Learning To See: American Sign Language as a Second Language

Preface

ix Preface Foreign language teachers often tell us that the goal of teaching a second language is to propel students beyond the limits of their own world, to encourage them to see through the language and culture of another people (Bugos 1980). Such a goal is entirely appropriate for teachers of American Sign Language (ASL). In the best language classrooms, students are treated to an extended voyage into a new and exciting world. They learn to talk about the familiar in unfamiliar ways, to consider values that may seem questionable. ASL students, too, are exposed to a different world. They are learning a new language, one that is unlike anything they are likely to have experienced before. ASL is, in every sense of the word, a foreign language. ASL students are also encouraged to view the world through the eyes of a different culture. The Deaf1 way of looking at the world is, as will be clear in this text, a foreign culture to second language students. Ben Bahan, a noted ASL teacher and Deaf writer, has proposed that Deaf people start calling themselves ‘‘seeing people’’ (Bahan 1989b). By using that word I put myself in a position of things I can do, instead of what I can’t do. Since I identified myself as a seeing person, that would explain everything around me: like TTYs, x Preface decoders, flashing doorbells, lipreading, and the emergence of a seeing language, American Sign Language. (p. 32) Entry into a foreign land is never easy. The first step must be to learn the language and culture of the people who live there. For students who wish to visit the world of Deaf people, ASL classes are the door—learning to see is the key. The authors would like to thank Professor Deb Smith and Charles Wilkinson for their invaluable assistance, and Ivey Pittle Wallace and Jill Hendricks, our editors at Gallaudet University Press. Notes 1. In the literature on ASL and its users, it is common practice to use the term deaf to refer to the audiological condition of not being able to hear and the term Deaf to refer to the cultural group that uses ASL and shares other values and beliefs. ...