Sign Language Teaching, Foreign Language Requirements for

Is ASL Really a Language?

Because of its unique modality, visual/gestural rather than aural/oral, many people wrongly assume that ASL is fundamentally different from spoken languages. ASL is a fully developed human language, one of the hundreds of naturally occurring signed languages of the world. Linguists have fully documented the linguistic status of ASL as a natural human language.

Is ASL a Derivative of English?

ASL is not a derivative of English. ASL has its own lexicon, morphology, syntax, and styles of discourse. Scholars have shown that signed languages have developed independently of spoken languages, and that signed languages have their own distinct routes of historical development, or language families. ASL is part of the French Sign Language family, which also includes Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS), Tunisian Sign Language, Russian Sign Language, and others. The British Sign Language family includes Australian Sign Language (Auslan), New Zealand Sign Language, Maltese Sign Language, and the Bangalore variety of Indo-Pakistani Sign Language.

ASL is not a “simplified” language. It contains structures and processes that English lacks, such as a rich verbal aspect system and the use of classifiers. There is abundant linguistic research on ASL demonstrating that the grammar of ASL is radically different from that of English, surely as different as any of the more traditional foreign languages taught in school.

Is ASL “Foreign”?

This depends on how one defines the term foreign and what academic goals are established for the foreign language curriculum. The objective of foreign language core curriculum requirements in secondary and postsecondary education is rarely to develop fluency in a language; rather, the intent is to expose students to a new language, to different cultures, and to the way in which language structures our knowledge and worldview.

ASL is indigenous to the United States and Canada. So, too, are Native American languages, some of which are accepted for foreign language credit at universities. The University of New Mexico, for example, accepts Navajo in fulfillment of foreign language core curriculum requirements. In many parts of the United States, Spanish [Page 852]can hardly be considered a foreign language. In the Southwest, for example, Spanish has been spoken for many centuries. The citizens of these regions strongly regard Spanish as a native language of America. For this and other reasons, many language scholars prefer to speak of second-language requirements, placing the focus on learning a language other than the student’s native language, regardless of the language’s country of origin.

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