|
Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) spoken most commonly by deaf African Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the American South. Like other schools at the time, schools for the deaf were segregated based upon race, creating two language communities among deaf signers: White deaf signers at White schools and Black deaf signers at Black schools. Today, BASL is still used by signers in the South despite schools having been legally desegregated for 60 years. Linguistically, BASL differs from other varieties of ASL in its phonology, syntax, and lexicon. BASL tends to have a larger signing space meaning that some signs are produced further away from the body than in other dialects. Signers of BASL also tend to prefer two-handed variants of signs while signers of ASL tend to prefer one-handed variants of signs. Some signs are different in BASL as well, with some borrowings from African American English. ==History== Like many educational institutions for hearing children during the 1800s and early 1900s, schools for deaf children were segregated based on race. This segregation created two speech communities that led to ASL diverging into two dialects: one spoken by the White deaf and another, Black American Sign Language (BASL), spoken by the Black deaf.〔McCaskill, et al. 2011, p. 8〕 The first school for the deaf, The American School for the Deaf (ASD), was founded in 1817 but did not admit any Black deaf students until 1952. Of the schools for the deaf that began to be created, few admitted students of color.〔McCaskill, et al. 2011, pp. 16–17〕 Seeing a lack of educational opportunities for the Black deaf, Dr. Platt Skinner founded the first school to accept the Black deaf—The School for the Colored Deaf, Dumb, and Blind—in 1856 in Niagara Falls, New York, saying: "() is the first effort of its kind in the country ... We receive and instruct those and only those who are refused admission to all other institutions and are despised on account of their color."〔Skinner 1859〕〔McCaskill, et al. 2011, p.17〕 The school moved to Trenton, New Jersey in 1860. After its closure in 1866,〔''ibid.''〕〔Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Area, n.d.〕 no Northern state created an institution for the Black deaf. Even after these states outlawed segregation by 1900, integration was sparse as some institutions allowed Black students and others did not.〔McCaskill, et al. 2011, pp. 17–18〕〔Douglas 2005, p. 83〕 After the foundation and success of the American School for the Deaf, many other institutions for the deaf were founded throughout the country. As schools, particularly in the South, were segregated, many Southern states created separate schools or departments for the Black deaf. The first school established for the Black deaf below the Mason-Dixon Line opened in the District of Columbia in 1857 and remained segregated until 1958. The last Southern state to create an institution for the Black deaf was Louisiana in 1938. Black Deaf children thus became a language community isolated from the White Deaf with different means of language socialization, allowing for different dialects to develop. As the education of White children was privileged over that of Black children, Oralism—the prominent pedagogical method of the time—was not as strictly applied to the Black deaf students. This afforded Black deaf students more opportunities to use ASL than their White peers as Oralist methods often forbade usage of sign language. Despite the decision in ''Brown v. Board of Education'' in 1954 which declared racial segregation in schools unconstitutional, integration was slow to come, and schools for the deaf were no exception, with the last school desegregating in 1978, 24 years after the decision.〔McCaskill, et al. 2011, pp. 19–20〕〔Douglas 2005〕 As schools began to integrate, students and teachers noticed differences in the way Black students and White students signed. Dr. Carolyn McCaskill, professor of ASL and Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University, recalls the challenge of understanding the dialect of ASL spoken by her White principal and teachers after her segregated school integrated: "When I began attending the school, I did not understand the teacher and she did not understand me because we used different signs."〔McCaskill 2014〕 Carl Croneberg was the first to discuss differences between BASL and White ASL in his appendices of the 1965 version of the ''Dictionary of American Sign Language'', and work has continued on BASL since then.〔McCaskill, et al. 2011, p. 11〕〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Black American Sign Language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|