Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language

Chapter 3

51 Chapter 3 The Sociohistorical Context for ASL Variation In order to understand the nature of sociolinguistic variation in the American Deaf community, we need to understand the sociohistorical context in which it occurs, especially the parts of this context that concern the residential schools for deaf children and the social and political organizations formed by deaf people. Researching the historical language attitudes and policies in schools for deaf students can aid in our understanding of variation because we can better visualize how other people perceived and treated deaf people and how these perceptions may have shaped the language use in deaf communities. The following chapters discuss in more detail some of the similarities and differences that these covert and overt policies may have affected. The first section of this chapter provides a brief historical sketch of the schools in each of the seven sites in the study and an account of their connection to the Hartford, Connecticut, school, the first U.S. school for the deaf. The second section discusses a repeated pattern in these sites, a transition from the exclusive use of signs to the use of a combined method and then to oralism. The chapter also explores how the residential schools participated directly in the creation of an ASL community across the United States. It is well known that the majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents and therefore that most deaf children do not acquire ASL from their parents in the same way that hearing children acquire their native language from their parents. Overwhelmingly, it has been the case that deaf children have acquired ASL from their peers in residential school settings, peers who belong to the minority of deaf children born to deaf parents and who are thus native users of ASL. Lane, Hoffmeister, and Bahan explain: [R]esidential schools for the Deaf—large, centrally located schools providing education from preschool through high school (and, in some cases adult education)—were at one time the center of the deafworld . However, starting in the 1860s, and especially after the Congress of Milan in 1880, oralists took control of the residential schools 2714 GUP SVA Chapter 03 6/14/01 9:17 AM Page 51 52 : s o c i o h i s t o r i c a l c o n t e x t f o r a s l v a r i a t i o n 1. Lane (personal communication, 2000) notes that thirteen schools were founded by Deaf superintendents after 1880 (Gannon 1981, 18), some of which were later taken over by oralists. in the U.S. and abroad, virtually eradicating the influence of the deafworld . From then on, the teaching staff and administrators were hearing, instruction in almost all schools was oral throughout the elementary years, and the Deaf staff were relegated to nonacademic posts with less influence on academic achievement, posts such as dormitory supervisor, coach, shop instructor, and custodian. . . . As a result of these changes, the students acquired much of their information and, unless they had been born into the deaf-world, all of their language , from other Deaf students or the after-school staff. (1996, 241)1 Residential schools, then, have played central roles in the transmission of ASL and can be considered crucibles for the acquisition of language and culture. And residential schools play a continuing role in the lives of Deaf adults. Residential schools have also played a central role in the transmission of ASL from one side of the country to the other. After the establishment in Hartford of the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons in 1817 (now the American School for the Deaf), Laurent Clerc instructed the school’s hearing teachers in the use of “manual French adapted to English” and also gave private lessons “to nearly a dozen hearing teachers from as many eastern cities” (Lane et al. 1996, 56). These teachers in turn founded schools in several states: In America, as in France, the mother school sent its teachers and Deaf graduates throughout the country to teach in various Deaf schools and to found new ones. As early as 1834, a single signed dialect was recognized in the schools for Deaf students in the U.S. [emphasis added]. By the time of Clerc’s death in 1869, over fifteen hundred pupils had graduated from the Hartford school, and there were some thirty residential schools in the United States with 3...