American Sign Language And Deaf Culture

360 million people around the world do not have the ability to hear. It is a sense that many people on a daily basis take for granted. This is five percent of the population's total deals have come up with their own unique language that is known all around the world in every country. The Deaf culture has established its own way of communicating with the non-hearing world, but has also made it possible for the hearing world to learn how to communicate with the Deaf world as well. It is important to know how to interact with different cultures in society. Sign Language was first brought to the United States in 1817 when a pioneer of Deaf education, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet convinced French teacher, Laurent Clerc to come to Hartford, Connecticut

American Sign Language is a visual based language that uses hand movements to communicate words and thoughts to other people; this process is called Signing.When signing, the brain processes the shape, placement, and movement of the hands, as well as facial expressions and body movements.Contrary to popular beliefs, sign language is not a universal language. Each country in the world has their own official sign language; for example: France has French Sign Language (FSL), and Spain’s is Spanish Sign Language (SSL). ASL is dominantly used in the United States and in many parts of Canada. Like any other speaking language, ASL has its own rules of grammar and syntax. In fact till this day ASL is still a growing language, still creating new signs for new words and phrases thus making it very similar to other languages that changes over time. ASL is accepted by many high schools, colleges, and universities in fulfillment of modern and “foreign” language academic degree requirements across the United States (What Is American Sign

Just to name a few would be Laurent Clerc, Dr. Gallaudet, and William Stokoe. Laurent Clerc along with the help of Dr. Gallaudet created the first learning institution in the United States for Deaf people. There they created ASL, which was derived from French Sign Language. Laurent Clerc has sometimes been referred to as the “Apostle to the Deaf People of the New World” because of founding ASL (Deaf Awareness). Gallaudet’s was motivated to bring a uniformed type of sign language to the US because he wanted to create a bridge between those who could hear and those who were unable to. William Stokoe, unlike Gallaudet and Clerc, did not build the ground in which ASL stands on today, but he did strengthen it by stating that it had its own linguistic features. This meant that Sign Language contains phonology, morphology, syntax like all other languages thus, making it, its own “true language” in the United States during the late 1950’s (Deaf