Sociolinguistics and Language Variation in the Deaf Community
This domain addresses variation within ASL and the social meaning of signing: regional, ethnic, age, and register variation, language contact, and attitudes. Items ask you to distinguish variation from error and to explain how contact shapes signing.
Dimensions of variation
- Regional variation: signs such as BIRTHDAY, HALLOWEEN, PIZZA, and PAPER have competing forms associated with regions and residential schools.
- Ethnic variation: Black ASL, documented by McCaskill, Lucas, Bayley, and Hill, shows distinctive features - a larger signing space, different two-handed configurations, some forehead-located signs, and lexical items - shaped by segregated schooling and community history.
- Age and generation: older signers may use forms now less common; younger signers innovate.
- Register and style: formal lectures, casual conversation, and ritual performance each shift signing.
- Gender and social network: variation correlates with network density and school experience.
Language contact
- Contact signing (Lucas and Valli) is a systematic outcome of ASL–English contact, with ASL structure plus English-influenced features; it is not "bad ASL."
- Code-blending (signing while speaking) is common in bilingual Deaf families.
- Borrowing: fingerspelling, initializations, and loan translations from English, all adapted into ASL phonology.
- Manual codes for English are engineered systems, not dialects, and their use reflects educational policy rather than natural acquisition.
Attitudes and standardization
- Prestige judgments ("pure ASL" versus "Signed English") are social, not linguistic.
- Dictionaries and curricula standardize some forms; variation persists.
- ASL is not universal: there are hundreds of sign languages, and International Sign is a contact variety, not a universal language.
Worked example
Two Deaf adults from different states argue over the "correct" sign for BIRTHDAY. Reasoning: both forms are attested regional variants with the same meaning; neither is an error; choosing one may signal identity or school background; a teacher should expose students to variants and teach awareness of region and register rather than declaring one wrong.
Traps
- Calling variation "slang," "wrong," or "not real ASL."
- Characterizing Black ASL as deficient or as "broken" ASL.
- Equating contact signing with ASL or with Signed English.
- Assuming ASL is universal or that BSL and ASL are mutually intelligible.
- Ignoring how school background and social networks shape signing.