Speaking of Languages: Sign Language?

[Daenerys]

The thread about languages for a Victorianist got me thinking about my own language test.  Has anyone ever heard of fulfilling the language requirement by using American Sign Language?  I know some, as a good friend of mine is deaf, and it's related to my research area, which is disability studies (20th Century American lit).

Thoughts??  I am not "fluent" in sign language but I could get there pretty quickly with tutoring from my friend.  I think I could become competent in it a lot faster than I could in German, which I skated through in undergrad, and which is only relevant to my field to the extent that I could read about Hitler's eugenics program. (Ugh.)

Thanks!

 

[unræd]

Yup! I know a couple of people at my current institution who have fulfilled departmental language reqs w/ ASL. The procedure was largely the same as a translation exam in a written language: they viewed a video of an asl instructor signing a text, and then their translation of it was graded for accuracy by the instructor. 

Although I've also been in schools where the department disallowed it, so your best bet, as always, is to check with your specific DGS.

[anxiousphd]

A good friend of mine met her language requirement for the MA at Boston College using ASL.

[heliogabalus]

I find ASL and sign languages absolutely fascinating, but since I assume foreign languages are required because of research in English PhDs, and the written languages for the deaf are the same as the national languages, I find it strange that any English graduate advisor would allow ASL to count. If you were in a linguistics program it would perfect sense, though.

[toasterazzi]

My department accepts ASL to meet the requirement, but I know some folks in other departments here who've had to fight to get their department to accept it for their requirement.

[fuzzylogician]

Yep, so as noted above, schools vary with regard to whether they accept ASL as a foreign language. Partly this is to do with simple misconceptions, and occasionally it has to do with technicalities, like at some point in the sequence of Language classes, schools might have a writing component that ASL simply can't satisfy because it's not a written language. Some institutions find a way around that and others think it's a sticking point.. so you'll need to figure out what your institution is like, and keep in mind that you might need to fight to have ASL recognized as a second language. For the record, ASL is a different language from English, and if you speak it (and English), then you are bi-lingual. I (and other linguists) think it absolutely should count, but that doesn't mean it's not sometimes a fight to get it recognized. 

[Glasperlenspieler]

6 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

I (and other linguists) think it absolutely should count, but that doesn't mean it's not sometimes a fight to get it recognized. 

Doesn't this sort of depend on the purpose of the foreign language requirement? If it's just to prove that you have the ability to communicate with/learn another language, then certainly it should count. However, I think most departments in the humanities view the language requirement as a research tool. Xhosa is unquestionably a different language, but it's probably not going to be very helpful if I want to study ancient Athenian tragedy. So, I suspect that most departments that disallow it do so not because they don't think ASL is a language, but rather because they don't see it as a viable research tool.

(note: I'm not trying to take a stand on the issue here, but this does seem to be what's at stake)

[hj2012]

12 minutes ago, Glasperlenspieler said:

Doesn't this sort of depend on the purpose of the foreign language requirement? If it's just to prove that you have the ability to communicate with/learn another language, then certainly it should count. However, I think most departments in the humanities view the language requirement as a research tool. Xhosa is unquestionably a different language, but it's probably not going to be very helpful if I want to study ancient Athenian tragedy. So, I suspect that most departments that disallow it do so not because they don't think ASL is a language, but rather because they don't see it as a viable research tool.

(note: I'm not trying to take a stand on the issue here, but this does seem to be what's at stake)

Sure, but OP says their research area is disability studies, for which ASL is absolutely useful. From the experiences I've heard from folks working on deaf cultures or disability studies who struggled to get ASL accepted for a language requirement, it seems that part of the reason why departments don't see ASL as a viable research tool is precisely because they don't really think of it as a language. 

[Glasperlenspieler]

13 minutes ago, hj2012 said:

Sure, but OP says their research area is disability studies, for which ASL is absolutely useful. From the experiences I've heard from folks working on deaf cultures or disability studies who struggled to get ASL accepted for a language requirement, it seems that part of the reason why departments don't see ASL as a viable research tool is precisely because they don't really think of it as a language. 

Oops, totally missed that. Sorry! I certainly didn't mean to imply that ASL would never be a viable research tool, only that which languages count as a viable research tools depends heavily on what field you're in. I would hope that any department with strengths in disability studies allows ASL and if not I suspect your diagnosis is correct.

[heliogabalus]

But if you're studying literature (as in written texts), the written form of ASL is English. (I know ASL is a different language, closer to French sign language than English, etc.; My sister speaks it.) So, how would it help research? If you are doing fieldwork in linguistics or sociology it could be crucial, but I have a hard time figuring out how ASL would help you access literature related to disability studies--unless maybe you're focusing on film. With written texts, I'd think being able to read braille would be more helpful. 

[fuzzylogician]

21 hours ago, heliogabalus said:

With written texts, I'd think being able to read braille would be more helpful. 

Wouldn't that depend on your area of study? If the student wants to study the deaf community, ASL is obviously more helpful, and conversely braille if they are focusing on the blind. If neither and they just need to satisfy a requirement, why not ASL, again? 

In any event, my comment above was about allowing ASL to satisfy the foreign language requirement in general (stemming from a current struggle my department is having at my own institution, where ASL can't ever count because it isn't a written language!). Of course there might be other factors that go into approving a particular language for a particular student, to do with their research and other goals this requirement might have. We could also talk about whether Xhosa could satisfy a language requirement for a Romance lit student (perhaps not). In this particular case, I would think that allowing ASL to satisfy the requirement is entirely within limits, since the student in question is interested in disability studies, with the caveats above. 

[hj2012]

14 hours ago, heliogabalus said:

But if you're studying literature (as in written texts), the written form of ASL is English. (I know ASL is a different language, closer to French sign language than English, etc.; My sister speaks it.) So, how would it help research? If you are doing fieldwork in linguistics or sociology it could be crucial, but I have a hard time figuring out how ASL would help you access literature related to disability studies--unless maybe you're focusing on film. With written texts, I'd think being able to read braille would be more helpful. 

Is literature confined to written text? There's also an argument for a more capacious definition of "literature" as such that might include, for example, the vibrant world of ASL literature. The inclusion of ASL literature raises fascinating and urgent questions about epistemological categories, performance and embodiment, technology and translation -- debates that continue to enrich literary and cultural studies, in my opinion. 

[cowgirlsdontcry]

I have seen one university's English Ph.D. program that allowed the foreign language requirements to be fulfilled by ASL. Most want French, Spanish or German (sometimes Italian) as those are the languages where most foreign language essays and criticism are found according to a French professor at my school. I have a two foreign language requirement and have fully met the requirements on one and half of the second. I have decided to audit an intensive review of Intro to Spanish (2-semesters in 1) to get me up to speed before taking the necessary intermediate Spanish. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do whatever it takes. Don't wait too long to begin foreign language requirements as most schools require that to be completed before comps.

[jackdacjson]

On 4/27/2017 at 2:51 AM, heliogabalus said:

But if you're studying literature (as in written texts), the written form of ASL is English. (I know ASL is a different language, closer to French sign language than English, etc.; My sister speaks it.) So, how would it help research? If you are doing fieldwork in linguistics or sociology it could be crucial, but I have a hard time figuring out how ASL would help you access literature related to disability studies--unless maybe you're focusing on film. With written texts, I'd think being able to read braille would be more helpful. 

The other thing I would add is that increasingly departments across the US/Canada expect their students to be able to work with non-written "texts". Indeed, my understanding is that it has become much harder and much rarer for textual/literary scholars working post-1890 or so to exclusively work with written texts. The study of film, TV, or new media is incredibly important, and so facility with sign language can be useful to those whose work is based in and on performance/bodily/recorded texts. As I argued on the Victorian language post, the reasons for acquiring (and requiring that we acquire) non-English language are vast, complicated, and should be based on specialization and interest. But I can imagine someone working in the contemporary field, informed by disability studies, reviewing and engaging with videos or live performances done in sign language. That kind of work is as important--and in some ways more important--than much of what most people do with their own language requirement. (Especially those who fulfill a language requirement and then never really work in the language again, a completely common occurrence.) And so, I'm really disappointed to hear of the struggle many go through to get ASL accepted and respected in their departments.

Anyway, total agreement with hj2012 and fuzzylogician.

 

Edited April 28, 2017 by jackdacjson
Pressed ctrl-enter by mistake.

[Daenerys]

On 4/28/2017 at 5:43 PM, jackdacjson said:

The other thing I would add is that increasingly departments across the US/Canada expect their students to be able to work with non-written "texts". Indeed, my understanding is that it has become much harder and much rarer for textual/literary scholars working post-1890 or so to exclusively work with written texts. The study of film, TV, or new media is incredibly important, and so facility with sign language can be useful to those whose work is based in and on performance/bodily/recorded texts. As I argued on the Victorian language post, the reasons for acquiring (and requiring that we acquire) non-English language are vast, complicated, and should be based on specialization and interest. But I can imagine someone working in the contemporary field, informed by disability studies, reviewing and engaging with videos or live performances done in sign language. That kind of work is as important--and in some ways more important--than much of what most people do with their own language requirement. (Especially those who fulfill a language requirement and then never really work in the language again, a completely common occurrence.) And so, I'm really disappointed to hear of the struggle many go through to get ASL accepted and respected in their departments.

Anyway, total agreement with hj2012 and fuzzylogician.

 

Wow!  Thank you all for the responses!  I have been busy with finals in my MA program and just stopped by today not knowing that this thread had become so large!

I wanted to directly address and agree with the comment above.  In my MA program we are required to take a course in visual rhetoric and a course in linguistics.  I have done some research into alternative texts and am interested in doing more.  What do rhetorical figures that encompass sound--  alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, rhyme--  mean to someone who can't hear?  How does experimental play with words on the page affect someone who is blind?  Last year, I read a short story (and it's driving me crazy that the name escapes me!) that had one main narrative, with an alternative narrative printed in small type in the margins.  The two working together gave more meaning to the piece than either would have been alone or written in sequence.  The whole thing kind of blew my mind, as it is totally outside the realm of our traditional linear definition of a "text" and got me wondering what else is out there adds meaning in unexpected ways.