perspectives in Education and Deafness

Ebonics and ASL

Teaching Our Children the Codes of Power

"Again? I thought that we were done with this..." This was my reaction and that of many researchers in the linguistic community when the decision of the Oakland California School Board to recognize Ebonics as a language resulted in heated—and sometimes alarmed—discussion. The board soon retracted some of its statement, and clarified its intentions. Its goal was not to teach Ebonics, but to use Ebonics to teach standard English.

While some people laughed at the board's insistence that Ebonics be called a "language," linguists noted that the distinction between "language" and "dialect" is usually made on social and political grounds—not linguistic ones. For example, most people accept that in Sweden, the language is Swedish, and in Denmark, the language is Danish, and that Swedish and Danish are separate languages. Not linguists. For linguists, the languages of Sweden and Denmark are mutually intelligible; they are more like varieties of one language. Similarly people say that in China, people use "dialects" of Chinese. Yet China's spoken "dialects" are linguistically separate languages. Mandarin is as different from Cantonese as German is from French.

But discussion about dialect and language aside, the intention of the Oakland school board had a solid linguistic base.

For 30 years, research has shown that there are specific differences between the linguistic structure of Standard English and Ebonics—and that identifying and articulating these differences—a process that linguists refer to as developing metalinguistic awareness—can facilitate the learning and use of Standard English, which everyone accepts as a necessary tool for attaining economic success in American society.

Unlike Ebonics, American Sign Language is not a variety of English. ASL is an autonomous linguistic system, independent of the linguistic system we call English. But like Ebonics, ASL is systematic and rule governed, and, like Ebonics, it has frequently been ignored and misunderstood. Even in the face of more than 37 years of research into its structure and use, it is still frequently described as "broken English," and invented codes for English, such as Manually Coded English or Seeing Essential English, are sometimes described as varieties of ASL. Like black children who arrive in school using Ebonics, deaf children who use ASL frequently see their linguistic situation demeaned and confused.

Metalinguistic awareness is the capacity that humans have to not only use their language, but to talk about their use of it. Metalinguistic knowledge is assured for the English language, where students study it from the day they enter first grade to the day they leave high school. It is formalized in dictionaries and grammars. It is implicit in such activities as diagramming sentences, or noting to foreign colleagues that in English "adjectives precede nouns."

There is evidence that when black children develop this kind of knowledge of Ebonics or deaf children develop this type of knowledge about American Sign Langauge, they can use it to improve their command of English. Wolfram and Detwyler (1992), for example, established a successful program in Baltimore city schools to teach third, fourth and fifth graders dialect differences within language, with examples from varieties of American English.

Similarly Neuroth-Gimbrone and Logiodice (1992) developed a remarkable and successful program for teaching English to deaf adolescent ASL users, which required students to videotape themselves signing a story that they wanted to write in English and then working through their videotape—at times, word by word—to create the English text. Essentially the students translated, a process that required a tremendous amount of knowledge about the structure of ASL and English and the differences between the two systems.

A key to the success of all these programs was the development and application of metalinguistic awareness in students as they explored different linguistic systems. As Delpit states:

Students must be taught [emphasis in the original] the codes needed to participate fully in the mainstream of American life, not by being forced to attend to hollow, inane, decontextualized subskills, but rather within the context of meaningful communicative endeavors; ... they must be allowed the resource of the teacher's expert knowledge, while being helped to acknowledge their own "expertness" as well; ... even while students are assisted in learning the culture of power, they must also be helped to learn about the arbitrariness of those codes and about the power relationships they represent...

In fall of 1990, Clayton Valli, my colleague, co-author, and fellow professor of American Sign Language Structure at Gallaudet University, and I asked our students to write about American Sign Language and how it had affected their lives. The students—all of them undergraduates and all of them deaf—produced unexpectedly powerful writing as they discussed the role of ASL in their identity, school life, relationships with family members, and education, as well as their reflections on the structure and use of the language itself.

One student wrote, "ASL has opened my eyes to a vast world of possibilities that I never imagined before—it was like ... I was trying to decipher some secret code... suddenly I broke the code and understood so much about myself that I never realized before." Another student noted, "the language I finally discovered when I was 14 years old (ASL) made me understand what's happening around me and I finally started to learn. Now my education brain is blossoming!" Still another student remarked, "Before I thought that ASL was 'bad English'... and I wasn't sure if I used ASL, PSE, or Contact Sign. Now I know I rise ASL ..... Finally one student noted "there is an advantage to knowing [American Sign Language and English] because we know when and how to change from one to the other..."

The theme of the writing was consistent: the central and crucial role that ASL played in these students' lives, giving them an indispensable sense of identity and pride. This grew directly from their own newly-developed metalinguistic awareness.

Children—whether they are Deaf, African American, Caucasian, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian—need at least three things when it comes to language:

• To be able to learn Standard English, since it is one of the key tools for success and economic advancement in American society; for Deaf children this may mean learning to read and write Englishnot necessarily speak it.
• To recognize and respect the languages that they use other than Standard English; to have their competence in these languages recognized and celebrated.
• To know the link between language and status and power within society.

The key to providing recognition and respect is the development of metalinguistic knowledge, not only in children, but also in educators, parents, and caretakes. This in turn feeds attainment of competence in English.

REFERENCES

Delpit, L. (1991). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people's children. In M. Minami and B. P. Kennedy (Eds.), Language issues in literacy and bilinguallmulticultural education, (pp.483-501). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Linguistic Society of America Resolution on the Oakland "Ebonics" issue, Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, January 1997.

Lucas, C. and Borders, D. (1994). Language Diversity and Classroom Discourse. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Co.

Neuroth-Gimbrone, C. and Logiodice, C. (1994). A Cooperative Language Program for the Deaf Adolescent Utilizing Bilingual Principles. In Bilingual Considerations in the Education of Deaf Students: ASL and English, conference proceedings. (pp. 123-149) Washington DC: College for Continuing Education.

Valli, C. and Lucas, C. (1995). Linguistics of American Sign Language-An Introduction. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press.

Valli, Lucas C., Farb E., (1992). ASL PAH Deaf Students' Perspectives on their Language, Burtonsville, MD: Linstok Press.

This includes writings from students in the ASL structure class of Ceil Lucas and Clayton Valli. Students picked the title for the book and royalties from its sales go to support research on AS Gallaudet undergraduates. The book is accompanied by a videotape.

Wolfram, W. and Detwylerj. (1992, March.) Beyond obligation: A role in mainstream education about social dialects. Paper presented at the Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC.