The Trojan horse in our ASL Deaf community.

Duration - 3:33

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Summary:

Hello, I’m Adrean — Recently a thought popped up while I was thinking about my experience in mainstreaming. I remember during the 1980’s, in the height of the Total Communication method, I would often be told to leave class for speech therapy. What struck me in the present was those sessions, in fact, the entirety if my mainstreamed experience, were centered on acquiring English skills. If the true problem was my lack of auditory abilities, then there should have been a majority of time spent on comprehending environmental sounds, and perhaps even decoding music. But that was not what happened. I spent long hours learning how to pronounce English words and understanding idioms, etc.

Our Deaf community today tends to view the audio-verbal or listening and speaking method as the enemy. Audism is a very real lived experience for us, however, it is not the full picture. The reason why AVT/LSL is such a problem is because it is a vehicle for English linguicism — it is the result of monolingualism here in the United States.

We can’t afford to be distracted by this trojan horse, especially because we neglect to realize how insidious the impact of English has been on ASL. It erodes our language from within, because we permit English to take over ASL linguistic rules and cultural expectations. We allow an unhealthy relationship between ASL and English because it gives ASL a semblance of legitimacy in a monolingual society.

If English continues to erode the foundations of ASL, then in the end, what will we have left? Will we, like in the story of the Trojan Horse, be left with a burning, conquered community?

We need to have a healthy relationship between ASL and English — healthy boundaries between the languages so that we can meet as equals.

What do you all think?

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Citations and links:

Frieze of trojan horse from the British Museum - public domain, Wikimedia Commons

The story of the Trojan horse - Link

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