After reading the articles and watching the videos about Deaf culture exploration, there was one central idea that seemed to come across in each article and video, that being language and culture go hand-in-hand and you truly cannot have one without the other. Before learning American Sign Language, I had learned 4 years of Spanish. Although we did learn about the history and culture of the Spanish language I never realized how important culture is to a language until studying American Sign Language. It has really opened my eyes and shown me that learning the beliefs, values, and norms of cultures other than your own is genuinely important. In the article, Blurring the Line between Language and Culture, it stated, “learning a language is …show more content…
In class we had learned a little bit about Gallaudet University while discussing the names of different colleges and universities, but I did not have any background knowledge of the school. I loved to learn that it was named after Thomas Gallaudet who was actually a hearing man who wanted to help the deaf. Although deafness is not a disability in need of a cure, it is still a condition that needed attention in order to create easier communication between those hearing and those not hearing. One area of American Sign Language I have been curious about since taking this course was how similar or different it was compared to signing in other languages. I was so pleased to watch the video titled The Origin of ASL by Joseph Wheeler comparing and explaining a little background information on British and French sign language. Lastly, it was astounding to learn how recent the recognition of Deaf culture is. In the article posted by Startasl.com, it states that is was first truly recognized only about 40 years ago (startasl.com). I do feel as though a lot of people do not realize what Deaf culture is or even know it is exists. Before taking American Sign Language, I had no idea about the community that is Deaf Culture, and I’ve recognized that the culture is what makes the language so interesting and
The movie “Audism Unveiled” was a very interesting and powerful movie. I never realized that deaf individuals are discriminated against. This could be partly because I have never been immersed in or educated about the deaf culture until this year. One of the things that struck me the most while watching “Audism Unveiled” was the many heart wrenching stories about children being unable to communicate with their own non-signing hearing families.. The deaf child would have to ask their family members, why everyone was laughing or what’s going on. The family members would just tell them “I’ll tell you later” or “Nevermind. It’s not important”, resulting in the individual feeling isolated. Personally, I agree with people saying that if a parent has a deaf child they should learn how to sign; communication is what brings families together. As a result, the most intriguing thing to me was the stories of family members never learning American Sign Language; leaving their family member isolated.
Alice Cogswell - The Beginning of American Deaf Education - Start ASL. (n.d.). Retrieved September 19, 2016, from https://www.start-american-sign-language.com/alice-cogswell_html
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.
Deaf with a lower case d means that you are hard-of-hearing and American Sign Language is not your primary language. Culture is defined as “the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought” (Zinza 53). In el Deafo CeCe is described as deaf because she uses hearing aids, she does not use American Sign Language, and she is not part of the Deaf community. An example of her culture would be when she went to the school where everyone had hearing aids, so she was not the only one that was hard-of-hearing. Culture can be described as any group of people, not just the deaf.
After viewing the movie, “Signs of Respect,” I could recall some of my first-hand experiences in Deaf Culture. It doesn’t matter whether a person has grown up in Deaf Culture, or just beginning to learn about it, if they are from the hearing population, they must decipher between the hearing population and Deaf Culture in order to maintain respectful relationships with the two. While I was growing up, I found that most hearing people have trouble respecting Deaf Culture because they lack common knowledge of the “change in culture.” Consistently, I have found this to be the issue as Deaf Culture is not being taught in the public-school setting like other cultures. In an uneducated, hearing person’s eyes, a “deaf” person should speak and understand things as they would. Even though both cultures technically live in America and speak American languages, it is most important to understand that they are entirely different.
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.
Two centuries ago, the Deaf community arose in American society as a linguistic minority. Members of this community share a particular human condition, hearing impairment. However, the use of American Sign Language, as their main means of communicating, and attendance to a residential school for people with deafness also determine their entry to this micro-culture. Despite the fact that Deaf activists argue that their community is essentially an ethnic group, Deaf culture is certainly different from any other cultures in the United States. Deaf-Americans cannot trace their ancestry back to a specific country, nor do Deaf neighborhoods exist predominantly throughout the nation. Additionally, more than ninety percent of deaf persons are born from hearing parents (Singleton and Tittle 222). Consequently, they often feel isolated from their families, as they do not even share the same language. Non-hearing children born into hearing families are more likely to attend a regular public school with typical peers, causing them to have little contact with other members from the Deaf community. Therefore, this community embraces a diverse group of individuals, who are surprisingly different from the rest of the members of their own families. This situation causes a cross-cultural conflict, which others believe needs fixing. Nevertheless, society should not perceive the Deaf community as a disability group but as a discrete linguistic minority, rich in history, values, and traditions.
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.
“Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things” (American). For centuries, people from all walks of life have been using their hands to communicate with one another, and for centuries people from all walks of life have been learning. Today I am following in their footsteps with a passion from God for the deaf language, culture, and souls. For almost a decade, an intense ardor for American Sign Language and a desire to reach its native users for Christ seeded itself in my soul, wove its roots deeper and deeper, and blossomed into one of the greatest loves of my life. American Sign Language is a unique language with a rich history that not only provides a service to people in the deaf culture, but also to hearing people who seek to attain fluency.
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
Bahan, Ben. Hoffmeister, Robert. Lane, Harlan. A Journey into the Deaf World. USA: Dawn Sign Press.
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.
In the book Seeing Voices, the author describes the world of the deaf, which he explores with extreme passion. The book begins with the history of deaf people in the United States of America, the horrible ways in which they had been seen and treated, and their continuing struggle to gain hospitality in the hearing world. Seeing Voices also examines the visual language of the deaf, sign language, which is as expressive and as rich as any spoken language. This book covers a variety of topics in deaf studies, which includes sign language, the neurology of deafness, the treatment of Deaf American citizens in history, and the linguistic and social challenges that the deaf community face. In this book, Oliver Sacks does not view the deaf as people having a condition that can be treated, instead he sees the deaf more like a racial group. This book is divided into three parts. In the first part, Oliver Sacks states a strong case for sign language, saying it is in fact a complete language and that it is as comprehensive as English, French, Chinese, and any other spoken language. He also describes the unhappy story of oralism (this is the education of deaf students through oral language by using lip reading, speech, and mimicking the mouth shapes and breathing patterns of speech)) in deaf children’s education. In addition, the first part is about the history of deaf people as well as information about deafness. It also includes the author’s own introduction to the world of the deaf.
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...
In the short story “Signs and Symbols,” Vladmir Nabokov entices the reader with the story of a concerned elderly couple who visits their mentally unstable son on his birthday at the sanitarium. This visit is further complicated by the son’s attempt to take his life, which compels the hospital staff at the sanitarium to prevent the parents from meeting their son. This circumstance then embarks on the difficult journey that life has been for this mother and father of their mentally deranged child. Nabokov provides a touching story to his readers and does this through: the illustration of the characters, the setting, and keeps the readers interest by presenting the story in a suspenseful way that it leaves the reader thirsting for more.