UPenn, 2/28: Ceil Lucas &=?iso-8859-1?Q?=A0Carolyn_McCaskill=3A=A0Black_?=ASL: a historical and linguistic overview

[Mark A. Mandel]

FORWARDED MAIL:

Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2013 12:30:35 -0500
From: "Jami N. Fisher" <jami at sas.upenn.edu>
Subject: [penguists] UPENN:  Thursday, February 28, 2013: Dr. Ceil
	Lucas and Dr. Carolyn McCaskill  "Black ASL: a historical and
	linguistic overview"
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Message-ID: <50F5923B.3090003 at sas.upenn.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"

Dear Colleagues and Community Members,

The ASL Program and Department of Linguistics at Penn are pleased to 
announce that Dr. Ceil Lucas and Dr. Carolyn McCaskill of Gallaudet 
University will present their research, "Black ASL:  a Historical and 
Linguistic Overview," on Thursday, February 28, from 5-7 PM.

The talk will be held in Claudia Cohen Hall, Room G-17.

For questions, please contact Jami Fisher, ASL Program Coordinator, 
Department of Linguistics: jami at sas.upenn.edu

This event is free and open to the public.  The talk is in ASL and 
interpretation will be provided.

Below is the abstract for the talk:

Black ASL: a historical and linguistic overview

This presentation will provide an overview of a historical and 
linguistic project on Black ASL focusing on school history, generational 
differences, and language differences. Ninety-six Deaf African-American 
informants in two age groups (over 55 and under 35) were interviewed in 
6 of the 17 states where schools were racially segregated. We 
analyzedlanguage patterns in Black ASL, for example, 2-handed signs, 
role-shifting, and the influence of African American English (AAE). We 
also report on the informants‚ perceptions of language use which help 
explain how some Black signs were created, remained or disappeared over 
time. This project is funded by National Science Foundation.

Sponsored by the Spencer Foundation and the National Science Foundation, 
the Black ASL project began in 2007 with two goals: 1) to determine if 
specific linguistic features could be identified to characterize the 
signing of the Black Deaf community as a distinct variety of American 
Sign Language (ASL), and  2) to describe the socio-historical reality 
that would make the emergence of this variety possible.


Formal education of deaf children began in the United States with the 
founding of the American School for the Deaf in 1817 and schools for 
deaf children were never formally segregated in the North. Education was 
not allowed for Black deaf children in the South until 1869, when the 
first school was opened in Raleigh, North Carolina. Sixteen other 
southern states and the District of Columbia established schools for 
Black deaf children, the last one being Louisiana in 1938. Most resisted 
the integration mandated by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, finally 
allowing desegregation in the mid-1960s, with Louisiana desegregating in 
1978. This socio-historical reality allowed for the emergence of a 
distinct variety of ASL.

...
The analysis identified a number of linguistic features that distinguish 
this variety and also shows that, as a result of integration and 
mainstreaming, the variety is changing. One striking finding is that the 
Black signers, both young and old, consistently use more traditional and 
standardized forms of signs, directly challenging perceptions that Black 
signing is somehow " inferior".

_______________________________________________
Ling-penguists mailing list
Ling-penguists at groups.sas.upenn.edu
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/ling-penguists