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Development of sign language
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My Reflection on the American Sign Language
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American Sign Language, or ASL, has come a long way since it first originated. Before the language was established in the United Sates by Galludet and Clerc, the deaf didn’t know any of the established sighs and were not being taught anything. If the family had money, the deaf were sent off to an asylum. Once ASL was taught, Deaf people were being forced to learn how to speak verbally—many were not even allowed to sign and had to sit on their hands or hands were being slapped with rulers. American Sign Language is one language that has opened my eyes to a whole new community—one a majority of people does not know about. One I personally did not know. Learning ASL as a second language was easier for me to learn than Spanish. I found that the language was simple and easier to remember. Most of the signs are easy to understand, and make sense for what people who speak ASL are trying to convey. I still remember every one of the signs I was taught from more than a year ago. Everyone should learn ASL as a second language because it is one that has opened my eyes to a new world that everyone else needs to know about too. There are many benefits to learning ASL and developing a deeper meaning and understanding of the deaf culture. One of these benefits are all of the jobs that are available for people who are fluent in ASL. Some jobs include: interpreters, teachers, audiologists, and many more. Just by knowing ASL I know that I will always have access to a job. As an interpreter I would …show more content…
As advocate is a person who helps supports groups of individuals. By using my ASL and being an advocate, I can help by giving the deaf a voice. Often the deaf are misunderstood. People look at the deaf and think of them as disabled. This is not the case. Being deaf is not something you should feel sympathetic about. Deaf is not an illness. Often times, they are proud of their deafness and become offended when someone is sympathetic of
In my family, I have a close cousin who is Deaf, and I know that many of my family members have questions about Deaf culture but are too afraid to ask. I felt the same way, which was a main reason I decided to take the ASL class. The class not only opened my mind to the study of American Sign Language, but also how Deaf culture is used in our society. This book has helped me learn a lot, from ways to respect Deaf people and to understand them, which is why I have advised my family to give the book a look as well. I definitely agree with points this book makes, because nearly all of them relate to today’s society and the world that we live in right now. Although, occasionally, some points were a bit confusing and took me off-guard, I performed some critical thinking on it and made a list of those I didn’t quite understand or agree with.
The documentary of “Through Deaf Eyes” has open my eyes to the deaf culture. The movie has made it “click” that deaf people are just that people and individuals like me. Deaf community has its struggles just like everyone else. They struggle with growing into who they are as a person, harmful situations, and feeling a sense of belonging. They just speak a different language like Italians and Hispanics. Communicating with a different language does not make them lesser than a hearing person. When able to learn to communicate, the deaf are able to learn and gain knowledge just like a hearing person. The only difference is they have to learn more and work harder to achieve their goals and gain knowledge, which a hearing person learns just by hearing their surroundings.
Sign language is a natural human language, they have their own vocabularies and sentence structures. Sign language comes into practice wherever Deaf societies come into existence. Sign language is not identical worldwide; every country has its own language and accents; however, these are not the verbal or transcribed languages used by hearing individuals around them.
It “is an important part of the social, cultural, and educational context of the hearing-impaired child’s development” (Stahlman, 349). If a person cannot communicate effectly then they may not thrive and develop while having a hearing or speech impairment. In both American Sign Language and Pidgin Signed English, a person who is hearing-impaired must learn to communicate with the world using only his hands and facial expressions. American Sign Language and Pidgin Signed English is a way for the unable to communicate. Both ASL and PSE can be taught in many different ways however, ASL is normally taught in school while PSE is normally self-taught but either way they are both a unique method of communication and can be used all over the world and can be translated and spoken just like any other language can
When considering language, people often fail to include non-verbal language in the definition, in particular American Sign Language used by those who are deaf. Many believe that people who are deaf share the same culture as those who can hear, as the difference between hearing and non-hearing individuals raised in the same society is believed to be only sensory oriented. Yet deaf individual have been shown to have their own culture and many choose to use ASL exclusively, teaching it to their children, as the view it to be a critical aspect of maintaining deaf culture (Gallaudet).
In Ben Jarashow’s Journey Into the Deaf World, he explained Deaf culture and how it feels to be deaf within the world of those who hear. People who are born deaf have a loss of what is commonly viewed as the most important sense, hearing. This leaves them with four senses instead of five; most important sense now being sight followed by touch. In return, this means that a language must be developed that is based heavily on sight. In the United States, it was not until 1960 that American Sign Language (ASL) was recognized as its own language.
For centuries, deaf people across the globe have used sign language to communicate, mostly using it privately in their own homes as a part of everyday life. Just recently, in the early ‘60s, professional linguists had discovered new truths concerning sign language and its native users. The news of these truths spread like wildfire and, thus, many turned their attention to sign language and the deaf community. With a horde of hearing people and deaf people needing to interact and exchange information with each other, how would they do so with a large-scale communication barrier? Because of this issue, the art of sign language interpreting was born. Although at first glance it seems effortless, sign language interpreting is quite a complex process
In the United States today, approximately 4500 children are born deaf each year, and numerous other individuals suffer injuries or illnesses that can cause partial or total loss of hearing, making them the largest “disability” segment in the country. Although, those in the medical field focus solely on the medical aspects of hearing loss and deafness, members of the deaf community find this unwarranted focus limiting and restrictive; because of its failure to adequately delineate the sociological aspects and implications of the deaf and their culture. Present day members of deaf culture reject classifications such as “deaf mute” or “deaf and dumb”, as marginalizing them because of their allusions to a presumed disability. (Edwards, 2012, p. 26-30)
Visual language as such as sign language is the concept of gesture, body language, facial expression, and movement. Sign languages had many different languages in the world; for example, Mexican Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language, Chinese Sign Language, langue des signes Francaise, American sign language, etc. In the present day, million Deaf Americans use American Sign Language to use communicate each other as a visual language in anywhere includes America, Canada, and some countries. It is not audio language, but it is an official languages recognized since 1988 by the government due issue of Deaf President Now for protest by Gallaudet students and Deaf people at capitol hill and Gallaudet University in Washington D.C. American Sign Language
American Sign Language has grown to become a popular outlet to fill the gap between hearing and deaf communication. Because of this, many schools, colleges, and universities teach the language to their students. However, the debate is whether it should be considered a foreign language and count for a foreign language credit. Although there are several kinds of sign languages, ASL is controversial because it is indigenous to the area like Navajo, the Native American language that was present here before Europeans settled in the U.S.
In general, sign language—as defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as “any means of communication through bodily movements … used when spoken communication is impossible or not desirable”—has been used by dozens of cultures for ages, but American Sign Language (ASL) is fairly new. The Native Americans hold one of the earliest records of sign language with their ancient system of communication using signs to converse and break “language barriers” between tribes who spoke different dialects (American). Because many of their cultures were so intertwined with various “shared elements,” the Indians were able to devise “common symbols” to communicate with each other without the use of formal interpreters (American). Across the sea, Juan Pablo de Bonet of Spain was conducting his own research of sign language for the deaf and published the first documentation of a manual alphabet in 1620 (Butterworth). Before ...
When children are born and as they grow most of what they learn to speak is from hearing their parents talk but what if they couldn 't hear? How would they learn? Its pretty simple actually. They wouldn 't learn. Those who were born hearing but got sick or eventually lost their hearing learned a few things and use them but, eventually they turn to ASL to be able to communicate with others and be able to further their education. When having to learn this language you have to keep many things in mind such as handshape, palm orientation, location, movement and facial expression, all of those things are crucial to being able to speak this language correctly. While this language has been around for many years there are still things that don 't have an ASL name and in those cases you would do something called finger spelling, where you spell out what you are trying to say in order to get your point across.(Learning Sign Language,2) As every language you are learning a whole different way of saying things and you are also opening yourself to those who can’t really open themselves to you. The deaf community do really try to not be a burden to us. They learn to read lips or even talk because they were forced to. A couple a years ago they were restricted from learning ASL and were punished if they tried to sign. (About sign
American Sign Language is considered a foreign language by 40 states around the United States. American Sign Language is not considered a foreign language, because a foreign language is defined by “any language used in a country other than one’s own; a language that is studied mostly for cultural insight”. By definition American Sign Language does not fit that description because, it is only used in America. American Sign Language is also not qualified as a foreign language because people say that a language must have literature for proper study when American Sign Language does not, also people have argued that American Sign Language lacks the same element of culture as other foreign language courses. But in other cases American Sign Language can be considered a foreign language in many ways just as it cannot be considered a foreign language. Some of the reasons that American Sign Language can be considered a foreign language are, American Sign Language is no less a foreign language than Navajo, which is also indigenous to the United States. One huge step towards the thought of American Sign Language being considered a foreign language is that the whole idea of language being foreign is disappearing. I believe that American Sign Language is a foreign language and should be accepted in more states and more schools around the country.
According to Hutchison (2007), the pivotal moment in the early history of deaf education was the International Congress of the Education of the Deaf, which met in Milan in 1880. Prior to that time, sign language was widely used as the language of instruction in schools for the deaf around the world. At the Milan conference, leading educators passed several resolutions that effectively banned sign language from classrooms, stating the “incontestable superiority of speech over signs in restoring the deaf-mute to society, which gives him a fuller knowledge of language” (Hutchison, 2007, p. 481) and declaring that “the oral method should be preferred to that of signs in the education and instruction of deaf-mutes” (Hutchison, 2007, p. 481). Not only did the resolutions disallow the use of the na...
Deaf people have been strongly excluded and labeled through out history. Deaf people have had many negative, life changing events. Through out history, deaf people have been excluded from many different opportunities that hearing people are just given. For example, communicating, it is something that we all do but, at one-point deaf people weren’t even allowed to sign. Deaf people have made a strong community and have made a huge difference in how we communicate with each other today. There are many famous deaf actors, artist, musicians, etc. who have all made an impact on deaf culture. One man who made an impact within the use of ASL is Chuck Baird, a famous deaf artist.