The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL

Its History and Structure

Carolyn McCaskill, Ceil Lucas, Robert Bayley, Joseph Christopher Hill

• Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781944838744
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Black ASL has long been recognized as a distinct variety of American Sign Language based on abundant anecdotal evidence. The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL, originally published in 2011, presents the first sociohistorical and linguistic study of this language variety. Based on the findings of the Black ASL Project, which undertook this unprecedented research, Hidden Treasure documents the stories and language of the African American Deaf community. With links to online supplemental video content that includes interviews with Black ASL users (formerly on DVD), this volume is a groundbreaking scholarly contribution and a powerful affirmation for Black Deaf people. This paperback edition includes an updated foreword by Glenn B. Anderson, a new preface that reflects on the impact of this research, and an expandedlist of references and resources on Black ASL. The supplemental video content is available online at the Gallaudet University Press YouTube Channel. Under Playlists, click "The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Companion Video to the Book." The original Black ASL Project research videos are also available. Featured in the film Signing Black in America: The Story of Black ASL, produced by The Language and Life Project at North Carolina State University (Dr. Walt Wolfram, Executive Producer). Look for it on PBS.

1

Introduction

Without a doubt, the question asked most frequently by laypersons as they turn their attention to sign languages and Deaf communities is whether sign language is universal (i.e., whether only one sign language is known and used by Deaf people all over the world).1 The answer, which is most often greeted with surprise, is that there is no universal sign language in the sense that the questioner intends it. There have been attempts to devise and implement systems that can be understood by deaf people in situations such as international conferences (Rosenstock 2003), with decidedly mixed results. However, there is no one naturally occurring universal sign language to which all deaf people somehow have access. There are basically as many sign languages as there are viable Deaf communities, as well as sign languages that exist alongside the spoken languages of the majority communities. These sign languages are also differentiated internally according to social criteria in the same way that spoken languages are. That is, varieties of sign languages exist, and the social factors that help define them include both those that play a role in spoken-language variation—region, age, gender, socioeconomic status, race—and others that are unique to language use in Deaf communities. The latter include the language policies implemented in deaf education, the home environment (e.g., Deaf parents in an ASL-signing home vs. hearing parents in a nonsigning home) and the sightedness [or not] of the signer, as in Tactile ASL, the variety used by deaf-blind individuals.

This book and its accompanying online video describe a project about one such variety of American Sign Language (ASL) used by African American signers and usually known as Black ASL. Hairston and Smith have stated that there is “a Black way of signing used by Black deaf people in their own cultural milieu—among families and friends, in social gatherings, and in deaf clubs” (1983, 55). There is abundant anecdotal evidence that such a variety exists. For example, one of the senior members of the research team, Carolyn McCaskill, talks about “putting my signs aside” when she arrived at the newly integrated Alabama School for the Deaf (ASD) in Talladega in 1968. She had previously attended the segregated Alabama School for Negro Deaf (ASND) and was one of about ten Black deaf students (five females and five males) who transferred to the school. She and the other students found classroom communication very challenging. They were very surprised to find how different the signing was at their new school and how difficult it was at first to understand the White students and the teachers. The teacher asked them, “What are you signing?” and the students asked her the same question. She and the other Black deaf students felt as if they were signing two different languages and in a foreign land. Ironically, the school for Black children and the school for the White children were located within a few miles of each other. As another example, a young hearing man from a Black deaf family (a Coda, “child of deaf adults”) who teaches ASL at a community college remarks, “Oh yeah—the way I sign in class and the way I sign at home are totally different.” Black Deaf participants and interpreters attending meetings of the National Black Deaf Advocates (NBDA) have been known to observe, “I see something different—different from other signing.” Thus, although we have had only fairly small-scale studies (see, e.g., Aramburo 1989; Guggenheim 1993; Lewis 1998), we do have numerous anecdotal accounts that a distinct dialect exists.

Since William C. Stokoe’s (1960) pioneering work, linguists have recognized that natural sign languages are autonomous linguistic systems, structurally independent of the spoken languages with which they may coexist in a given community. This recognition has been followed by extensive research into different aspects of ASL structure and accompanied by the recognition that, as natural sign languages are full-fledged autonomous linguistic systems shared by communities of users, the sociolinguistics of sign languages can be described in ways that parallel the description of the sociolinguistics of spoken languages. On Stokoe’s pioneering work, Garretson (1980) remarked that, “To know, once and for all, that our ‘primitive’ and ‘ideographic gestures’ are really a formal language on a par with all other languages of the world is a step towards pride and liberation” (vi). A formal language by definition includes sociolinguistic variation and distinct subsystems or varieties. As of this writing, we have clear empirical evidence of one such variety of ASL, the Tactile ASL used by deaf-blind signers, which is distinct in its phonology,2 morphosyntax, lexicon, and discourse structure from “sighted ASL” (Collins and Petronio 1998; Collins 2004). There is a widespread perception in the American Deaf community that Black ASL exists, and (mostly) anecdotal reports indicate that it is as distinct from the ASL used by White signers as vernacular African American English (AAE) is from middle-class White English (as seen earlier). However, empirical studies of Black ASL based on natural language have not previously been conducted. This book and video are the first steps to filling that gap in our knowledge.

In the following pages, we address four main questions:

1. What sociohistorical reality would make a separate variety of ASL possible?

2. What are the features of the variety of ASL that people call “Black ASL”?3

3. Can the same kinds of unique features that have been identified for African American English be identified for Black ASL to show that it is a distinct variety of ASL?

4. If unique features exist, what are they, and what are the linguistic and social factors that condition their use?

HOW LANGUAGE VARIETIES COME ABOUT

In order to describe Black ASL as a distinct variety of ASL, we should examine whether the sociohistorical conditions that Black and White Deaf people have experienced might have led to the emergence of a separate variety. This requires one more step back to ask how language varieties come about in general, whether signed or spoken. In a study of African American English, Rickford states, “All languages, if they have enough speakers, have dialects—regional or social varieties that develop when people are separated by geographic or social barriers” (1999, 320). There are a number of geographic and social factors involved in the formation of language varieties. Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (2006) state that “Dialects are most likely to develop where we find both physical and social separation among groups of speakers” (29). They discuss the factors involved in dialect formation, which include settlement patterns, migration, geographic features, language contact, economic ecology, social stratification, social interaction (e.g., social practices, speech communities), and group and individual identity. Settlement patterns have both to do with where people come from and where they settle. For example, “the initial patterns of habitation by English speakers from various parts of the British Isles, as well as by emigrants and enslaved peoples who spoke languages other than English, are still reflected in the patterning of dialect differentiation in the United States today” (30). Wolfram and Schilling-Estes go on to explain that, once settlements are established, dialect boundaries may reflect migration from these points and that geographic features such as mountains, rivers, and lakes are important insofar as they shape migration routes. Geographic isolation of course plays a role, as Bergmann, Hall, and Ross point out in Language Files: “[B]eing isolated from other speakers tends to allow a dialect to develop in its own way, through its own innovations that are different from those of other dialects” (2007, 419). Wolfram and Schilling-Estes further observe: “The most effective kind of communication is face-to-face, and when groups of speakers do not interact on a personal level with one another, the likelihood of dialect divergence is heightened” (2006, 32). Political boundaries such as national or local borders also need to be considered. Contact with other language groups also plays a role in the formation of dialects, as does economic ecology: “Different economic bases not only bring about the development of specialized vocabulary items associated with different occupations; they also may affect the direction and rate of language change in grammar and pronunciation” (34). Socioeconomic status has a well-documented role in the formation of varieties, as do social networks (Milroy 1987) (i.e., with whom people interact and talk on a daily basis).

A very useful construct is that of communities of practice (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992; Lave and Wenger 1991). Eckert (2000) defines such a group as “an aggregate of people who come together around some enterprise” and as “simultaneously defined by its membership and the shared practices in which that membership engages” (35). Communities of practice (CofP) are “dynamic and fluid” groups in which individuals “are seen as active agents in the construction of individual and group identity, rather than simply as passive respondents to the social situations in which they find themselves” (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 2006, 38). The idea of the CofP has often been more helpful in explaining patterns of variation than, say, more rigid notions of social class imposed by the researcher (Bucholtz 1999). Finally, group membership, whether voluntary or coerced, and personal identity have also been seen to have played roles in the emergence of language varieties.

Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (2006) also identify a number of linguistic factors such as rule extension, analogy, grammaticalization, phonological processes (e.g., assimilation), and word-formation processes (i.e., factors in dialect formation having to do specifically with the structure of language). As a result of these social and linguistic factors, we see differences between middle-class and working-class speech, varieties shaped by social class, age, gender, and ethnicity, as in the case of the Spanish used in the Southwest. As Wolfram and Schilling-Estes state, “These linguistic and social factors may come together in a myriad of ways, resulting in a multitude of dialects” (24).

Of course, varieties can also lose some of their distinctive characteristics when users of different dialects come into regular contact with each other. For example, in the United States, dialects on the East Coast tend to reflect the varieties of English brought by the original settlers. In the West, however, these differences became less distinct as settlers from north and south mingled on the frontier. In a similar way, we might expect to see differences between Black and White ASL become less noticeable as a result of the integration of residential schools and the increase in integrated mainstream programs. In several of the following chapters we address the question of whether Black and White ASL are becoming more similar or are maintaining their linguistic distinctiveness.

African American English

African American English4 (AAE) is a very well-documented variety of English that illustrates the role of these geographic and social factors in the formation of a language variety. It is also directly relevant to the project described in this book. Almost sixty years of research findings have documented the structure and use of AAE in rich detail. In addition, AAE has been shown to be a rule-governed and systematic variety of English distinct in its structure from other varieties of English, a variety that acquired its distinctiveness over a long period of time and as a result of the interaction of many historical and social forces.5 Furthermore, not only linguists but also both Black and White laypersons recognize AAE as distinct from other English varieties. While laypersons and linguists may use different labels to identify this variety (e.g., Ebonics), they nevertheless easily and clearly perceive it to be distinct from middle class White English, as well as from other varieties of English. Moreover, many empirical descriptions of AAE structure and use solidly confirm laypersons’ perceptions of distinctiveness.

Another Variety of ASL: Tactile ASL

Research on other varieties of ASL is also relevant to the present volume, most notably the work on what is known as Tactile ASL, the variety of ASL used by deaf-blind people, specifically those with the genetic condition Usher syndrome I. Individuals with this condition are born deaf and later, usually in their teenage years, start losing vision in varying degrees due to retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary condition that is characterized by progressive loss of peripheral vision and eventually leads to central vision loss. Crucially, most deaf-blind people in this category grow up using ASL and are fluent signers by the time they begin to lose their sight. A variety of ASL has emerged in this community that accommodates the loss of sight at all linguistic levels: phonological, morphological, syntactic, and discourse. One of the consequences of the loss of sight is that deaf-blind people no longer have access to the numerous ASL grammatical and discourse markers produced on a signer’s face. Remarkably, these nonmanual (facial) markers are produced on the hands in Tactile ASL. For example, the raised eyebrows required for yes/no questions or the nodding required for back-channeling are produced manually (see Collins and Petronio 1998 and Collins 2004 for fuller accounts). As mentioned, features of Tactile ASL appear at every level of the language, and there is a vigorous community of deaf-blind signers who use Tactile ASL. Tactile ASL qualifies as a clear example of a variety of ASL. In addition, research has demonstrated the existence of tactile varieties of other sign languages such as Swedish Sign Language (Mesch 2000) and Norwegian Sign Language (Raanes 2006). The project we describe here explores the specific linguistic and sociolinguistic factors that might qualify Black ASL as a variety of ASL in the same way that Tactile ASL has been shown to be a variety of ASL. People say, “I see something different—different from other signing,” and it is our goal to describe what that “something” is and which factors have contributed to its formation.

SO WHAT ABOUT BLACK ASL?

We return now to the physical and social factors that Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (2006) describe as playing a role in shaping language varieties. As for settlement patterns, migration, and geographic isolation, the physical and social segregation and oppression that have affected the Black hearing community and contributed to the emergence of AAE have also affected the Black Deaf community. In the chapter on race, deafness, and ASL in his book on the history of ASL, Tabak (2006) lists physical isolation and geography as two of three factors that “have served to increase the variabi...