Introduction to American Sign Language

American Sign Language is known to us as the language and culture of the Deaf in the United States and most of Canada.  ASL belongs, along with Gebarentaal (Netherlands Sign Language), BSL (British Sign Language), JSL (Japanese Sign Language), MSL (Mexican Sign Language) and all other sign languages, to the so-called 'visual-gestural' group of languages.  ASL did not just come into being, but has had a long and interesting development.  It had its origin in the speech community on the 17th-19th century Martha's Vineyard Island outside the state of Massachussets where "everyone ... spoke sign language (Norma Ellen Groce)". 

In 1817, the first Deaf school was founded in Hartford, Connecticut by The Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and his French educator-colleague, Laurent Clerc, who was deaf.  Clerc introduced some aspects of LSF (Lingue Signes des Francias), especially the manual alphabet and initialized signs, to the American Deaf speech community.  A great variety of these dialects still emerges imperceptibly with ASL of today.

The standard ASL which we will be studying here can be said to be the product of political, social and cultural developments of only the last two centuries.  We should take note of the considerable difference that exists in ASL between signing in ASL and signing in the English word order.  Although the casual observer they seem to be the same whether it is signing in ASL or signing in the English word order, the students will soon discover that many signs require their own predicates for singularity and plurality, size and shape specifiers, arbitrary/descriptive signs, and the like.  A person signing just as it is written runs the risk of "speaking like a book," which can be extremely boring and confusing.

The great variety of parts of signs in ASL can by their very nature not be satisfactorily described on paper and even in ASL; the parts of signs being learned must be examined at as early a stage as possible.  Not only are ASL users to be found in all parts of the country, but an increasing variety of video tapes is available online.

The ASL 101 class is intended only as a guide to the articulation of the principal signs.  These parts must necessarily be inexact as well: even though many signs can best be identified through comparison with corresponding ASL handshapes and manual alphabet. 

 

 

 

References:

 

Battison, Robbin. 1978. Lexical Borrowing in American Sign Language. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok Press.

 

Groce, Norma Ellen. 1985. Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.

 

Frank Allen Paul and Ben Bahan. ASL Handshape Game Cards. San Diego, CA: DawnSignPress.