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capri0mniI found a website that's up as a student resource for a particular curriculum in ASL (American Sign Language). The teacher's put up some pretty interesting stuff, including this brief (and, imnsho, chilling) history of signed languages in education: The Language of the Deaf.
I think I may want to do more research on that Milan Convention... But only when I'm in a resolutely cheerful mood, because otherwise, I'll either want to kill people, or go to bed with the covers pulled up for .... oh, I don't know ... maybe a year or so.
Anyway... that timeline of Signed Languages reminds me that I was going to a camp for handicapped children, when a) D/deaf* children were starting to be reclassified as handicapped, by government and social agencies,** b) Total Communication was just beginning to replace strict oralism, and c) I was at the perfect age to pick up a second language naturally.
What I learned at Wagon Road Camp was not true Sign Language (even though all the grown-ups told me it was [damned liars!]). But the building blocks of a visually based language got lodged in my brain in the final four years before my language centers ossified. I didn't even start to tackle Latin until well after puberty, and I took one semester of Spanish as a freshman in college. So, even though I rarely use it (with other people -- I still occassionally fingerspell, count things, and sign brief phrases to myself), ASL is the closest thing I have to a second language. And that may be why I got upset, and started hunting down resources on the Web, when I realized I was forgetting it.
Over the last few nights, I've been thinking about my relationship with sign language, and my use of it, and my relationship with Deaf-
World. On the one hand, I will never be a part of that culture -- even if both my eardrums were shattered tomorrow, I'd still have grown up in the Hearing World, and I'd carry the remnants of that culture with me till the day I died. So I admit there's an element of exoticism and fascination going on, and that part of my psyche, I find embarrassing. On the other hand, even though the Deaf don't consider deafness to be a disability, much of the Hearing World still does; a Deaf university student, for example (unless she's going to a Deaf university, like Gallaudet) will need to go to the Disabled Student Services Office for an interpreter, instead of the Foreign Language Student Services Office (even though that same university may be teaching ASL under its Foreign Language Dept). So I am more likely to cross paths with her than my nondisabled Hearing peers.
So, um, yes.
I was going to post a second link from the same site about Signing Etiquette, to give examples of how Deafness is truly a distinct culture from the Hearing World.
But now that I've written this all out, I think that's a completely different topic, altogether.
* Capital-D "Deaf" refers to the cultural group, and lowercase-d "deaf" refers to the simple inability to hear. You can be hearing and Deaf -- if you're a hearing child raised by Deaf parents, for example, and Sign is your first language. You can also be 'deaf as a post', and still be part of the Hearing world, and culture.
**The Deaf do not consider themselves to be a part of the Disability community, but part of a linguistic community, and culture (unless, of course, a Deaf person also has a disability -- it happens).
I think I may want to do more research on that Milan Convention... But only when I'm in a resolutely cheerful mood, because otherwise, I'll either want to kill people, or go to bed with the covers pulled up for .... oh, I don't know ... maybe a year or so.
Anyway... that timeline of Signed Languages reminds me that I was going to a camp for handicapped children, when a) D/deaf* children were starting to be reclassified as handicapped, by government and social agencies,** b) Total Communication was just beginning to replace strict oralism, and c) I was at the perfect age to pick up a second language naturally.
What I learned at Wagon Road Camp was not true Sign Language (even though all the grown-ups told me it was [damned liars!]). But the building blocks of a visually based language got lodged in my brain in the final four years before my language centers ossified. I didn't even start to tackle Latin until well after puberty, and I took one semester of Spanish as a freshman in college. So, even though I rarely use it (with other people -- I still occassionally fingerspell, count things, and sign brief phrases to myself), ASL is the closest thing I have to a second language. And that may be why I got upset, and started hunting down resources on the Web, when I realized I was forgetting it.
Over the last few nights, I've been thinking about my relationship with sign language, and my use of it, and my relationship with Deaf-
World. On the one hand, I will never be a part of that culture -- even if both my eardrums were shattered tomorrow, I'd still have grown up in the Hearing World, and I'd carry the remnants of that culture with me till the day I died. So I admit there's an element of exoticism and fascination going on, and that part of my psyche, I find embarrassing. On the other hand, even though the Deaf don't consider deafness to be a disability, much of the Hearing World still does; a Deaf university student, for example (unless she's going to a Deaf university, like Gallaudet) will need to go to the Disabled Student Services Office for an interpreter, instead of the Foreign Language Student Services Office (even though that same university may be teaching ASL under its Foreign Language Dept). So I am more likely to cross paths with her than my nondisabled Hearing peers.
So, um, yes.
I was going to post a second link from the same site about Signing Etiquette, to give examples of how Deafness is truly a distinct culture from the Hearing World.
But now that I've written this all out, I think that's a completely different topic, altogether.
* Capital-D "Deaf" refers to the cultural group, and lowercase-d "deaf" refers to the simple inability to hear. You can be hearing and Deaf -- if you're a hearing child raised by Deaf parents, for example, and Sign is your first language. You can also be 'deaf as a post', and still be part of the Hearing world, and culture.
**The Deaf do not consider themselves to be a part of the Disability community, but part of a linguistic community, and culture (unless, of course, a Deaf person also has a disability -- it happens).
no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 03:16 pm (UTC)I have been meaning to ask: How did you manage to latch onto this thesis of yours?
no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 06:21 pm (UTC)(Well, to me.)
Basically, I originally wanted to do something on the women's only language in China, but the adviser strongly recommended we all do something we could find stuff on in Halifax. I was pretty stumped, though.
We did a tour of the Archives here that included looking at the old records dating back to... oh, 1818 or something, of the Halifax Women's Council (still in existence, really interesting story there, but I'm too tired/sweaty to remember it all right now). I was utterly fascinated by this book of minutes, and every time they let us look at something, I'd go back to this book. I remember reading a bit in it, as an aside, about "fundraising for the Society for the Protection of the Feeble-minded".
I came home that day and was nattering at Don about how much I was struggling finding a thesis topic, and while we were brainstorming, I mentioned this paragraph. The more I looked into this stuff, the more I learned about disability in Halifax, and the more it seemed obvious to do that as my topic.
I focused down on the NS School of the Deaf & Dumb because it had less stuff than the School for the Blind. I'm going to be swimming in school records in the fall.
Email me your address? anna@annaoverseas.com. I'll forward it along to you this evening. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-04 08:19 pm (UTC)Harlan Lane's When the Mind Hears is an eminently readable (and terrifying! and heartening!) history of deaf people, including Milan and how people fought back. A library near you may even have the videotape version!
no subject
Date: 2009-08-05 03:28 am (UTC)--
And thanks for the link to Worldcat. My local library does have a copy of the book. But for some reason, the website is acting up, and I can't log into my account.
I'll try again, tomorrow, after the library's open again, and their web wizard has a chance to fix whatever's wrong.
In the meantime, I went surfing around WorldCat for more ASL things, and found mostly children's and babies' dictionaries :-P. But I am now lusting after this: Signing the Body Poetic: Essays on American Sign Language Literature. After all, you cannot really appreciate or understand a language until you can get your mind around its playful, creative, side (So says this recovering English Major).
--
And it's not so much even that I don't get to use sign language in 3-D space as much anymore, that's giving me angst, but the loss of the ideas of the signs from my mind -- concepts that just can't be fully translated into English.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-05 03:36 am (UTC)Amen about the untranslatable. ASL is so exquisite at describing humans interacting with each other—the fluid transitions between the human-classifier 1-hand and the eye-classifier bent-V hand, when combined with eye gaze and facial expression.
Yeah, written English just doesn't get there.