Can You Find the Hearing Bias in This Job Announcement for an ASL

ASL 101 Homework #1 Sign Language Myths: What have I believed?

The following pages are from an article that I found from the Irish Homepage, an internet site out of Dublin Ireland. It is interesting in that the Irish Deaf culture is currently experiencing a state of growth that took place in American Deaf culture roughly 20 years earlier. But the struggle is the same for Deaf people everywhere: Educating the hearing about the realities of Deaf People, their culture, and their language.

An important step for the ASL student is to recognize what beliefs we have fostered, what we hold to be true, and we do not yet know. That is your homework assignment.

Your homework is painfully simple. Simple because all you have to do is to write a brief response to this article, painful because I am asking you to honestly assess your knowledge, prejudice and ignorance (we all have a mix of these things in all subjects), and write honestly about them.

Write a response to ONE or TWO of these myths… Not all of them!

You are to write a one-page response. College standard: Double spaced with one-inch margins. (read “writing college Papers” instructions)

It is Due Monday, January 9th. Common sign language myths:

The following are a few of the common myths that a lot of hearing people hold about sign languages: “All sign languages are the same, or should be.”

Wrong. Different countries have different sign languages. E.g. American Sign Language(ASL), British Sign Language(BSL), French Sign Language and Irish Sign Language(ISL) are all different. (The boundaries of language usage may not always coincide with country borders, eg ISL and BSL are both used in Northern Ireland.)

They may contain certain features in common with each other. In the same way as English has features in common with French and German, but this does not make them the same language.

The ideas that all Sign Language should be the same comes from the idea that they are not natural languages but were created by teachers. This is untrue although they have often been influenced by the education system.

“Sign languages are not proper languages.”

Sign languages are true (and full) languages. Just as much as English and Irish are. They have their own structure and grammar. They contain some grammatical features, which do not occur in English such as classifiers.

“Sign language is the same as (or a corrupted) form of English.”

This myth arose because often in schools around the world signed form of the spoken language was used (i.e. in Ireland signed English). This manual system is not a sign language.

The use of signed spoke language arose with the first school for the deaf which was opened in Paris by Abbe Charles Michel de l'Epee. He learned sign language but failed to recognize its grammar and so imposed French grammar on it. Producing what he called methodical sign, making up signs as needed to be able to express spoken French exactly. So he is responsible both for starting schools for the deaf so education for the deaf became wide spread, he is also responsible for creating/ reinforcing the myth that sign languages are not proper natural languages but artificial languages invented in schools.

“Deaf children who learn sign will never learn to speak.”

It is TOTALLY UNTRUE.

This is one of the most damaging myths that is often told to parents, by professionals such as teachers, social workers, etc.

Some of the clearest spoken prelingualy deaf speakers are fluent signers. It is like saying to someone from the Gaeltach, that you should not use Irish or you will never learn to speak English. Which will cause you to be isolated and so to integrate you in to society you must be banned from speaking Irish.

In fact the more languages someone knows the better they tend to be at each of them and find it easier to learn more languages.

“Sign language isolates the Deaf and makes them different.”

Sign language does not isolate the deaf in fact it does the opposite. It helps to integrate people for the following reasons:

• Allows full and easy communication o Requires less concentration than lip-reading o Information is not lost in the same way that it is by lip-reading; where only about 30 per cent of the speech patterns are visible on the face. o Signing can be used in situations where lip-reading is impossible such as bad light or with visual distractions etc. o much easier to follow a group conversation in sign than by lip-reading • More and more hearing people are learning sign language. • Through the use of interpreters less of the message is lost than with lip-reading.