10 minute read
The Black ASL Project: An Overview
ASL Version: https://youtu.be/C6X6e1e1BOM
Dr. Carolyn McCaskill, Gallaudet University
A graduate of the Alabama School for the Deaf, 1972, Gallaudet in 1977, BA; 1979, MA & 2005, PH.D. She is the Founding Director of the newly Center for Black Deaf Studies at Gallaudet. She is also a Professor in the Deaf Studies Department. Carolyn is the co-author of groundbreaking research and book, The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Its History and Structure, published in 2011 (with Ceil Lucas, Robert Bayley, and Joseph Hill). She is also an associate producer on the documentary Signing Black in America, with Joseph Hill and Ceil Lucas, produced by the Language & Life Project, North Carolina State University, 2020.
Dr. Ceil Lucas, Gallaudet University
Ceil Lucas is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at Gallaudet University and editor of the journal Sign Language Studies. She has conducted extensive sociolinguistic research on American Sign Language (ASL) as well as research on African American English. Her books include Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language (with Robert Bayley and Clayton Valli), The Linguistics of American Sign Language, 5th edition (with Clayton Valli, Kristen Mulrooney, and Miako Villanueva), and The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Its History and Structure (with Carolyn McCaskill, Robert Bayley, and Joseph Hill). She is an associate producer for the documentary Signing Black in America, with Carolyn McCaskill and Joseph Hill, produced by the Language & Life Project at the North Carolina State University, 2020.
Dr. Joseph C. Hill, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology
Dr. Joseph C. Hill is an Associate Professor in the Department of ASL and Interpreting Education, Associate Director of the Center on Culture and Language, and Assistant Dean for Faculty Recruitment and Retention at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institutes for the Deaf. His research interests are the socio-historical and -linguistic aspects of Black American Sign Language and the American Deaf community’s attitudes and ideologies about existing signing varieties. His contributions include The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Its History and Structure (2011) which he co-authored with Carolyn McCaskill, Ceil Lucas, and Robert Bayley and Language Attitudes in the American Deaf Community (2012). He is also one of the associate producers for the documentary, Signing Black in America, with Carolyn McCaskill and Ceil Lucas, produced by the Language & Life Project at the North Carolina State University, 2020. Link: www.josephchill.com
Dr. Robert Bayley, University of California, Davis
Robert Bayley is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at UC Davis and an associate member of the Centre for Research on Language Contact at York University in Toronto. His research focuses on language variation and language socialization, especially in bilingual and second language populations. Professor Bayley is the author of more than 150 publications, including 16 co- authored and co-edited volumes and articles in major journals such as American Speech, Asia- Pacific Language Variation, Language, Language Variation and Change, and Studies in Second Language Acquisition. Currently he is conducting research on the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence by second language learners and, with Kristen Kennedy Terry, working on a book on social network analysis for second language acquisition research.
The Black ASL Project: An Overview
On February 1, 2024, the Black ASL team gave a presentation via Zoom for the membership of the Registry of Interpreters of the Deaf (RID), coordinated by Kayla Marshall. What follows is a summary of the project’s findings.
The first large-scale systematic study of Black ASL reported that, at least with respect to some of the variables analyzed, Black signers were more likely to produce signs in citation form (+cf), the standard form found in ASL dictionaries and taught in ASL classes, than their white counterparts were (McCaskill et al. 2011/2020). Moreover, the older Black signers, those who were fifty-five or older in the first decade of the twenty-first century and had attended segregated schools, were more likely to produce +cf variants than their younger Black counterparts who had attended integrated schools. For example, Black signers are more likely to produce signs like KNOW or TEACHER 2 in their citation form on the forehead, while white signers are more likely to produce them somewhat lower (Lucas et al. 2001, McCaskill et al. 2020 [2011]). Similarly, Black signers are more likely than their white counterparts to use the two-handed variant of signs, the traditional +cf form. Examples include the signs WANT, DON’T-KNOW, TIRED, and TEACHER. Figures 1a and 1b and 2a and 2b illustrate the +cf (forehead) and –cf (lowered) versions of the sign TEACHER and the +cf (two-handed) and –cf (one-handed) forms of the sign DON’T-KNOW.
Figure 1
(a) TEACHER in citation form.
(b) TEACHER in lowered (non-citation) form.
Figure 2
(a) DON’T KNOW in two-handed (citation) form.
(b) DON’T KNOW in one-handed (non-citation) form.
Figure 3
Lowered signs by age, and one-handed vs. two-handed signs by age: Results from four studies3 .
Figure 3 summarizes the results of four studies of the lowering of signs produced on the forehead in citation form and two-handed signs that can also be produced as one- handed. In every case, the Southern Black signers produced a smaller percentage of signs in –cf form than their white counterparts did. That is, the difference between Black and white ASL varieties is quantitative, rather than qualitative.
In addition to producing more +cf signs, including those produced at a lower level and more two-handed signs, the Black signers studied in McCaskill et al. (2011/2022) used markedly less mouthing of English words and phrases than their white counterparts did, as well as a larger signing space, and they had a tendency to repeat the same sign within a sentence. McCaskill et al. also report on a number of lexical differences. Finally, Black ASL exhibits many borrowings, both lexical items and phrases, from African American English (AAE), two of which, the signs MY BAD and TRIPPIN’, are shown in Figures 4 and 5. These features add up to a distinct variety of ASL.
Figure 4
MY BAD
Figure 5
(a). TRIPPIN’, forehead with movement out.
(b). TRIPPIN’, forehead, short, repeated movement, no movement out.
The project has shown that a distinct variety of American Sign Language, known as Black ASL, developed in the segregated schools for deaf African Americans in the US South during the pre-civil rights era. The project found:
very clear evidence of deaf teachers, both Black and White, in many of the Black schools/departments, that is, fluent signers who provided solid models of ASL. These models combine with the lack of oralism to account for the more traditional and standard usage in Black ASL, including the lack of mouthing of English;
strong evidence that the Black and white students did not interact with each other, even if their schools were located close to each other;
strong evidence of the fierce racist resistance to integration, to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, and to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and, in all cases, integration required intervention from the federal or state governments. No state voluntarily desegregated before 1954, and only four did so shortly after the Brown v. Board decision;
that Black deaf people are of course full-fledged members of the American Black community and are thus in contact with African American English (AAE). As our research shows, one feature of Black ASL is the incorporation of AAE lexical items and phrases.
The project findings can be found in McCaskill et al. (2011/2020); the project is also discussed in the documentary Signing Black in America, produced by the Language and Life Project at North Carolina State University (2020), available for free on YouTube.
Some specific questions for discussion arise from this summary and from the February 1 presentation, questions which may be useful in interpreter training settings:
Have you ever interpreted (a play, personal conversation, comedy show, VRI, church etc.) for a Black client where standard English and African American English were used? How does code-switching impact the interpreting process?
Have you ever interpreted (a play, personal conversation, comedy show, VRI, church etc.) for a Black Deaf client where ASL and BASL were used? How does code-switching impact the interpreting process?
When is it appropriate for an interpreter to voice African American English or sign BASL? Should the race of the interpreter be considered? Why or why not?
How does interpreting in Black ethnic/cultural environments during interpreting education programs or professional development courses impact an interpreter’s preparation?
Notes
1 Portions of this article have been adapted, with permission, from Lucas, C., R. Bayley, J. C. Hill, & C. McCaskill. (2022). The segregation and desegregation of the Southern schools for the deaf: The relationship between language policy and dialect development. Language 98.4: e173198. Figures 1–5 appear with permission of Gallaudet University Press. They appear in McCaskill, C., C. Lucas, R. Bayley, and J. Hill (2011/2020), The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Its History and Structure.
2 We use small caps for ASL signs, including those for words and phrases originating in African American English. For example, TEACHER refers to the ASL sign, not to the English word.
3 Data for lowered signs for northern Black ASL and white ASL are from Lucas et al. 2001. Data for one- handed vs. two-handed signs for northern Black ASL and white ASL are from Lucas et al. 2007. Data from white signers were collected in California, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington State. Data from no southern African Americans were collected in California, Massachusetts, and Missouri. Data for Louisiana ASL are from Bayley & Lucas 2015. Data for southern Black ASL are from McCaskill et al. (2011/2020). Older signers in all studies are fifty-five or older. Younger signers in McCaskill et al. were younger than thirty-five, and in Lucas et al. 2001, Lucas et al. 2007 younger signers were younger than fifty-five.
References
Bayley, R., and C. Lucas. (2015). Phonological variation in Louisiana ASL: An exploratory study. New perspectives on language variety in the South: Historical and contemporary perspectives, ed. by Michael Picone and Catherine E. Davis, 565–80. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Language and Life Project, North Carolina State University. Signing Black in America. Video documentary. W. Wolfram, executive producer; D. Cullinan and N. Hutcheson, video producers. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiLltM1tJ9M&t=6s&ab_channel=TheLanguage%26LifeProject.
Lucas, C., A. Goeke, R. Briesacher, and R. Bayley. (2007). Phonological variation in American Sign Language: 2 hands or 1? Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 36, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Lucas, C. R. Bayley, J. C. Hill, and C. Mc Caskill. (2022). The segregation and desegregation of the Southern schools for the deaf: The relationship between language policy and dialect Development. Language 98.4: e173-198.
Lucas, C., R. Bayley, and C. Valli (2001). Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
McCaskill, C., C. Lucas, R. Bayley, and J. Hill (2011/2020). The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Its History and Structure. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. (The 2020 publication is an updated paperback version of the 2011 one, produced to accompany the Signing Black in America documentary.)
