Black American Sign Language

Black American Sign Language
Fingerspelling of "BASL"
Region	North America
Native speakers	(no data)
Language family	French Sign–based (possibly a creole) American Sign Language Black American Sign Language
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None

Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) spoken most commonly by deaf African Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the American South. Like other schools at the time, schools for the deaf were segregated based upon race, creating two language communities among deaf signers: White deaf signers at White schools and Black deaf signers at Black schools. Today, BASL is still used by signers in the South despite schools having been legally desegregated for 60 years.

Linguistically, BASL differs from other varieties of ASL in its phonology, syntax, and lexicon. BASL tends to have a larger signing space meaning that some signs are produced further away from the body than in other dialects. Signers of BASL also tend to prefer two-handed variants of signs while signers of ASL tend to prefer one-handed variants of signs. Some signs are different in BASL as well, with some borrowings from African American English.

History

Like many educational institutions for hearing children during the 1800s and early 1900s, schools for deaf children were segregated based on race. This segregation created two speech communities that led to ASL diverging into two dialects: one spoken by the White deaf and another, Black American Sign Language (BASL), spoken by the Black deaf.

The first school for the deaf, The American School for the Deaf (ASD), was founded in 1817 but did not admit any Black deaf students until 1952. Of the schools for the deaf that began to be created, few admitted students of color. Seeing a lack of educational opportunities for the Black deaf, Dr. Platt Skinner founded the first school exclusively for the Black deaf—The School for the Colored Deaf, Dumb, and Blind—in 1856 in Niagara Falls, New York, saying: "[it] is the first effort of its kind in the country ... We receive and instruct those and only those who are refused admission to all other institutions and are despised on account of their color." The school moved to Trenton, New Jersey in 1860. After its closure in 1866, no Northern state created an institution for the Black deaf. Despite northern states outlawing segregation by 1900, integration was sparse as some institutions allowed Black students and others did not.

After the foundation and success of the American School for the Deaf, many other institutions for the deaf were founded throughout the country. As schools, particularly in the South, were segregated, a number of states in the South created separate schools or departments for the Black deaf. The first school established for the Black deaf below the Mason-Dixon Line opened in the District of Columbia in 1857, remaining segregated until 1958. The last Southern state to create an institution for the Black deaf was Louisiana in 1938. Black Deaf children thus became a language community isolated from the White Deaf with different means of language socialization allowing for different dialects to develop. As the education of White children was privileged over Black children, Oralism—the prominent pedagogical method of the time—was not as strictly applied to the Black deaf students. This afforded Black deaf students more opportunities to use ASL than their White peers as Oralist methods often forbade usage of sign language. Despite the decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 which declared racial segregation in schools unconstitutional, integration was slow to come, and schools for the deaf were no exception with the last school desegregating in 1978, 24 years after the decision.

As schools began to integrate students and teachers noticed differences in the way Black students and White students signed. Dr. Carolyn McCaskill, professor of ASL and Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University, recalls the challenge of understanding the dialect of ASL spoken by her White principal and teachers after her segregated school integrated: "When I began attending the school, I did not understand the teacher and she did not understand me because we used different signs." Carl Cronenberg was the first to discuss differences between BASL and White ASL in his appendices of the 1965 version of the Dictionary of American Sign Language, and work has continued to be done on BASL since then.

Table of States with Black Deaf Schools

State	White School Established	Black School or Department Established	Integration
Washington, DC	1857	1857 (dept.)	1958
North Carolina	1845	1868–1869	1967
Maryland	1868	1872	1956
Georgia	1846	1882	1965
Tennessee	1845	1881 (dept.)	1965
Mississippi	1854	1882 (dept.)	1965
South Carolina	1849	1883 (dept.)	1966
Kentucky	1823	1884 (dept.)	1954–1960
Florida	1885	1885	1965
Texas	1857	1887	1965
Arkansas	1850/1867	1867	1967
Alabama	1858	1868	1968
Missouri	1861	1888 (dept.)	1954
Virginia	1839	1909	1965
Oklahoma	1898	1909 (dept.)	1962
Kansas	1861	1888 (dept.)	1954
Louisiana	1852	1938	1978
West Virginia	1870	1926	1956

Phonology

The gray box represents the typical signing space of ASL. Signers of BASL are more likely to produce signs outside of this area than other signers.

When asked, many signers in the South give anecdotal accounts of differences between the signing of Black and White signers. These differences turned out to be aspects of the differing phonology of BASL. Among these annecdotal accounts were claims that Black signers had a larger signing space and used more two-handed signs, and investigation into these annecdotes has found correlations.

When compared, Black signers were more likely to produce signs outside of the typical signing space and use two-handed signs than were White signers. The best predictors of enlargement of the signing space is the class of word being produced as locative and indicating verbs (though not plain verbs), adjectives, and adverbs are most likely to utilize a larger signing space. Less marked forms such as pronouns, determiners, plain verbs, and nouns tend to be less likely to be produced outside the typical signing space. The selection of two-handed signs over one-handed signs were found to have systematic constraints on their production. When the sign could be produced with one or two hands, Black signers often produced the variant that matched the handedness of the following sign; if the following sign was two-handed, they were more likely to produce a two handed variant while if the following sign were one-handed, they were more likely to produce the one-handed variant. The use of innovative one-handed forms though, even in environments which favored them, did not exceed 50 percent.

BASL signers further tend to favor lowered variants of side-of-forehead signs resulting in contact at the cheek. Early research showed that BASL signers chose lowered signs at a rate of 53 percent with grammatical category being the strongest constraint. Other conditioning environments for lowered signs depend on preceding location, namely signs produced in front of the body condition lowered sign variants while signs produced at the head cause signers to favor non-lowered forms.

Syntax

Unlike ASL, BASL allows for the frequent use of syntactic repetition. In a study conducted by Carolyn McCaskill, of 26 signers (13 Black and 13 White), there were 57 instances of repetition from Black signers compared to 19 from White signers, and of those 19 instances, 18 came from a single signer. The use of repetition by BASL signers is considered to be pragmatic rather than clarifying as most instances were of declarative statements and, cross-linguistically, pragmatic repetition in statements is common.

A study in 2004 by Melanie Metzger and Susan Mather found that Black male signers used constructed action and constructed action along with constructed dialogue more often than White signers, but never used constructed dialogue by itself. These results were not reproduced in a later study into constructed action and constructed dialogue by McCaskill, which found that Black signers not only used constructed dialogue, but did so more frequently than white signers.

Lexical variation

Lexical variation between BASL and other dialects of ASL was first noted in the Dictionary of American Sign Language. Older signers are more likely to use variant signs than younger signers, and most, having been developed in segregated schools for the Black Deaf, refer to every day life. Younger signers of BASL are less likely to use these variants, but when asked about them are aware that older signers have and use these innovative signs.

Borrowing from African American English

A body of work has arisen looking at the similarities between Black American Sign Language and African American English (AAE) as both are language varieties marked by their usage in African American communities. In 1998 Dr. John Lewis investigated the incorporation of aspects of AAE into BASL. He reported that, during narrative storytelling by a Black signer, there were "Ebonic shifts" marked by shifts in posture, rhythmicity, and incorporating side-to-side head movement. He concluded that this "'songified' quality" was related to the style of AAE. This finding was not reproduced by Dr. Carolyn McCaskill which she attributes to the nature of the speech acts: Lewis analyzed a narrative event while McCaskill utilized natural or elicited data. Lexical borrowing has been seen in BASL signers under the age of 35 which is likely due to the advances in mass media as younger signers would have more contact with AAE through movies, television, and the internet.

References

• Douglas, Davison. 2005. Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865–1954. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Lewis, John. 1998. Ebonics in American Sign Language: Stylistic Variation in African American Signers.Deaf Studies V: Towards 2000: Unity and Diversity ed. by C. Carroll. Washington, D.C.: College for Continuing Education, Gallaudet University.
• Lucas, Ceil; Robert Bayley; Carolyn McCaskill, and Joseph Hill. 2015. The intersection of African American English and Black American Sign Language. International Journal of Bilingualism 19. 156–168
• Lucas, Ceil; Robert Bayley; Mary Rose, and Alyssa Wulf. 2002. Location Variation in American Sign Language.Sign Language Studies, 407–440. 2;
• Lucas, Ceil; Robert Bayley, and Clayton Valli. 2001. Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press.
• McCaskill, Carolyn. 2014. Black ASL. Accessed 21 March 2015 Video. In ASL with English captions
• McCaskill, Carolyn; Ceil Lucas; Robert Bayley, and Joseph Hill. 2011. The Hidden Treasure of Black Asl: Its History and Structure. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press.
• Metzger, Melanie, and Susan Mather. 2004. Constructed Dialogue and Constructed Action in Conversational Narratives in ASL. cited in Lucas, et al. 2002
• Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Area, . n.d. Site of Dr. P.H. Skinner's and Jarusha Skinner's School for Colored Deaf, Dumb and Blind Children. Accessed 21 November 2015 Web.
• Skinner, Platt. 1859. The Mute and the Deaf. Niagara City, N.Y.: .
• Stokoe, William; Dorothy Casterline, and Carl Cronenberg. 1965. Appendix D: Sign Language and Dialects.A Dictionary of American Sign Language. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok.