American Sign Language Essay

American Sign Language was developed from French Sign Language through the collaboration of Laurent Clerc and Thomas Gallaudet in 1817 (Shaw 158). Before this time, there are no standard signed language, however, there were several systems deaf individuals used to communicate. Together, Clerc and Gallaudet opened a school, now known as the American School for the Deaf. This was a huge milestone in Deaf history and deaf students flocked from all over to attend the school. This was the start of what we know today of American Sign Language, which is complete with its own grammatical and syntactical rules. ASL and English are similar in the way that both evolve and change over time. In the article, “Formal Devices for Creating New Sign in American Sign Language,” Bellugi and Newkirk review internal expansion of lexicon and the creation of compounds or ideas that were not prevalent during formation of the language. The section on idiomatic derivatives will be especially useful because of the description of figurative signs versus figurative extensions.

American Sign Language is extremely literal in several ways whereas spoken English is highly figurative and metaphorical. There are some exceptions, however. Those who use ASL are known to be quite sarcastic. The idioms they use reflect that sense of humor. Despite the obvious difference between the two languages, another large aspect of the culture that many glace over is the concept of ASL idioms. One must question how these common phrases were established, where they came from and why they are not the same as their counterparts in spoken English. In “Handling and Incorporation of Idioms in Interpretation,” Metzger and Fleetwood examine the room for errors in miscommunication or misinterpretation that occurs during code switching as well as when one attempts to comprehend an idiom or saying that is foreign to one’s native