What's Your Sign for Pizza?: An Introduction to Variation in American Sign Language

The Importance of Variation Research for Deaf Communities

63 The Importance of Variation Research for Deaf Communities Ceil Lucas and Robert Bayley W e examine the importance of variation and other linguistic research for Deaf communities. Sociolinguistic variation in American Sign Language (ASL) was initially addressed by Carl Croneberg in the Dictionary of American Sign Language (DASL), the first dictionary of a sign language based on linguistic principles (Stokoe, Casterline, and Croneberg 1965). This work was followed by studies of lexical, phonological, and grammatical variation. The treatment of variation in the DASL will be reviewed and research on variation described, with emphasis on the findings from a largescale study of phonological variation. We will show that research on linguistic variation and other aspects of sign languages impacts Deaf communities in three ways.1 First, the recognition that ASL exhibits sociolinguistic variation like other systems that we recognize as languages reinforces the hard-won status of ASL and other sign languages as real languages. Second, the study of variation in sign languages reinforces the position that systematic variation, or “orderly heterogeneity,” is integral to the structure of all languages (Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog 1968). Understanding the nature of a language requires an understanding of variation. This in turn relates to the increasing awareness of modality differences between spoken and sign languages. Third, the findings from research on sign language structure and variation have had a direct impact on the educational and employment opportunities available to Deaf people. This report was originally published in the University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 7(3): 175–89. The research reported here was supported by NSF Grants SBR #9310116 and SBR #9709522 to Gallaudet University. Clayton Valli, Mary Rose, Alyssa Wulf, Alison Jacoby, Leslie Saline, Susan Schatz, and Ruth Reed assisted with data collection, transcription, and coding. PERSPECTIVES ON ASL Users and observers of ASL have long been aware of variation in the language . Evidence can be seen in writings about deaf people’s language use dating from the mid-nineteenth century. For example, at the fourth Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf in Staunton, Virginia, J. R. Keep described variation in the signs used by students at the school: there is a language of signs; a language having its own peculiar laws, and, like other languages, natural and native to those who know no other. . . . There may be different signs or motions for the same objects, yet all are intelligible and legitimate . . . . As a matter of fact, however, although the Deaf and Dumb, when they come to our public institutions, use signs differing in many respects from those in use in the institutions , yet they soon drop their peculiarities, and we have the spectacle of an entire community recalling objects by the same motions. (1857, 133) In response to Keep’s remarks, Harvey Peet referred to Deaf signers as “those to whom the language is vernacular” and added, “there is room for difference of dialects. One Deaf Mute may fall upon one sign and another upon another sign, for the same object, both natural” (1857, 144–46). Despite the early awareness of variation indicated by comments such as those quoted above, formal research on variation in sign languages did not begin until the 1960s, with Croneberg’s two appendices to the DASL (Stokoe et al. 1965). “The Linguistic Community” (Appendix C) describes the cultural and social aspects of the Deaf community and discusses economic status, patterns of social contact, and the factors that contribute to group cohesion, including the extensive personal and organizational networks that ensure frequent contact even among people who live on opposite sides of the country: “The deaf as a group have social ties with each other that extend farther across the nation than similar ties of perhaps any other American minority group” (Stokoe et al. 1965, 310). 64 Supplementary Readings Croneberg noted that these personal ties are reinforced by membership in organizations such as the National Association of the Deaf and the National Congress of the Jewish Deaf. These personal and organizational patterns of interaction are central to understanding language use and variation in ASL. While ASL is variable at a number of different linguistic levels, nevertheless Deaf people recognize a cohesive community of ASL users extending across the United States. In “Sign Language Dialects” (Appendix D), Croneberg dealt with sociolinguistic variation, specifically as pertains to the preparation of a dictionary: “One of the problems that early confronts the lexicographers of a language is...