To include or not include?

[M. de Bekker]

I feel that it is very normal to include these words in the dictionary. As to
the hearing people only looking up the dirty words, people always do that with
any language so why bother. Furthermore, children pick up these words
everywhere also in dictionaries. Why not teach them what they mean and how to
sign them? At least now they know that it is not appropriate to use them.

M. de Bekker


Aanhalen "Grushkin, Donald A." <grushkind at CSUS.EDU>:

> Folks:
>
> I would like your opinion on something.  I am compiling a bilingual
> ASL-English dictionary, that I am striving to be as comprehensive as
> possible beyond anything we have seen to date.  To this end, I have
> been
> consulting a number of sources, and one of the sources is Woodward's
> books
> on Signs of Sexual and Drug behavior.  My wife believes I should not
> include
> these signs, because she feels it is not appropriate to do so, and if
> young
> deaf children should get their hands on this dictionary, they could be
> learning the signs as well.  Plus, I do know that the Deaf community
> generally doesn't like Hearing people looking up the "dirty" signs just
> to
> know the "dirty" stuff.
>
> On the other hand, I feel that if English dictionaries such as my copy
> of
> Webster's has 4-letter words and offensive terminology in it, then why
> shouldn't an ASL dictionary?  Don't people learning sign have the right
> to
> be able to look up the meaning of something if they should happen to see
> it,
> or Deaf people the means to translate what they know?  Don't Hearing
> children see these 4-letter words in the dictionaries as well?
>
> One solution to this that I thought of was to have two editions... the
> "abridged", "clean" version, and an unabridged version.
>
> Another solution is to partially prevent Hearies from looking up the
> signs
> by not including them in the English-to-ASL part, but only in the
> ASL-to-English part, so if they should SEE it, they can find out it's
> meaning, but they wouldn't easily be finding the sign itself if they
> didn't
> know how to sign it.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Donald A. Grushkin, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor/Coordinator, ASL Program
> Eureka Hall Rm. 312 (Campus Zip # 6079)
> California State University, Sacramento 95819
> (916) 278-6622 Voice; 278-3465 TTY
>