Personal Narrative: American Sign Language

Nyle DiMarco plays a positive role within the Deaf community. He has proven with time and dedication dreams do come true if you put your mind into succeeding. According to the article, Why Nyle DiMarco’s Work is Crucial for the Deaf Community (2016), states, “Nyle considers his Deafness as an asset rather than a limitation.” He wants to show the world that being Deaf only makes him unique and inspires people within the Deaf community to follow their dreams. Not only that, but he also encourages the use of American Sign Language. When communicating to his family, friends, or at work, he uses American Sign

The book “A Journey into the Deaf-World”, by Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister, and Ben Bahan, is about the different people who are considered deaf: hard-of-hearing, deaf, and CODA. People who are hard-of-hearing are people who don 't hear well; people who are deaf lack the power of hearing since birth; you can be born hearing and throughout time lose some or all of your hearing sense. People who are CODA (children of deaf adults) are often signing because their parents are deaf and CODA’s often are helpful by being interpreters. CODAs become a great link between their parents and the hearing world. This book explains about deaf culture and how sign is a visual and manual way of conversing. The benefits of sign language are many and the ASL “foreign language” is growing among hearing as well. About more than 500,000 people sign in America alone. ASL is dated from 1779, but probably even earlier. Sign language promotes cultural awareness; deaf culture uses sign language as their main form of communicating.

In chapter 5, This chapter was very interesting to me. This chapter was about the way that Deaf people view sign language. One interesting thing to me was when William C. Stokoe’s suggested classification of sign language. Rather than classifying sign language based on the English dictionary,

Winn, J. (2016, November 3). The importance of early exposure to american sign language with deaf Children. Signing Savvy Blog. Retrieved February 09, 2018, from

“You have to be deaf to understand the deaf”’ is a deaf poem by Willard Madsen, and he was written at 1971’s. He was a professor of journalism and former Associate Professor of Sign Language at Gallaudet University. He was born from Peabody, Kansas in 1930s. He lost his hearing to scarlet fever when he was two age. He attended public junior high school before he transferring to Kansas school for the Deaf at Olathe. He went on to study at Gallaudet. He graduating in 1952s with a degree in the education. He do taught at the Louisiana school for the Deaf for five years after, he received a master’s degree from Louisiana State University. After he joined to Gallaudet faculty in 1957s, and he taught at gallaudet for 39 years when he have retirement at 1996s. His career was spent to teaching journalism and english to preparatory students. He was a founding member of American Sign language Teachers Association, which provided certification for sign teachers across the country. He wrote two text book for sign language but, he was well known as a poets in both American Sign Language and English. Classics of Deaf cultures are “You have to be deaf to Understand” and “NO!”.

The purpose of this research paper is to answer the major question, what is Deaf culture? There are three sub-questions that will assist in answering the major question: (1) What constitutes Deaf culture? (2) How has American Sign Language impacted the Deaf community? (3) What are the major issues that are being addressed in Deaf culture today? With these questions answer, it will give a better understanding as to what Deaf culture is and that it is indeed a culture.

Deaf children are entitled to know that they are heirs to an amazing culture, not a pitiful defect. In order to follow through on that obligation, one of the best things I feel we can do is try to educate other hearing people about the realities of American Sign Language and Deaf culture. Language is one of the most critical aspects of most cultures, and one which sets deafness aside from other defects such as blindness, physical disability, or illness. Sign language is not universal, nor does it always correspond to the spoken language in the same country. For example American Sign Language is native to the United States and Canada. Deaf Canadians might use English, French, or both as a written language. But deaf people in Great Britain, while they may write in English, use a completely different sign language. (nad.org)

Two centuries ago, the Deaf community arose in American society as a linguistic minority. Members of this community share a particular human condition, hearing impairment. However, the use of American Sign Language, as their main means of communicating, and attendance to a residential school for people with deafness also determine their entry to this micro-culture. Despite the fact that Deaf activists argue that their community is essentially an ethnic group, Deaf culture is certainly different from any other cultures in the United States. Deaf-Americans cannot trace their ancestry back to a specific country, nor do Deaf neighborhoods exist predominantly throughout the nation. Additionally, more than ninety percent of deaf persons are born

It is hard to imagine a society where everyone speaks sign language regardless of their hearing abilities. It would be a marvel, such social cohesiveness and acceptance of deafness. Today, there is no such reality, although, it may come as a surprise to most, there was once a place where this was a reality. On an island off the coast of Massachusetts, called Martha’s Vineyard.

In the Deaf community Benjamin Bahan is considered an influential figure because not only does he write about Deaf culture but he is a storyteller as well. Bahan has published at least twenty-eight articles, five books, and eight videotapes. With Dirksen Bauman and Melissa Malzkuhn they created the world’s first online journal called, Deaf Studies Digital Journal. It is a “peer-reviewed academic and cultural arts journal to feature scholarship and creative work in both signed and written languages” (Gallaudet Press). Because he is a storyteller he appears in chapter two of “Signing the Body Poetics”. In this chapter he talks about the Face-to-Face tradition in the American

The documentary Deaf Jam produced by New Day Films provided an in-depth look into the beauty and dexterity of American Sign Language (ASL) while highlighting many important aspects of deaf culture. It also gave an even deeper analysis of the personal lives of those who are deaf and the societal and emotional struggles they face every day. This was done through the eyes of an Israeli immigrant named Aneta Brodski and her empowering journey to share her story through signed slam poetry.

The Book I decided to read is called “Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf”. In this book the author Oliver Sacks basically focuses on Deaf history and the community of the deaf developed toward linguistic self-sufficiency. Sacks is a Professor of Neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He became interested in the problem of how deaf children acquire language after reviewing a book by Harlan Lane. The book was titled “When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf”. This book was first published in 1984 and was published again in 1989. Before reading Harlan’s book Sacks did not know any sign language. The book encouraged him to begin studying sign language. Sacks became extremely interested on how the deaf learn to communicate with the ability of sound being nonexistent. He wanted to know what this process may tell us about the nature of language. Seeing Voices is made up of three chapters, the history of the deaf, a discussion of language and the brain, and an evaluation of the problems behind the student strike that occurred at Gallaudet University, in March of 1988.

This year, I had a solo performance at my school’s American Sign Language show. I was extremely nervous, as I had never done anything alone in any type of performance. My first year sign language teacher was very excited for me to perform, and since it was my last chance to do so, I pushed myself to sign up. On stage I was hesitant to perform, but overcame the fear and did my very best.

Inspired by that resolution, the use of sign language was removed by fellow oralism-supporting educators from many programs for the deaf around the world. And, so for over a hundred years, up to until recently, educators from many different countries would continue to gather every five years and deliberate about the state of deaf education, seemingly unimpeded by the shadow of Milan’s controversial legacy. Those educators were mostly supporters of the oral method, until now. In today’s society sign in school has improved. Around 300 sign languages are in use around the world today. People are learning that sign language is a regular language such as Spanish or French. And that it should be taught in school to help benefit deaf and hearing people communicate better. Sign language is broken into three different areas. Deaf sign languages, which are the preferred languages of Deaf communities around the world. This include village sign languages, shared with the hearing community, and Deaf-community sign languages. Auxiliary sign languages, which are not

While on my path to be a future Speech Language Pathologist, I cannot in good conscience continue without having a decent knowledge of basic conversational American Sign Language (ASL). Before I chose this career my parents took the time to educate me in the ABCs and simple signs, I have continued to learn more as time has gone on. Even with my limited knowledge it has already helped me greatly through out my professional career. However ASL is not always beneficial, primarily with those who are born deaf or hard of hearing. Do you have a favorite book, from any age? Or do you feel a love and passion for writing? Are you good at writing, have you always been? Children who are born deaf or hard of hearing are typically taught to utilize American Sign Language as their primary means of communication. The biggest struggle that deaf or hard of hearing children face is making the transition to text-based literacy, this conflict lies not only in their first language syntactical hindrance but also in the struggle one deals with to make the connections required for such development. While Sign Language gives them a way to verbally communicate, it also places them at a disadvantage for the American English written word. This disadvantage is typically linked back to the fact that since American Sign Language stems from French Sign Language (LSF), and has a similar syntax to the French language. As well as according to Delaporte and Shaw (2011) linguists and anthropologists have long