL may have come from black deaf schools, they also came from the community itself. They include Black ASL signs from deaf families and home signs from hearing families. Within the schools and within the larger black deaf community, a unique dialect grew and thrived.
Black ASL has some significant variations, the researchers learned. “Preliminary findings show that Black ASL signers may prefer two-handed signs to the one-handed versions of signs like ‘want,’ ‘now,’ ‘still,’ and ‘enjoy’,” Lucas said. “It also looks like they prefer the forehead versions of signs like ‘know,’ ‘don’t-know,’ and ‘if,’ as opposed to the lowered forms of these signs.” These conclusions are still tentative, the researchers stress, but they do see a rich and distinct language in Black ASL.
In addition to the linguistic data, said Lucas, they collected a valuable set of stories about life in the black deaf community. Subjects described their experiences of arriving their deaf schools for the first time, and reminisced about signs they have seen drift out of use.
Lucas believes this work is truly the first of its kind. "This amount of data in this many sites, this systematic study of Black ASL; nothing like it has been done before," she said.
As they continue to analyze their research, the team members have been approached to present their findings. At Gallaudet, they have presented at the National Black Deaf Advocates' (NBDA) Eastern Regional Conference, as part of the VL2 Educational Lecture Series, and the Black Deaf Expo. They have also been part of the Sociolinguistics Symposium in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and New Ways of Analyzing Variation in Houston, Tex. Future invitations will bring their findings to the American Dialect Society Conference in San Francisco, Calif., and they hope to present in other venues.