Page 125 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

110 Reading Between the Signs

The Value of ASL and the Preservation of
Deaf Culture

For many members of the Deaf Community, they and
ASL are indistinguishable. Their self-concept is based
on being Deaf and being Deaf to them means using
ASL. Their feelings about ASL comfort them, just as using
ASL in communication with other Deaf people is made
comfortable by ASL. (Schein 1989, 37)
ASL is loved and cherished by the Deaf community. As their cre-
ation, ASL is “rooted biologically and culturally in Deaf people,
[and] is a unifying force in the Deaf community” (Tucker 1994,
368). Yet, it is oppressed by those who do not recognize its exis-
tence, its validity as a language, or its value in allowing deaf chil-
dren to access education with a language naturally suited to their
needs.
Perhaps it is the very oppression of ASL that engenders such
strong positive feelings about it. The experience is similar to other
“oppressed language communities” around the world. In France,
for example, two regional languages, Breton and Occitan, were
not allowed to be taught in school for hundreds of years. Yet they
were kept alive in the hearts and mouths of their speakers, who
passed them on to their children and wrote poetry and songs in
these languages. Often the subject of this art was how much the
language meant to them. This intense love for an endangered
language is something that we English speakers have probably
never experienced.
How Deaf People Feel about ASL
“Deaf adults often tell stories about the first time they saw ASL,
remembering in vivid detail their sense of ‘connection’ or ‘libera-
tion’ with the new language” (Rexroat 19). “When ASL entered
my life, I felt like I was born again…. It is my language. It is my
identity” (Finkle 1992, 7). Learning sign language “was like wak-
ing up in heaven…I felt almost as if ASL were biologically innate
to me. It was developed, refined and kept alive by deaf people,
and it feels right. It’s designed to meet our needs” (Ogden 1996,
143). As former president of the National Association of the Deaf
George Veditz so eloquently put it in 1913 in a lecture preserved
on film,

05 MINDESS PMKR 110 10/18/04, 12:00 PM