Guilty of Dysconscious Linguicism: Part I

English version:

Guess what.  I’m guilty.  Guilty of what, you ask?  Dysconscious Linguicism!  What is that?  That is something I will explain in Part 2 of this vlog series.  In this part, I will give my background and tell my story.  In doing so, I will explain the reason for accusing myself of dysconscious linguicism.

I come from a Hearing family of which I am the sole Deaf member.  I am congenitally Deaf, with an unknown etiology.   At the age of 18 months, my mother placed me in a preschool program that provided a signing environment.  (Prior to that time, I had no exposure to language, neither signed nor spoken.  My communication consisted of pointing at things. )  Immediately, I began to thrive in that environment.  I also began reading books at an early age, and developing a love for books.

At the age of 3 1/2, I enrolled in a residential school for the Deaf.  It was during my time at that school that a situation arose.  I suspect that this situation was one that began my internalization of linguicistic attitude toward ASL.

One Monday morning, and I clearly remember that it was a Monday because on that momentous day, my classroom teacher was absent for whatever reason, and there was no substitute teacher available for my class.  As a result, my class was split up so that we all ended up being assigned to different classes for that day.  One classmate and I ended up in a class of 9-10 year-olds while we were both only 6 or 7 years old at the time. The Hearing teacher of that class had us write on blackboards about our weekend.  So, my classmate and I shared a blackboard and wrote extensively about our respective weekend activities.  Once done, we returned to our assigned seats in the classroom. The older students also returned to their seats once they were done with their assignment.  After looking at the other blackboards, we were baffled to see that each of the older students had only two or three sentences about their weekend activities.  This was in stark contrast to our blackboard, which was filled to capacity with our writing.

Now, all those older students had Hearing parents, although they were all ASL users. We (my classmates) were not actual ASL users though we did sign.  To clarify: we were both nerds. We were both voracious bookworms who devoured as many books as we could.

When the Hearing teacher inspected the contents of all the blackboards and saw the marked contrast between the work of his students and ours, he castigated his students severely. Basically, he said, “What is wrong with you?!  These 6-7 year-olds are far better writers than you 9-10 year olds!  They are able to fill up a blackboard while you only wrote 2 or 3 sentences! ”

When I witnessed that blistering criticism, I was mortified and felt bad for his students.  I think that  was when I began to internalize the rampant linguicism against ASL in that school .  That is, the viewpoint that when one uses ASL, one’s command of English is poor, and that ASL was broken English.  A good number of teachers at that school  reinforced my internalization of that linguicistic attitude as I grew up in that school.  There were some teachers who told me that ASL was in fact broken English.   It did not help that each time I saw an ASL using student, he or she exhibited (what I perceived to be) a poor command of the English language.

When I turned 13, I found myself struggling with math, while I did quite well in English classes.  I began to notice that most ASL-using students did quite well in math while I wasn’t.  Once I realized that, my respect for my fellow students grew.

By that time, I was also laboring under the misconception that Hearing people, purely on the basis of their ability to hear and speak, were more proficient in English than us Deaf people.   There were several hard of hearing residental students from my school who were mainstreamed in public schools.  These students exhibited an attitude of superiority simply because they attended public schools (which was taken as a sign of prestige) and we did not, and because they could hear and speak a bit.  That was blatant audism… dysconscious audism at that.  (Linguicism is closely tied to audism.  This will be expanded upon in the next v/blog.) I also internalized that dysconscious audism!

When I became a day student (after several years as a residential student), I was thrilled to be riding a school bus with Hearing kids. I communicated with them using pen and paper.  I soon noticed something odd. The person, with whom I was writing back and forth, seemed to be struggling to read my written messages, using the sounding-out and re-reading strategies.  I was puzzled by this as I had no such issues with reading.  Whenever I fingerspelled to that person, she sounded out each letter I spelled then in syllables, then in complete words.  It was a slow process and I began questioning this individual’s intelligence.

That was when I had an epiphany (… at the grand old age of 13!):  Just because a person could hear doesn’t mean this person had a better command of English than a Deaf person.  Therefore, the logic followed that Hearing people aren’t necessarily smarter than Deaf people.  (In other words, the ability to hear/speak alone doesn’t necessarily denote intellectual prowess, prodigious or otherwise).  That life-changing insight caused me to begin examining my views on my fellow schoolmates who were ASL-users.

Up to the age of 13, I had been signing in the English order and fingerspelling sophisticated words (think Dilton in the Archie comics, Reed Richards in Fantastic Four or Beast in X-Men comics).  The other students finally became quite frustrated with me because while I could understand their ASL, they struggled to comprehend what I was telling them.  Things came to a head and I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to start using ASL, or my friends would stop associating with me purely because they were fed up with having to work at figuring out what I was saying.  I understood their position, and began the long process of switching from English to PSE to ASL.    This process lasted through my university years, both undergraduate (Gallaudet U.) and graduate (U of Rochester) and my early teaching years.  Finally, I became quite fluent in ASL.

Looking back, now that I have the utmost respect for ASL as a bona fide language, I realized something.  During that time when I was signing in the English order as a child and thinking that my schoolmates were using broken English, I was actually the one who mangled ASL!  I reiterate: I had been using broken ASL all along!

Go to Part II, which will discuss the definitions for linguicism and dysconscious linguicism.  (Part II will be posted soon.)

PS:  If you wish to view comments and discussions under my vlog at YouTube, just click directly on my video twice, and it will take you there.   If you wish to leave a comment there or here on my website, be my guest.