The Language
Those within Deaf Culture share a common language: American Sign Language (ASL). The most important part of learning Deaf Culture is learning ASL. Deaf people pride their culture and the pride of their culture is the pride of their language. American Sign Language was first truly recognized as a language a little over 50 years ago, when William Stokoe, Carl Cronenberg, and Dorothy Casterline wrote the idea that Deaf people had a language of their own: and so the Dictionary of American Sign Language was published.
ASL was not always considered a language, between the late 1800s and mid-1900s, sign language was a substandard practice. The publishing of William Stokoe Dictionary of American Sign Language was the first in its era and the field of linguistics to fully break down ASL into components understood by others, and this proved that it was more than “English on the hands” or mere “pictures in the air” as people originally thought. American Sign Language was a living, breathing, and linguistic masterpiece that was comprised of and for Deaf people within North America. For deaf and hard-of-hearing people, sign language provided a clear and effective means of communication. What was once disregarded as a “substandard” form of gesturing, is now recognized as a fully systematic method of communication.
American Sign Language (ASL) is not universal, despite what many believe. Similar to spoken languages, each country, each continent has its very own sign language. ASL closely resembles French Sign Language as opposed to other English-speaking countries’ sign language like England, which uses British Sign Language (BSL). Because of the American Sign Language founders, Edward Miner Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc, both sign languages share quite a few signs directly from France. Gallaudet was a hearing American who traveled to France in hopes of learning how to formally educate the Deaf. Since France had an established School for the Deaf, Institut Royal des Sourds-Muets, in Paris, what better place for Gallaudet to travel and meet, the first deaf teacher of the deaf, Laurent Clerc and a previous student of Institut Royal des Sourds-Muets. After Gallaudet invited Clerc back to America, Gallaudet learned Sign Language from Clerc during their voyage and later established a college that would educate Deaf adults around the world: Gallaudet University.
Just as English has borrowed or loaned words from other spoken languages, ASL is a combination of its own natural origination and loan signs from the French language.
