Sex is Definitely a Problem: Interpreters’ Knowledge of Signs for Sexual Behavior

SLS 14 (1977),73-88 9 William C. Stokoe SEX IS DEFINITELY A PROBLEM: INTERPRETERS' KNOWLEDGE OF SIGNS FOR SEXUAL BEHAVIOR James Woodward The focus of this paper is a semantically related class of signs in American Sign Language (ASL). 1 This may serve also as a focusing point for linguistic and sociolinguistic studies being made of sign languages and of deaf communities. Signs in ASL relating to sexual behavior have especially important implications for descriptive and theoretical sociolinguistic and anthropological studies and for applied research in the areas of language and education, language and medicine, and language and the law. For example, signs for sexual behavior appear to serve, as will be discussed below, as one method of maintaining the "ethnic" boundaries between hearing and deaf communities. Within the deaf community, these signs also serve to separate age groups within communities, and regional (Southern/Northern) and ethno-social (Black Southern/ White Southern) communities of the deaf. The paper attempts generally to outline some of the more obvious implications of the knowledge of these signs for the areas of research already indicated and specifically to concentrate on a number of the problems that these signs may impose 1 A version of this paper was presented at the Fifth Annual NWAVE Conference, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. October 1976; data collection was supported in part by NSF Grant SOC 741 4724; grateful acknowledgement is also made for their help to Lloyd Anderson, Harry Bornstein, Susan De Santis, and Carol Padden. Sign Language Studies 14 on sign language interpreters and so on deaf persons in courts of law. Implications for sociolinguistic research. Signs for sexual behavior are loaded with interesting regional and socioethnic variations, a few of which are discussed below. In New York City the sign SHOES also means 'male-homosexual'. The sign generally current in ASL as STUCK (with an extended meaning of 'pregnant'), in New York City also means specifically pregnant through rape'. The sign MALE-MASTURBATION, used in such diverse places as California and Ohio, is often mistaken for the sign SODA-POP in other regions. (Capitals are used to "name" ASL signs without the necessity for describing their formation; the word capitalized is usually close to the English gloss bilingual signers associate with the sign; but in standard linguistic practice, more exact translations are presented here within single quotation marks.) Black Southern signs (Woodward 1976a) cause even more confusion, because they are less generally known by non-Black signers in the U. S. The Black Southern sign PREGNANT is identical with the general ASL sign MOTHER. Black Southern MOTHER is formationally like Black Southern PREGNANT, except that MOTHER uses a wiggling movement of the fingers and PREGNANT does not. Black Southern LESBIAN-INTERCOURSE is identical with the White Northern child sign HETEROSEXUAL-INTERCOURSE. Interrelationshp between background social variables are also made clear through such variations in ASL usage as those discussed in earlier studies. The hypothesis suggested by Woodward and Erting (1975), that southern signers tend to use older forms of signs more often than do northern signers and that Blacks in the south tend to use historically older forms more often than Whites, was initially guided by the analysis of such items as the Black Southern sign PREGNANT . When this sign was shown to a number of White Southern informants, only one recognized it. He reported that White signers used to use the sign but now do not. This hypothesis of Woodward and Erting has since been tested and supported (Woodward 1976a, Woodward & De Santis 1975). Woodward Implications for anthropological research. Language use is an extremely important method of maintaining "ethnic" boundaries in the deaf community - i.e. the distinction Deaf, the ethnically marked group, and Hearing, the majority (Markowicz & Woodward 1975). Certain characteristics of ASL usage identify a person as deaf and are reserved for use with other core members of the deaf community (cf Battison 1976). Because of diglossic pressure, there is an immediate shift from such usage to pidgin-like English signing (Woodward 1973, Woodward & Markowicz 1975) when a hearing person with some knowledge of signing enters a conversation. Signs for sexual behavior are not well known by the average hearing signer, apparently not...