Black American Sign Language | |
---|---|
Fingerspelling of "BASL" | |
Region | North America |
Native speakers
|
(this article does not contain any information regarding the number of speakers) |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog | None |
Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used predominantly by the Black Deaf in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the American South. Like other schools at the time, schools for the deaf were segregated based upon race, creating two language communities among deaf signers: White deaf signers at White schools and Black deaf signers at Black schools. Today, BASL is still used by signers in the South despite schools having been legally desegregated for 60 years.
Linguistically, BASL differs from other varieties of ASL in its phonology, syntax, and lexicon. BASL tends to have a larger signing space meaning that some signs are produced further away from the body than in other dialects. Signers of BASL also tend to prefer two-handed variants of signs while White signers tend to prefer one-handed variants of signs. Some signs are different in BASL as well, with some borrowings from African American English.
History
Like many educational institutions for hearing children during the 1800s and early 1900s, schools for deaf children were segregated based on race. This segregation created two speech communities that led to ASL diverging into two dialects: one spoken by the White deaf and another, Black American Sign Language (BASL), spoken by the Black deaf.
The first school for the deaf, The American School for the Deaf (ASD), was founded in 1817 but did not admit their first Black deaf student until 1952. Of the schools for the deaf that began to be created, few admitted students of color.[1] Seeing a lack of educational opportunities for the Black deaf, Dr. Platt Skinner founded the first school exclusively for the Black deaf—The School for the Colored Deaf, Dumb, and Blind—in 1856 located in Niagara Falls, New York saying: "[it] is the first effort of its kind in the country ... We receive and instruct those and only those who are refused admission to all other institutions and are despised on account of their color."[2] The school moved to Trenton, New Jersey in 1860 and closed in 1866.[1][3] After the closure of the School for the Colored Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, no Northern state created an institution for the Black deaf. Despite northern states outlawing segregation by 1900, integration was sparse as some institutions allowed Black students and others did not.[1][4]
After the foundation and success of the American School for the Deaf, many other institutions for the deaf were founded throughout the country. As schools, particularly in the South, were segregated, a number of states in the South created separate schools or departments for the Black deaf. The District of Columbia was the first to establish a school for the Black deaf in 1857, later desegregating in 1858. The last state to create an institution for the Black deaf was Louisiana in 1938. Black Deaf children thus became a language community isolated from the White Deaf allowing for diverging dialects to develop. Further, the language socialization of the two groups were also different. As the education of White children was privileged over Black children, the prominent pedagogical method of the time, Oralism, was not as strictly applied to the Black deaf students. This afforded Black deaf students more opportunities to use ASL than their White peers as Oralist methods often forbade usage of sign language. Despite the holding in Brown v. Board of Education which declared racial segregation in schools unconstitutional, desegregation was slow to come to many schools, and schools for the deaf were no exception with the last school desegregating in 1978, 24 years after the decision.[1][4]
As schools began to integrate in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, students and teachers noticed differences in the way Black students and White students signed. Dr. Carolyn McCaskill, who attended a school for the Black deaf, recalls the challenge of understanding the dialect of ASL spoken by her White principal and teachers: "When I began attending the school, I did not understand the teacher and she did not understand me because we used different signs."[5] Carl Cronenberg was the first to discuss differences between BASL and White ASL in his appendices of the 1965 version of the Dictionary of American Sign Language.[1][6] Work has continued to be done on BASL with the Black ASL Project at Gallaudet University which published The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL describing the development and features of BASL.[1]
State | White School
Established |
Black School
or Department Established |
Integration |
---|---|---|---|
Washington, DC | 1857 | 1857 (dept.) | 1958 |
North Carolina | 1845 | 1868–1869 | 1967 |
Maryland | 1868 | 1872 | 1956 |
Georgia | 1846 | 1882 | 1965 |
Tennessee | 1845 | 1881 (dept.) | 1965 |
Mississippi | 1854 | 1882 (dept.) | 1965 |
South Carolina | 1849 | 1883 (dept.) | 1966 |
Kentucky | 1823 | 1884 (dept.) | 1954–1960 |
Florida | 1885 | 1885 | 1965 |
Texas | 1857 | 1887 | 1965 |
Arkansas | 1850/1867 | 1867 | 1967 |
Alabama | 1858 | 1868 | 1968 |
Missouri | 1861 | 1888 (dept.) | 1954 |
Virginia | 1839 | 1909 | 1965 |
Oklahoma | 1898 | 1909 (dept.) | 1962 |
Kansas | 1861 | 1888 (dept.) | 1954 |
Louisiana | 1852 | 1938 | 1978 |
West Virginia | 1870 | 1926 | 1956 |
Phonology
Anecdotal accounts have suggested that signers of Black American Sign Language (BASL) utilize a larger signing space. Investigation into the signing space of BASL signers has found these claims to generally be true. In most situations, a BASL signer is more likely to produce a sign outside of the typical signing space than a White signer. Locative and indicating verbs (though not plain verbs), adjectives, and adverbs are most likely to utilize a larger signing space, while less marked forms such as pronouns, determiners, plain verbs, and nouns tend to be less likely to be produced outside the typical signing space.[1]
BASL signers tend to favor lowered variants of side-of-forehead signs resulting in contact at the cheek. Early research showed that BASL signers chose lowered signs at a rate of 53 percent with grammatical category being the strongest constraint.[7][8] Other conditioning environments for lowered signs depend on preceding location, namely signs produced in front of the body condition lowered sign variants while signs produced at the head cause signers to favor non-lowered forms.[1]
Signers of BASL also tend to favor two-handed signs more frequently than signers of White ASL, though these choices have systematic constraints. Signers tend to choose two-handed variants of a sign when the following sign is also two-handed and when the sign makes contact with the face or body. Conversely, if the preceding sign is one-handed, signers choose the one-handed variant, though the use of innovative one-handed forms, even in environments that favor them, still does not exceed 50%.[1]
Syntax
Unlike ASL, BASL allows for the frequent use of syntactic repetition. In a study conducted by Carolyn McCaskill, of 26 signers (13 Black and 13 White), there were 57 instances of repetition from Black signers compared to 19 from White signers, and of those 19 instances, 18 came from a single signer. The use of repetition by BASL signers is considered to be pragmatic rather than clarifying as most instances were of declarative statements and, cross-linguistically, pragmatic repetition in statements is common.[1]
A study in 2004 by Melanie Metzger and Susan Mather found that Black male signers used constructed action and constructed action along with constructed dialogue more often than White signers, but never used constructed dialogue by itself.[9] These results were not reproduced in a later study into constructed action and constructed dialogue by McCaskill, which found that Black signers not only used constructed dialogue, but did so more frequently than white signers.[1]
Lexical variation
Lexical variation between BASL and other dialects of ASL was first noted in the Dictionary of American Sign Language.[6] Older signers are more likely to use variant signs than younger signers, and most, having been developed in segregated schools for the Black Deaf, refer to every day life. Despite not knowing many of these variant signs, younger signers of BASL are aware of them.[1]
Earlier work looked at whether there was a relation between the dialect spoken by African Americans and the dialect signed by the African American (Black) Deaf. John Lewis found that a Black deaf signer had a rhythm that added "a 'songified' quality" which he related to the style of AAE.[10] A recent study by McCaskill did not find a similar phenomenon. The two studies differed in that Lewis' data came from a performance while McCaskill's was either natural or elicited. Some instances of lexical borrowing occurred but only in signers under 35.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o McCaskill, Carolyn; Ceil Lucas; Robert Bayley, and Joseph Hill. 2011. The Hidden Treasure of Black Asl: Its History and Structure. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press.
- ^ Skinner, Platt. 1859. The Mute and the Deaf. Niagara City, N.Y.: .
- ^ Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Area, . n.d.. Site of Dr. P.H. Skinner's and Jarusha Skinner's School for Colored Deaf, Dumb and Blind Children. Web.
- ^ a b Douglas, Davison. 2005. Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865–1954. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ McCaskill, Carolyn. 2014. Black ASL. Video. Accessed 21 March 2015. In ASL with English captions
- ^ a b Stokoe, William; Dorothy Casterline, and Carl Cronenberg. 1965. Appendix D: Sign Language and Dialects.A Dictionary of American Sign Language, 313–19. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok.
- ^ Lucas, Ceil; Robert Bayley, and Clayton Valli. 2001. Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press.
- ^ Lucas, Ceil; Robert Bayley; Mary Rose, and Alyssa Wulf. 2002. Location Variation in American Sign Language.Sign Language Studies, 407–440. 2;
- ^ Metzger, Melanie, and Susan Mather. 2004. Constructed Dialogue and Constructed Action in Conversational Narratives in ASL. Poster presented at the Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research.
- ^ Lewis, John. 1998. Ebonics in American Sign Language: Stylistic Variation in African American Signers.Deaf Studies V: Towards 2000: Unity and Diversity ed. by C. Carroll. Washington, D.C.: College for Continuing Education, Gallaudet University.