This proposal will comprise four parts. It will discuss the status of American Sign Language (ASL) first as a language, then as a foreign language. It then will deal with whether ASL should be accepted toward a college's foreign-language requirement, and lastly will consider whether and how ASL should be accepted by CAS specifically.
Allow me, though, one little point by way of introduction. This is in no way a personal crusade, designed to relieve me of the foreign-language requirement; I am exempt anyway, and am arguing this for its own sake, because I feel strongly about it.
If any member of the Committee has any questions about ASL or about anything I have written herein, he should not hesitate to contact me. I am most easily reachable by electronic mail at [old address deleted from WWW version], but can also be reached at home at [number deleted from WWW version] or in the CAS Student Council office at extension 88125.
That ASL is a natural language is indisputable; virtually any linguist and any linguistics textbook will tell you so. (In fact, a partial list of professionals and scholars who have told me so appears in Appendices A and B to this proposal.) As Eve Sweetser (PhD; Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics, UC Berkeley; President of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association) writes:
There is no doubt in the mind of any linguist who has actually looked at signed languages that they are full and complete human languages. It's just not a debate any more. The disagreement is only between people who know something about signed languages and those who have no knowledge about them, and imagine them to be "primitive" and possibly universal gesture systems. (Anyone who's actually tried to learn a signed language knows better; having come in touch with the complex grammatical structure of ASL has been a wonderful addition to my language-data repertory, as a linguist, but even to a practical language-learner, the complexity and regularity are evident.) Since I work on gesture as well, I'm fairly well situated to judge that ASL is not "just gesture" but a complex language which is conducted in the visual-gestural modality.[2]
And as Margaret Speas (Associate Professor, Linguistics, U Mass) writes:
There's no question that it is a complete language. It has it's own "phonology", morphology and syntax, which cannot be violated if the signer is to look like a native signer. It is processed in the language areas of the brain, not the spatial processing areas.
Here's a small example that shows that motions which may look like gestures are really part of an organized and abstract grammar:
Adjectives (and verbs) can be "inflected" by changing the manner of motion, to reflect different "verbal aspects". For example, you take an adjective sign, and do it in a short and quick motion, and it means "very/really adj" (very sick, very sweet, etc) Now, the adjective that means "slow" is a flat right hand starting at left fingertips and moving upwards along arm. If that's a gesture, you'd think that "very slow" would be signed by doing the action very slowly. But you sign "very slow" by doing in a short and quick motion. You use the abstract inflection rather than a gesture.
For a slightly more technical and detailed -- but eminently readable -- analysis of ASL and its differences from English, I strongly recommend David M. Perlmutter's article "The Language of the Deaf" which can be found in The New York Review of March 28, 1991, starting at page 65.
ASL is not manual English -- signs made for individual English words in English grammar and syntax. Rather, ASL has its own grammar, syntax, and idioms. As Dr. Sweetser writes, ASL is "radically different from Signed English - in fact, the grammatical structure of ASL is typologically more like some Native American languages than like English, although the antecedents of ASL lie in Europe, and specifically in French Sign Language." ASL, in fact, is different from British Sign Language (BSL), so much so that the two are mutually unintelligible. Obviously, the sign language is not mainly dependent on the spoken language of the same area.
Steven Schaufele (Ph.D.; Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, Soochow University [Taiwan]) came to the same conclusion:
It is terribly important first of all to recognize that ASL and the other
'recognized gestural languages' . . . are in no way gestural representations
of spoken languages. They are completely separate, distinct languages. Too
many of us 'normal' people tend to assume that a language like ASL is merely
a gestural equivalent of English, the dominant spoken language in the same
part of the world in which ASL is used. But this is not true; neither is it
true that the gestures of ASL are in any way 'isomorphic' with English words
or grammatical constructions, in the sense that it is possible to set up
one-to-one correspondences between ASL gestures and English words; this is
very far from being the case. Like every other human language, ASL has its
own unique ways of parcelling out and organizing one's perceptions of reality.
If promoting awareness of such inter-language differences is part of [NYU's]
CAS' justification for having a foreign-language requirement, then ASL can
surely fulfill that goal at least as effectively as any spoken language,
if not more so since, obviously, by its very nature it forces the student/user
to contend with the issues of performing all the functions of a normal human
language by means of gesture rather than by means of sound.
So ASL is not a translation, in any sense, of English. Just as obviously, however, English has affected ASL to a fair extent. In fact, certain words (like "TTY" and "bus") are "loan words", "borrowed" from English and fingerspelled in ASL. But every language has loan words. English has an enormous number of French and Latin words and phrases used every day without a second thought. The effect English has had on ASL in no way detracts from the latter's status as an independent language.
Also, as Paul Smolensky (Professor and Chair, Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University) writes, ASL "has much less in common with English than does German or French, so it must count as a 'foreign' language -- again, there can be no doubt of this on the part of any linguist."
Some argue that ASL is not a foreign language, as it is found domestically. But, as Tony Woodbury (Professor and Chair, Department of Linguistics, University of Texas) writes, "by that logic, they must also exclude Spanish, which has even more domestic native speakers than ASL, and antedates English in many parts of the US." Others contend that ASL, as it was first used here in the States, and as it is used almost exclusively here, is not a foreign language, whereas Spanish neither is used to a great extent here nor was first used here. To this I respond simply that by that logic English itself is a foreign language, as it was started overseas and is used extensively outside of the States even today. But further, native American languages -- which (unlike ASL, which is used in Canada) have never been used much outside of the United States -- are accepted by various colleges toward their respective foreign-language requirements (e.g., the University of New Mexico accepts Navajo); and if there were demand for the classes here, and teachers could be found to teach them, I have no doubt they would fill the requirement in CAS also. Yet they are no more "foreign" than ASL.
William C. Morris (PhD, Cognitive Science & Linguistics; Visiting Scholar, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, UCSD) explains that ASL is
in many ways considerably more "foreign" than any more "typical" foreign language. Because of its significant diffferences [sic] from spoken languages, it takes considerably greater effort to learn the language. Anyone who undertakes to learn ASL, or any signed language, should be recognized for the size of the task involved. At the same time, it should also be said that while the task is greater in some ways, learning ASL is learning a foreign language, and the effort and result are not different in kind from learning French, Afghan, Tamil, or Japanese.
Many colleges and universities -- including many of the most prestigious ones -- already accept ASL as filling a language requirement. A partial list of such institutions can be found in Appendix C to this proposal.
One reason to teach a foreign language is to expose students to a different culture. ASL certainly fits that bill. There is a strong Deaf culture in the United States; it has its own rules of etiquette that many hearing ASL students, or others exposed to the Deaf culture for the first time, find a bit disconcerting. The Deaf community has its own social and political organizations. Deaf clubs, found wherever Deaf communities exist, serve as meeting places and social centers, and residential schools have served an important socializing function for the young. There are Deaf athletic organizations, church organizations, and publications. There are many other aspects unique to Deaf life; one example is the fact that Deaf people usually marry other Deaf people. I recommend Bergman and Bragg's play Tales From a Clubroom as a light introduction to Deaf culture; its English translation is widely available.
Others say that a language should not be learned unless it has a literature. ASL, they contend, has no literature, and should not fill a language requirement. This logic is based on a false premise: ASL does in fact have an extensive literature. Nancy Frishberg, now professor of linguistics at UCSD, wrote an article a decade ago in the journal Sign Language Studies pointing out three types of literature in ASL: oratory, folklore, and performance art; the latter includes both poetry and drama. In addition, there is literature translated from English and other spoken languages. These are all easily accessible to students, even more so now that so much ASL literature is being videotaped. As Richard D. Janda, a linguistics professor at Ohio State University, writes,
there is certainly a signed literature (preserved on video) that is no different in kind from the oral literature of many peoples, or from the written literature which represents mainly a transcription of earlier oral literature (the Sanskrit hymns and epics come to mind, in this regard). That ASL has a fully precise and expressive literature is certainly obvious to anyone who has attended performances of the National Theater of the Deaf.
There is a contention that languages should not count toward a foreign-language requirement unless there is scholarly work (journals and the like) written in the language. This policy has points in its favor, but I really need not discuss it, as it is obviously not CAS' policy. For in CAS, one can learn Ancient Greek or Latin toward the foreign-language requirement, as well as Urdu or Persian. Few if any journals are currently written in these languages. Incidentally, ASL, although not used in journals, is used in a scholarly context: it is used in classes in Gallaudet University.
Some argue that, although ASL has literature, it has no written literature, so should not be studied as a foreign language. Similarly, some contend that since ASL is signed, not spoken, it should not be studied. But these are mere biases, not arguments. There is no reason a signed language (assuming it is a true language, as ASL is) should not be studied as is any other language.
Lastly, there are those who claim that languages should be learned so that they may be used in jobs or in conducting fieldwork after graduation. (This, indeed, seems to be one of CAS' reasons, as the MAP supplement to the Bulletin indicates that language study "nurtures an awareness of the diversity of human cultures and serves the practical need for language skills in government, business, research, and many other fields.") But this is served as well by ASL as by any other modern language, and better than by, say, Ancient Greek. If one chooses to seek a law degree and become an attorney, say, in New York, he or she will may better served if enabled to communicate with clients who can only speak ASL than with those who can only speak, say, Persian, as there are simply more of the former in New York. Similarly, unless one wishes to become a cleric or study ancient texts, Latin is useless. But ASL can be used in many jobs -- in fact, almost any job in the United States that requires face-to-face communication.
I will now deal with arguments for and against accepting ASL toward CAS' foreign-language requirement specifically (as distinct from the arguments, above, regarding acceptance at colleges in general). First, though, allow me to point out a pertinent fact. As of the time I am writing this proposal, more than one hundred fifty students have signed a petition noting that they want CAS' policy changed to allow ASL as a foreign language, and I know that more signatures have been collected (but not yet given to me; I will, though, by the time the Curriculum Committee meets, have a better idea of the number of names on the petition). Such a great show of student support should not be ignored.
You may wonder whether NYU's ASL teachers -- all of whom work for the School of Education -- are really qualified to teach ASL at the college level. Well, simply from an educational point of view, these teachers have more educational experience than many of the teachers of other language courses accepted by CAS. For instance, the basic courses in the Romance languages are taught at NYU by graduate students almost without exception, whereas ASL is taught by people who have already earned their master's degrees.
Looking at their fluency, I note that all the ASL teachers are Deaf except one, and that one is a CODA (child of Deaf adults, who learned ASL as a first language). Those whose first language is not ASL have attained a fluency that can be expected from a native user.
English is generally not used in the ASL classrooms. (Obviously, as in any language classroom, this rule can only be enforced to an extent.) This is true also of most of the language courses that fill CAS' requirement, but not necessarily of Irish, and certainly not of ancient Greek or Latin. Thus, in all these respects, the courses are equivalent to those taught at CAS.
Lastly, I wish to point out that administratively, there can be a slight difficulty with allowing ASL as a foreign language, as there is currently a sixteen-credit limit on courses taken outside CAS for most CAS students. But this really should not present a problem; it can be obviated by having the courses cross-referenced as A- or V-level courses. Several TSOA courses are already cross-listed (e.g., in CAS' Dramatic Literature department), and there should be no difficulty in listing Education courses in CAS. Cross-listing ASL courses in CAS would also better inform students about their opportunity to take these courses. As to where to list them, I might note that some colleges teach ASL courses out of their linguistics departments; while this may not be optimal, I can think of no better idea.
For all of the aforementioned reasons, I respectfully submit that the Curriculum Committee allow the American Sign Language courses taught at NYU to be counted toward CAS' foreign-language requirement.
These people in general expressed no opinion as to whether ASL should count toward a foreign-language requirement. Some indicated that it should not, for reasons I have dealt with elsewhere in this proposal. (A name followed by the name of a department or field and then by the name of a university or college means that the person listed is a professor [or associate professor, or the like] in that department or field.)
(A name followed by the name of a department or field and then by the name of a university or college means that the person listed is a professor [or associate professor, or the like] in that department or field.)
Note also that in 1990, a bill was passed by the Florida legislature, ensuring that all Florida-based universities accept ASL as filling the entrance requirement of a foreign language (though not necessarily the baccalaureate requirement). In 1992, Kentucky passed a law that state universities and community colleges must count any ASL courses they may teach toward their respective language requirements, and must accept ASL as filling the entrance requirements of a foreign language. I understand also that Pennsylvania (and most other states) accepts ASL as filling the high school language requirement.
[1] I wish to thank a fellow Student Council member, Seth Blinder, for his assistance, including proofreading. However, any errors that remain are almost certainly my own. ↑
[2] All quotations are from correspondence. ↑
[3] Most of the entries on this list were gathered by Dr. Sherman Wilcox of the University of New Mexico. I am grateful for his unwitting assistance. ↑