Speaking Of Words: Language Death

By Michael Ferber, InDepth NH

A few years ago a controversy arose at UNH over American Sign Language. For a long time the introductory course in it had two or three sections, but suddenly the sections ballooned to eight or ten. A commission was set up to look into the reasons for this surprising jump in students. Were they all really interested in communicating with deaf people? Students planning to be social workers had long been taking a year of ASL to help them in their future work, but these new students were not making such plans.

What we found out is that a lot of students had learned it was easy to get a good grade in a year-long course in ASL and thereby dispose of the foreign-language requirement for the BA. A survey showed that the average grade was A- and the amount of homework very modest; with twice as much homework students in first-year Spanish were earning an average grade of B-. This seemed unfair, somehow, but what could be done? I was appointed to the commission, so I read several books about ASL, watched videos, and listened carefully to a colleague on the commission who was a native signer as well as native speaker of English and a professor of linguistics at UNH Manchester. I did not master ASL, but I learned a lot about it.

As I discussed the problem in my own department (English) and the Languages Department I found there was a good deal of ignorance about it, some of which I had shared before joining the commission. Some thought that ASL was the same as “signing English,” that is, spelling out English with manual equivalents of letters, something like Braille or Morse Code. Such a thing exists, but that is not ASL, which is in no way dependent on English or on any other spoken language. The fact that it is called American Sign Language means only that it is the sign language used by the deaf in America (and Canada outside Quebec). Some signers of ASL do not know English at all, though most have learned to read and write English, and some to lip-read it, and some to vocalize it.

ASL is a language in its own right. It is a “natural language” like English and Urdu. It is not a pidjin, which is a limited system constructed by adults to communicate across two or more languages; it is more like a creole, which is typically the product of children. ASL, and the other sign languages around the world, were created by deaf people, with at least a large input by children signing it as their first language.

Anyone studying it as a second language will be struck at how differently the words are ordered from the way they are in English. The train of signs usually begins with the topic, not what we call the grammatical subject. For example, “Do you have many children?” would begin with children: CHILDREN + HAVE + MANY? + YOU. The YOU (pointing a finger) may be left out, of course, as it may be implied by the situation, and the question may be indicated by a raised eyebrow.

Sometimes the word order reflects the actual sequence of events: NEW YORK + THERE + HOTEL + ARRIVE + FINISH + TIRED + I = “I was exhausted by the time I arrived at the hotel in New York.” FINISH is a sign that indicates the completed aspect of the preceding verb, making it similar here to the English past tense. The “I” at the end is another pointing finger, very possibly omitted.

There is a lot of pointing in ASL, of course, and it means that it can incorporate a large number of pronouns. If you are telling a long story about your family gathering at Christmas, the first time you mention your mother you sign MOTHER and point to a space on one side of the line of sight between you and the one you are signing to. When you first mention your father, your aunt, your sister, your brother, you assign them each to a unique spot on one or the other side of the line. Further mentions of the same people require just pointing to the right spot. In English “she” would be confusing, since it might refer to your mother, aunt, or sister, but in ASL they are differentiated in space. ASL has no problem either with the non-binary “they/them”: that non-binary person gets their own little spot in space waiting to be pointed at when needed.

Signing is done with the face as well as the hands. In a spoken language we can add quite a bit with hand gestures, tones of voice, and a few facial expressions as well, but ASL enlists the face in important ways, often as adverbs modifying the verb. An expression of disgust or contempt, with the tongue between the teeth like a strong th-sound, means “carelessly.” So “John does his homework” as a neutral fact would be JOHN + WRITES + HOMEWORK. But to say “John does his homework carelessly” (or “John blows off his homework”) would be JOHN + th-WRITES + HOMEWORK, where the th-gesture with the tongue is made during the manual sign for WRITE.

I have taken these examples from the books I read while serving on the commission. I did not learn enough or practice enough to talk with a deaf person, but I gained a lot of admiration for the community that created ASL and continually adds to it in brilliant and often witty ways. As for the unusual problem at UNH, it was pretty much resolved when it was discovered that each department in the College of Liberal Arts can decide if ASL counts as the language requirement for their majors. English and many other departments decided not to count it, though the linguistics majors may take it as their second foreign language requirement. Certainly, if you are studying English literature, knowing some French or Latin is more useful than knowing ASL. But students who really care about it can still study it, and if they really care about it they will grow a new and wonderful visual language in their head.

I am happy to hear from readers: mferber@unh.edu. If any of them know ASL and can correct any mistakes, I would be especially glad to learn from them.

Michael Ferber moved to New Hampshire in 1987 to join the English Department at UNH, from which he is now retired. Before that he earned his BA in Ancient Greek at Swarthmore College and his doctorate in English at Harvard, taught at Yale, and served on the staff of the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy in Washington, DC. In 1968 he stood trial in Federal Court in Boston for conspiracy to violate the draft law, with the pediatrician Benjamin Spock and three other men. He has published many books and articles on literature, and has a deep interest in linguistics. He is married to Susan Arnold; they have a daughter in San Francisco.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.