American Sign Language 101: why not?

It wouldn’t even be a particularly radical step. More than 150 colleges either offer ASL courses or accept fluency in the language as fulfilling their foreign language requirement, including Ivies such as Brown and Penn, which both offer six semesters of ASL. Some colleges — Boston University, for example — go further than what I’m suggesting and offer majors in deaf studies. ASL classes are even offered on a not-for-credit basis already at Princeton, by the Student Volunteers Council (SVC) in association with the New Jersey School for the Deaf.

The fact that uncredited classes are already offered shows that there’s clear demand for it at Princeton. Not only does the SVC offer beginner’s and intermediate courses, but 12 of us went on the BreakOut trip to learn about ASL, Deaf culture and education, and more applied to. If that many people were willing to pay up to $150 and give up their Fall Break, then there would almost certainly be enough for a class in it — especially since a for-credit class will be better-publicized, and students will be more willing to make time for it.

Some may doubt whether ASL is a genuine “foreign language,” but all the evidence suggests that it is. It’s not just English expressed through signs rather than words — that method of communication exists, but it is known as Sign-Supported English and is different from American Sign Language. ASL has its own grammar, different from English’s, and linguists in general accept that ASL is a real and distinct language rather than an inferior variant of English. Of course, like any foreign language, it also lets you meet new people and see different cultures — though, in this case, without even leaving America. And there are definitely noticeable differences in Deaf culture — for example, if a deaf student wants to ask a question in a lecture, they walk up to the front and sign their question so that they can be seen.

Consider the benefits — for one, ASL Table would be the only language table where you could talk with your mouth full! But the more important reason, of course, is that it would make Princeton far more friendly and accessible to deaf students. Obviously, the administration and Office of Disability Services can provide academic support without requiring anyone to learn ASL, for example by offering interpreters in classes. But interpreters can’t follow students everywhere, and having a group of students taking ASL classes would mean that deaf students could meet more people and have a more normal college experience — which would then encourage more to apply.

There would be benefits for the individual students who took ASL, though, as well as the wider Princeton community. I’m fairly interested in languages — after five years of high-school French, I’m taking Latin now and hoping to take up either German or Italian next year — and I found using ASL really interesting, intellectually. Because it’s a signed language, you can use the space around you in a way you can’t with spoken language. If I wanted to talk about my two brothers, for example, I could sign “brother” and then point to a space on my left, then sign it again and point to my right — setting up two “brothers” in the space around me. Whereas saying “him” in English would be ambiguous, in ASL I can just point to my right or my left, depending on which brother I meant, and it would be perfectly clear which one I was talking about. Thinking far ahead in the future, there are even studies showing that using basic sign language with hearing babies has benefits — they can communicate before they’ve mastered the ability to speak, which means that they don’t have to cry to get attention. There’s also evidence that babies who are taught to sign even learn to speak faster and do better on IQ tests.

I’m not making any specific suggestions — I don’t know who would run this class, whether it’d just be one semester or six or even what department it could be in. All I ask is that we consider the benefits. It would follow established practice at other Ivies, Princeton would become a more welcoming environment for the deaf, those who are interested in language or Deaf culture or even interpreting will have more opportunities here, and it could even make your kids smarter. What other class can offer all that?

Rob Day is an exchange student from Oxford, where he majors in ancient history. He can be reached at rkday@princeton.edu.