Carol Neidle writes from Boston University:
bq. Hello everyone,
I thought you might be interested to know about the latest political struggle at Boston University: for recognition of American Sign Language in fulfillment of the university’s “foreign language requirement.” There has been an astounding degree of ignorance and prejudice underlying the university’s unwavering position on this issue.
There is a Web site with information about what is going on http://www.bu.edu/asllrp/fl/ as well as an online petition (started by an undergraduate) accessible from that site.
Any support you might be able to offer — signing the online petition and/or offering a brief statement of support for our Web site — would be very much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
With best wishes,
Carol
While the petition says that only affiliates of BU are eligible to sign, according to Carol, “The petition was originally intended for affiliates of BU, but people from all over have been signing it … and I believe that the student can no longer modify the wording on the petition Web site. In fact, anyone can sign.”
Well, this is not the gravest case of ignorance on foreign
Languages.
The number one ignorance is to think that Spanish is the
language of Brazil, a kind of ignorance Hollywood film
makers seemingly want to perpetuate in every movie
they make about Brazil.
There are in certain Universities (such as the University of
Edinburgh) a Department strangely called ‘”Hispanic”
Languages/Studies Department”, which includes
Portuguese, as if Portuguese speaking Countries were
Hispanic in any sense.
And to make matters worse, it does not matter how many
times you explain these mistakes, the same minds resist
and do not review their misconceptions.
So, if Boston University made a mistake, it made a very
April 16th, 2004, at 11:33 am #insignificant one in comparison to others.
tony, it’s certainly ignorant to forget about brazilian portuguese. but i don’t think that you should start comparing the degrees of ignorance here. even when one doesn’t take into account that spanish and portuguese are both romance languages decending from latin and calls grouping them together a mistake, how would this ‘mistake’ make it any less important that bu’s cas administration appears to show complete ignorance with respect to asl?
April 16th, 2004, at 1:17 pm #Let me answer two points:
1- Although Dutch and Icelandic are Germanic languages,
it is certainly a huge mistake to include Dutch among
the Scandinavian Languages. Portuguese, Italian, Spanish
French are all Romance, but it is not only an instance of
ignorance but a huge dis to call Portuguse a ‘Hispanic
Language’.
2-It is important to compare ‘ignorances’ and show that
April 17th, 2004, at 12:12 am #People do not want to revise them. For instance, even when
a Brazilian tells you that Portuguese is not a Hispanic
Language, you found an argument to resist, saying
something like ‘well, they both come from Latin’.
So BU CAS does the same: even if you tell them they do not
know certain things, they resist and keep the attitudes.
And, trust me, even being wrong they can give you all
sorts of arguments to maintain their position and not
revise their beliefs. Even if Sign Language users ask them
more consideration, just like when Brazilians ask ‘please,
we do not speak Spanish’.
PERTINENT INFORMATION
Standardisation of Sign Languages in Brazil:
Two curious (and failed) attempts to standardise Sign Languages in Brazil came to my mind.
The first attempt was unofficial and informal:
it involved a very small number of persons, who had been exposed to the
reality of Sign Language communities in the US.
They simply expected Sign Language to be one Universal language and tried
to spread the US Language among both Hearers and Deafs. Sooner many
told them that the Languages used in Brazil were different and that nobody
knew the US Language well to use or teach it.
The second is more recent: it is the ‘introduction’ of a Brazilian Sign Language
into the mass media. That seems to be the language of some larger cities, such
as Sao Paulo and Rio (I am not 100% sure though).
However, many small and middle size Town communities have had their own
Local Languages for years and they find the ‘National’ Language as strange as
the US one.
In my home town the word for ‘father’ is the same as ‘moustache’ and root
sentences have an SOV order, for instance. 40 Kms from my hometown,
there is another local Sign Language, which is completely different, and the
word for ‘father’ may be the same as the one for ‘beard’ and Grammar also
differs.
Consequently, when people watch TV News with someone translating into
April 17th, 2004, at 1:09 am #the National Language, the vast majority of Sign Language users in places other than Sao Paulo or Rio complain
that they cannot understand anything said by the translator.
Most Deafs still prefer subtitles or closed caption.
that makes your point more clear. if you’re talking about comparing these two cases in order to figure out whether there is a common pattern that will help us figure out why people like to stick to their believes, and maybe in consequence leads to a better way of presenting what we believe in, then i’m all with you. i think that’s very important.
April 18th, 2004, at 11:04 am #Yeas, that is precisely the point.
In my hometown there are two or three schools
that have some structure to include deaf students.
In one of them the tradition is that deaf students must
learn to speak Portuguese and to read the lips. They
advise against teaching them any Sign language, and
often ask the students not to use it.
Well, in consequence of such directive, deaf students
in the aforementioned school have naturally created
their own Sign Language among themselves
and have used it from the start. Each new student learns
it just by interaction with the other older classmates.
Even thus, the school has not changed its position
to admit the use of both languages. And not many
teachers informally ask students to teach them their Sign
language.
Of course, the Sign language they themselves
April 18th, 2004, at 5:20 pm #created within school environment is now being used in
the rest of the town, in all aspects of the social life of the
deaf population. I know some hearers who have learned it
in their teens just by playing games with deaf neighbours.
On the other hand, there also parents who do not like their
deaf children to use Sign languages and politicians, who
talk about policies for the deaf population, but retain
many prejudices and myths respecting Sign languages.