Dr. DonG.’s Deafhood Discourses

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(Showing vase) That was a gift for my wedding.  I can’t remember who gave it to us, but it was a gift.  My wife and I cherish that present.  We don’t put it carelessly in some place and leave it, we put it in a safe space — in that china cabinet behind me.  A place of honor, where we can look at it and let it bring back memories.  My mom tends to say I never learned proper social etiquette.  I don’t know if she’s right or not, but one thing I do understand: When someone gives you a gift, you don’t take it and say “This looks cheap.  Where did you get it?”  ”I don’t think this is very good” and comment in that vein, or comment about the gift to other people who might report back to the original gift giver.  You don’t want to hurt that person’s feelings, right?

In 1913, George Veditz referred to ASL as “the noblest gift God has given to Deaf people”.  He was right!  ASL IS a gift.  Without that gift, I wouldn’t be here.  I don’t know where I would be, but definitely not here, and not successful.  It took me a long time to realize that ASL is a gift, and now I appreciate it and treasure it.

But I see people out there who mock and belittle ASL, who say SEE is better, who actively HOPE that SEE signs will spread, and they think that SEE should spread and they encourage that spread.  Or worse, they say that SEE IS ASL!  What ridiculousness!  Or they talk negatively about Deaf people who try to preserve ASL, ridiculing them as “Deaf Culture Police” or “ASL Purists” and the like.

I don’t care if you yourself are Deaf, Hard of Hearing, or a parent of a Deaf child.  When YOU belittle or insult ASL, when YOU promote SEE, or ridicule people who try to support and promote the improvement of ASL, when YOU spread any kind of linguicism against ASL, YOU are spitting in the face of those Deaf people who gave YOU the gift of ASL.  And worse, you are spitting in the face of those Deaf people who came before you who cherished, supported, and passed on ASL so YOU could have that gift, too.

ASL IS A GIFT!  CHERISH IT!

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In 1904, James L. Smith, who was President of the NAD at that time, said:

“The ememies of the sign language are not confined to those who decry it and call for its abolition entirely. Its most dangerous enemies are in the camp of its friends, in the person who maltreat it and abuse it by misuse. The sign language, properly used, is a language of grace, beauty, and power. But through careless or ignorant use it may become ungraceful, repulsive, and difficult to comprehend. Every one of us should try, both by example and precept, to preserve the grace, beauty, and expressiveness of our gesture language”.

Wow.  That was in 1904, and it was quite a prescient statement!

In the 1960′s, Gerilee Gustason and many other people, many of them Deaf themselves, invented signed English systems.  Those systems have proliferated, causing what we see today: many Deaf people growing up with dysfluent signing.  But was Gustason truly a friend of ASL?  No, she is a friend of English.

But we do have people now who call themselves “friends” of ASL.  For example, this woman , who is Hearing, when I watched her video, she would talk and show a sign here or there.  But her signing looks almost as if she had learned out of a book before making the videos.  The problem with her approach is that it causes people to think that ASL is just English shown through signs, which it is not.  I don’t have to explain to you why that’s wrong.

But worse are people, Deaf and Hearing, who have complete websites which purport to teach ASL and have put in a lot of work into them.  But what do they do and say in their websites?   It is incredible.  For example, Dr. Bill Vicars, who is the owner of Lifeprint/ASL University, which is one of the top-rated Google searches for ASL, has many linguicistic statements about ASL.  For example, if you look at his discussion under the word “TRY”, you will see him say that some people sign TRY with an A handshape, some with an S handshape, or with a T handshape.  He says that many people use the T hanshape, which is true, but is that ASL?  No.  That goes back to SEE (Signing Exact English).  SEE influenced those Deaf people into thinking that is ASL.  Moreover, Bill Vicars says that today, there are people who he calls “Deaf Culture Police” or “Deaf Culture Purists” and that they (we) have “English Letter Phobia” and that we are longing for the “good old days of ‘pure’ ASL”.  Yes, we want to see good ASL to come out into the community, but will we ever go back to to that perfect ideal?  I don’t know.  There is a lot of mixture and contamination in the community now.  But that condescending attitude of perceiving us as simply “wanting the good old days of ASL” disgusts me.  In another statement within that same discussion, he says “I recently saw an ASL instructor signing ‘WORK ROOM’ instead of OFFICE with an O.  I’m not making that up!”  Oh I see.  He views trying to go back to a more ASL sign instead of the initialized forms with OFFICE, APARTMENT, ROOM, DORMROOM, and on and on with such a disdainful attitude!

In another example, someone asked about the word “am”. He says “ASL has a sign for ‘am”.  That is NOT ASL!  That, again, is SEE! SEE is NOT ASL!  But again, his view is demeaning towards ASL proponents.  He says “your safest bet is to follow the herd and label that AM sign as ‘English’ and avoid using it around any ‘DCP’ (Deaf Culture Police/ASL purists)”.  That is so awful!

If the “guardians” of ASL won’t guard ASL, who will?  James L. Smith’s words about who the most dangerous enemies of ASL are should include those who spread misinformation, lies, myths, AND linguicism about ASL.

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In this final part, I demonstrate how to write different signs, using the SignScript system.

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In this second part, I introduce the SignScript symbols for Locations, Movements, and Non-Manual Signals

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In this first part, I introduce the SignScript symbols for handshapes and orientations.

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I’ve been discussing writing in signed languages.  I’ve compared different systems, such as logographic systems like SignWriting to more alphabetic systems like Stokoe’s.  I’ve invented one I call SignScript.  It follows more of an alphabetic model.  The reason I support alphabetic models is that research shows students have an easier time transitioning between an alphabetic system in their first language and an alphabetic system in their second language.  The transition is easier than if the first language’s system is logographic and the second language’s is alphabetic.  There’s a cognitive disjoint happening in that case, and it’s harder to make the transitions.  The second reason I like alphabetic systems is that they can be typed.  I have developed a font for SignScript which can be installed on any computer to use for typing.  Another reason is that alphabetic systems minimize “drawing”.  I myself am a terrible artist.  SignWriting and Robert Arnold’s si5s both rely on drawing to varying degrees.  It’s not for me.  Also, with alphabetic systems, it’s easier to develop dictionaries based on parameters, such as handshapes.  You can also develop “spelling rules” for new signs, which would be good in the case you invented a new sign and wanted to figure out how to write it.  You can follow the established “rules” to know how to “spell” that sign.  In comparison, Stokoe’s system didn’t have clear “spelling rules”.  At least, in my opinion, that wasn’t the case, especially when it came to ordering movements.

With SignScript, my goal is to disassociate English from ASL.  I want ASL to stand by itself, on its own.  How?  First. I have disassociated it from English orthography (print).  Stokoe’s system used English orthography for part of it, in that you could see the English letters A, B, and so on.  But in my opinion, when people see English, they automatically think in English.  So I developed the symbols to represent those handshapes but in a way that they do not look like English orthography (as much as possible).

I should clarify that I do include English orthography when while signing, you fingerspell something, like your name or a place or something like that, then you would use English orthography to write that .  So SignScript will blend ASL and English, yet keeping the two in their respective places.

SignScript also has an “alphabetic order”.  But my order does not follow English’s letter order.  It follows ASL principles — the developmental process of how babies first develop handshape use in their signing.  Research shows the first handshapes tend to be basic: “B A S O C”.  Those are the basic handshapes.  Later, they develop more complex handshapes like (demonstration).  There is a specific developmental progression to how those handshapes are acquired, and when they are acquired.  So, I based my order based on that research.  What I’ve found so far is that many signs tend to be found among the more basic handshapes, while there are fewer signs using more complex handshapes.  So that’s something that we can look at and research to learn more about ASL through writing systems.

Obviously, SignScript borrows elements from different systems, primarily Stokoe’s and Sam Supalla’s (at the University of Arizona).  I’ve taken ideas from those two systems in developing SignScript.

In the next videos, I will explain the different symbols and what they look like.

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In Mike McConnell’s blog, he’s looking for the “risks” of learning ASL as a first language.  I sent in my comment, and he decided not to publish my comment.  I will not be discussing that here.  (Interrupted by bout of coughing) (drinks water) That feels better.  What I said are the risks of learning ASL:

1. Hearing Parents and other family members will have to learn another language.  That’s terrible!  Here in America, people know only one language.  We can’t have people learning more than one language!
2. Deaf children and parents will enjoy a closer bond (can’t have that in our American society, with its increasing alienation between people!  We can’t promote closeness!)
3. Deaf children will understand what’s going on around the dinner table and at family gatherings (no more “Family Dog Syndrome”)
4. Deaf people will attain full linguistic competency in a language (putting a lot of SLPs and psychologists out of work)
5. Deaf people will attain age-appropriate cognitive, academic and linguistic skills (laying waste to a whole system which pathologizes Deaf people, requiring IEPs, SSI, VR, and so on.   There will be no need for any of those services).
6. Deaf people will have enhanced cognitive skills and mental flexibility as a result of knowing two or more languages.  (We can’t have that.  We have to restrict people to using only a limited portion of their minds).
7. Finally, Deaf people will stop grumbling about recollected abuses, problems, audism, and the like, which means the “Nattering Nabobs of Negativity” like Mike McConnell and others will have nothing to blog about.

The point: only in a monolingual setting (which are a small minority of the world’s population — most of the world’s peoples know two or three or four languages), is knowing another language viewed as a problem, liability, or risk.

But (ironically) many people encourage their children to learn Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, and many other languages as a second language.  So why is learning ASL viewed as a risk or problem?  Why look for problems associated with learning ASL, when with other languages, they are NEVER viewed as being a potential problem?  NO!

Note: Thanks to Shel Potma for pointing out no spoken languages are ever viewed as a “risk”

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Back in France, when Epee established his school, he gathered Deaf people from around the city, including some who had a group of signers, and brought them into his school.  Epee saw their signs and thought of it as having no grammar.  He saw French as having a proper grammar, while signs did not have a grammar.  It should be recognized that their signs probably did already have grammar, but Epee, being Hearing, didn’t understand about sign language grammar.  So Epee decided to give sign language grammar by conforming signs to French grammar.  He called this system “Methodical Signs”.  What this means is that he used the signs, plus created others to represent French grammatical concepts like “-ing”, “-ness”, “-ment”, articles (“the”), and so on.  It was similar in idea to what signed English is today.

The Methodical Signs were used in the classroom for the teacher to dictate sentences to the students, which the students would copy in writing.  They could copy the signs in writing perfectly.  Alternatively, students would read a passage from a text and sign it in Methodical Signs, which they could also do perfectly.  However, when the teacher would ask them what the text meant, the students would express incomprehension.  The same went for when the teacher would ask what he had just signed and what it meant.

Later on, after Bebian took over the school, he realized Methodical Signs were worthless, since they were not helping Deaf people with their English… I mean, French.  So Bebian discarded the Methodical Signs.  The same thing happened here in America — Clerc started with the Methodical Signs, but later realized, like Bebian, that they were a waste of time.

About 100 years later, Stokoe recognized that sign language — ASL — has a grammar and structure.  But still, 5 years later, what happened?  A group of people — Deaf and Hearing both, developed signed English systems — SEE1, SEE2, LOVE, and other systems.  They developed these systems because they thought ASL did not have a grammar, or that ASL’s grammar is not good enough, and that students must learn English only.

Now, that was back in the 1970s, more than 30 years later, is Deaf people’s English good?  No.  I’m still seeing people say things like “Sign English help me more better English” or “Oral good for Deaf people help English”.  So does signed English help English?  NO. Does oralism help English?  NO.  Does Cued Speech help English?  NO.

What helps English?  Bilingual-Bicultural education.  Exposure to both ASL and English, switching back and forth between the two languages.  If you know the research, you would know this: what group of Deaf people tends to have the BEST English skills?  Deaf people from Deaf families.  Not all of them, but this is the pattern.  The reason is that Deaf people from Deaf families tend to have parents who help teach their children how to translate from English to ASL and from ASL to English.  So they learn to understand BOTH languages.

That’s why I still don’t understand why these people (with poor English skills themselves) defend those methodologies (SEE, Cued Speech, Oralism) that failed THEM and our community.

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Now to the point — Back in France, after Epee established the school for the Deaf, later, the Abbe Sicard took over running the school.  Sicard had a godson — Roch-Ambroise Bebian, who basically grew up at the school with the Deaf students there.  He would sign with the Deaf students, so he was almost like a CODA himself.  When Sicard retired, Bebian took over the directorship of the school.  Bebian realized that the “Methodical Signs”, which are analogous to signed English, were no good and a waste of time, because they didn’t work.  He was basically the first one to develop the “Bi-Bi” approach: writing in French and signing the concepts in LSF, and switching between the two languages.  He was looking for a way to better help Deaf students navigate between the two languages, so he developed a dictionary, but it was a true bilingual dictionary, with the French word paired with the signs written in his invented writing system.  For example, see this picture (“Livre”).  In the example, you see the picture — that’s the picture for the sign representing the concept ‘livre’, which means ‘book’.  If you look at it closely, you will get it.  The main symbol represents the flat handshape, with the line inside of it probably meaning there is a contact between the two handshapes.  And the circular handshape next to it likely represents the movement of separating the hands.

Another example (picture: “cligner”) — the word “cligner” means ‘to blink’.  So you see the sign symbol, which looks like a “4″, representing the eyelashes, and the round symbol representing the face.  And the semicircular symbol I suspect represents the movement, so the sign would probably look like this (demonstration).

There’s another word, “clignoter”, which looks very similar, means “to wink”.  The sign symbols are almost the same, but an additional movement is added, so the sign would look something like this: (demonstration).  Something like that.

This was a really powerful tool for Deaf students because if you know the sign, but don’t know the English (or French) word, how would it be possible to find the word?  They could look in the book for the sign, and then find the French word equivalent.  Most ASL dictionaries follow English first, in that if you know the English word, you can find the sign.  But suppose you don’t know what the English word was, then you’re stuck.  With that dictionary (Bebian’s), you could switch between the two languages with ease, going both ways: French-Sign and Sign-French.

Other people have invented systems for writing sign languages.  SignWriting was developed by a woman who was a dancer, and she adapted the dance movement notation for sign language.  (See picture)  The system works, it’s currently  being used in Nicaragua, and the children pick it up quite easily.  But I personally am not that crazy for it because it involves a lot of drawing and it seems like it would take up a lot of paper space to write a few signs (compared to English writing).  I would prefer to see a more “alphabetic” system.

At the University of Arizona, Sam Supalla invented his writing system.  It utilizes handshapes, movements, location, orientations, it works, it is good, but one thing I wish: it isn’t expanded to allow for the possibility of writing at the sentence level.  He focused only at the lexical (word) level.

Now we see that Si5S, that invented writing system.  I don’t understand how it works — he hasn’t explained its rules, how the different elements go together.  The idea is good, but I am not clear on how to read the signs or write down our signs.  I want more explanation from him.

In my next vlog, I will show you my idea for how to write signs.

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Now, how can we write sign languages?  Most people typically follow the spoken language model, using the writing system of that spoken language.  The words of the spoken language are overlaid onto the signs.  For example, suppose we sign (“cat”), in English, the English word “cat” will be overlaid onto the sign.  That’s called a “gloss”.  Glossing can work for simple ideas like “cat”, “dog”, “eat”, and so on.  But glossing becomes more problematic when we try to express more abstract or complex ideas, as well as on the sentence level.  For example, you know the old joke “please but”.  In it, the Deaf person is stuck trying to come up with a gloss for the sign meaning to “open the warning gate rails”.  So, as a make-do effort, he uses the English gloss “but” as a close approximation for the sign he wants to express.  But of course, it makes no sense to the Hearing person reading it.  As another example, how would you gloss these signs (_____) and (______)?  I’ve struggled for a long time and cannot figure out a good translational equivalent for those signs.  That’s a big problem with glossing.  Sometimes you just can’t translate directly from signs to a spoken language.  Linguists don’t like glosses, either.  They have problems with them in that they’re not clear, they don’t show what the sign looks like, and more.

So linguists have several different ways to record signs.  These are called transcription or notation systems.  These systems are often complex and are more for linguistic purposes in analyzing signs — their movements, handshapes, and other parts of the signs.

One famous example is Stokoe Notation.  His system borrows many of the English letters plus some symbols that he invented.  His system takes a more phonological analysis of the signs — the handshapes, movements, locations.  (see graphic).

Other researchers have their own system like Liddell and Johnson, two linguists at Gallaudet who invented their own system, which is complex.  I don’t fully understand or like their system, (see graphic), but it works for them.  But it is clearly for linguistic purposes.

Others, in Germany, have the Hamburg Notation System, called HamNoSys for short, and it is a different system.  (see graphic).

But it is important to understand that these systems are all for the purposes of linguistic research, and not for everyday use for people to use in correspondence, etc., because they are too complex for common use.

But can signs have a written representation?  Yes, they can, and I believe they should.  Robert Arnold has explained about his “Si5S” writing system, and explained his reasons for developing it, and I support his reasons.  I would add to those reasons also, is a written system could help ASL students learn ASL through writing, not just signs, and be able to analyze the grammar, and so forth that way, WITHOUT glosses.  I believe strongly that Hearing people, when they see glosses, they think in English, and associate signs with English, or it makes them think ASL is “lousy English”.   But it’s not.  They need to be disassociated, since they are different languages.

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