{"id":51457,"date":"2012-10-08T11:00:01","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T16:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=51457"},"modified":"2013-02-11T03:25:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T08:25:00","slug":"black-and-white-vernacular-in-american-sign-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/10\/08\/black-and-white-vernacular-in-american-sign-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Black & White Vernacular in American Sign Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Racialicious<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Frances Stead Sellers at the Washington Post<\/em><\/a> has a fascinating account of the differences in Black and White American sign language. \u00a0Sellers profiles a 15-year-old girl named Carolyn who in 1968 was transferred from the\u00a0Alabama School for the Negro Deaf and Blind to an integrated school, only to learn that she couldn’t understand much of what was being signed in class.<\/p>\n

White American sign language used more one-handed signs, a smaller signing space, stayed generally lower, and included less repetition. \u00a0Some of the signs were\u00a0subtlety\u00a0different, while others were significantly different.<\/p>\n

“Well-dressed”:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“Pregnant”:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As is typical, the White students in the class did not adapt to Carolyn’s vernacular; she had to learn theirs. So she became bilingual. \u00a0Sellers explains:<\/p>\n

She learned entirely new signs for such common nouns as \u201cshoe\u201d and \u201cschool.\u201d She began to communicate words such as \u201cwhy\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t know\u201d with one hand instead of two as she and her black friends had always done. She copied the white students who lowered their hands to make the signs for \u201cwhat for\u201d and \u201cknow\u201d closer to their chins than to their foreheads. And she imitated the way white students mouthed words at the same time as they made manual signs for them.<\/p>\n

Whenever she went home, [Carolyn] carefully switched back to her old way of communicating.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These distinctions are still present today, as are\u00a0the White-centric rules that led Carolyn to adopt White sign language in school and the racism that privileges White spoken vernacular as “proper English.” \u00a0For example, referring to the way she uses more space when she signs, student Dominique Flagg explains:<\/p>\n

People sometimes think I am mad or have an attitude when I am just chatting with my friends, professors and other people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The little girl who transferred schools and discovered that White people signed differently than her is now Dr. McCaskill, a professor of deaf studies. You can learn more about the racial politics of American sign language from her book, The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Racialicious. Frances Stead Sellers at the Washington Post has a fascinating account of the differences in Black and White American sign language. \u00a0Sellers profiles a 15-year-old girl named Carolyn who in 1968 was transferred from the\u00a0Alabama School for the Negro Deaf and Blind to an integrated school, only to learn that she couldn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,15,23384,253,283,285,1760,1757],"class_list":["post-51457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-culture","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-history","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51457"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51463,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51457\/revisions\/51463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}