Timothy Reagan

A sociocultural understanding of deafness: American sign language and the culture of deaf people

Abstract This article provides an exploration of the culture of Deaf people in the United States and anglophone Canada, with special emphasis on the role of American Sign Language (ASL) in the maintenance and propagation of that culture. It begins with a discussion of two competing perspectives on deafness in contemporary society: the pathologic perspective, in which deafness is seen as a medical condition requiring remediation of some sort, and the sociocultural perspective, which focuses on the Deaf as a cultural and linguistic minority group. The case for the view of the Deaf as a cultural and linguistic minority group is then presented, focusing on a number of the central cultural components of deafness, and on the related issues of paternalism in cultural identification. The role of ASL in supporting and facilitating each of the other components of Deaf culture is emphasized throughout the discussion. The article concludes with a discussion of the world view of culturally Deaf individuals, and the implications of this world view for a variety of issues of concern to Deaf people.

Becoming a Reflective Educator

We may not be able to make you love reading, but becoming a reflective educator will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.

The Properties Of South African Sign Language: Lexical Diversity & Syntactic Unity

A growing literature deals with various aspects of South African Sign Language (SASL), including works on the history, lexicography, sociolinguistics, and educational uses and implications of SASL (Landman 1990, Penn 1992a, b, 1993, Penn & Reagan 1990, Penn & Reagan 1991). Much of this literature emphasizes the degree and extent of diversity in SASL. The origins of this diversity have generally been attributed to (a) the history of deaf education in the country, (b) the segregation policies of the apartheid regime (multiple educational systems, geographic separation, and ethnic and linguistic diversity in the national population), and (c) a number of other causes (see Penn 1992b, 1993, Penn & Reagan 1990, Penn & Reagan 1991). This diversity, while of considerable interest to sign language researchers, has inevitably been assumed to raise many practical problems and concerns for those involved in education, and it has been a factor of concern to deaf people themselves as they seek greater cultural and linguistic unity. In this paper we argue that SASL is indeed marked by a high degree of lexical diversity, but there appears to be an underlying common syntactic and morphological base on which all of the different varieties are grounded. We will suggest further that this common syntactic and morphological base provides a foundation on which future educational and language policy with respect to deaf people may be developed.

The Explanatory Power of Critical Language Studies: Linguistics with an Attitude

In this article, I address the miracle of human language from a socio-cultural perspective, emphasizing the role that language, and more explicitly, the critical study of language, can and should play in developing reflective, socially and politically aware and responsible teachers, administrators, and students. The article begins by examining the nature and focus of critical language awareness as it has emerged in the recent years, with particular focus on the implications of critical language awareness for educators. The framework established in discussing critical language awareness is then applied to several broad areas: critical discourse analysis, as a potentially powerful research methodology, and to the implications of critical language awareness for the concept of language rights in education in general and specifically in case of deaf children.

Cultural Transformation in an Urban Professional Development Center: Policy Implications for School-University Collaboration

Entrenched organizational policies, coupled with significantly different (and to some degree incompatible) institutional and professional cultures, have made educational reform difficult to achieve. In this article, the process of cultural transformation in the redesign of a teacher preparation program involving an urban professional development center is discussed. It is suggested that such school-university partnerships can enhance the education of individual students, provide a variety of professional development activities for all involved, and foster research activities within school environments. Such collaboration can clearly build a cohort of teachers who will be better prepared for the multicultural nature of the public schools of the next century.

The Case for Applied Linguistics in Teacher Education

The notion that black English is a language and that black kids are actually bilingual is ludicrous and patronizing. Ebonics is ungrammatical English. What students who speak Ebonics need to learn is that they are speaking substandard English and that substandard English brands them as uneducated. (Hernandez, 1996, p. A-21) This quotation, from a recent column by Roger Hernandez about the decision of the Oakland, California, Board of Education to recognize Black English (or Ebonics [see Blackshire-Belay, 1996]) as the dominant language many students in that district speak, makes clear both the emotional and psychological importance of language in the educational process as well as the extent to which normally well-educated and articulate individuals can be victims of their own ignorance of the nature of language and linguistics (see, for example, Bennet, 1996; S. Holmes, 1996; Maxwell, 1997; Olszewski, 1996; Schorr, 1997; Staples, 1997). The debate about Black English is only one component of a far larger problem in contemporary American education: the lack of knowledge of applied linguistics common among educators and educational professionals. Trueba (1991) recently noted that there are approximately 35 million persons in the United States who speak a language other than English at home, of whom about 20 million are not fluent in English. Almost 11 million of them are school age children (p. 45). These numbers alone are significant, but they take on considerable urgency when one considers the demographic trends they represent. Both the percentage and the absolute number of language-minority children in the public schools in the United States will increase dramatically in the decades ahead as American society itself becomes increasingly diverse culturally and linguistically (see Ager, Muskens, & Wright, 1993; Baker, 1993; Corson, 1993). These children bring with them educational needs distinct from those of their English-speaking classmates in important ways. They must learn to function in an American society very different from that existing when earlier non-English-speaking groups were assimilated into the dominant society. It is neither socially nor educationally sound simply to assume that left to their own devices, such students will acquire English (see Scarcella, 1990). At the same time, school-based programs that target such students especially bilingual education programs and English as a Second Language programs--are increasingly unpopular with many segments of society and are under fire all over the country (see Baron, 1990; Crawford, 1992a, 1992b; Moraes, 1996; Porter, 1990; Smitherman, 1992; Tatalovich, 1995). It is, in any case, unlikely that such programs will be available for all language-minority students. Rather, significant numbers of non-English and limited-English-speaking students are almost certainly going to be placed in English-medium classroom environments, taught by teachers with neither special language skills nor professional training to prepare them to teach such students. The needs of children who do not speak English, or who do not speak English fluently, are only one part of the linguistic challenge facing teachers, as the debate in Oakland makes clear. Millions of children speak distinctive non-mainstream varieties of English or exhibit various sorts of language and speech pathologies; many language-related classroom issues arise on a daily basis related to language use. Few debates about language in the educational sphere generate the heat and passion that discussions of nonmainstream language varieties, especially of Black English, generate. The 1979 judicial decision in Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children vs. Ann Arbor School District (473 F. Supp. 1371, E. D. Mich. 1979) led to a widespread national debate about the status of Black English similar to that taking place about the Oakland decision (for earlier discussions of King, see Chambers, 1983; Smitherman, 1981; Whiteman, 1980). …

South African Sign Language and language-in-education policy in South Africa

Language planning and language policy issues and decisions are both significant and often controversial in the educational sphere. In the case of South Africa, language planning and language policy have a long and complex history in South Africa. Used in the apartheid era both to support Afrikaner nationalist objectives and as a pillar of ethnolinguistically separate education, language planning and policy have remained an important and divisive matter well into the new democratic era (cf. Heugh 1995, 2002; E. de Kadt 1996; Ridge 1996, 2004; Chisanga and Kamwangamalu 1997; Kamwangamalu 1997, 2004; Verhoef 1998; Reagan 2001, 2002a; Alexander 2004; J. de Kadt 2006).

Language Policy, South African Sign Language, and the Deaf: Social and Educational Implications

In this article we examine South African Sign Language in light of the recommendations made by the Language Plan Task Group on future language policy. The deaf community is discussed as a cultural and linguistic entity and some research on the nature of South African Sign Language is provided. Finally, the implications of emerging government language policy are suggested for the case of the deaf in South Africa, specifically in relation to social aspects and to future educational policy.

‘Language ideology’ in the language planning process: Two African case studies

Language planning, together with the articulation and implementation of various language policies, has come to play an increasingly significant role-in policy-making in both developed and developing societies. Although it would appear axiomatic that the successful implementation of a given language policy requires an understanding of and sensitivity to the socio-political context in which the policy is to operate, an important component of this context has been consistently overlooked in much of the language planning literature. As Juan Cobarrubias has observed, ‘(t)he ideological aspect related to language-status planning is perhaps the most neglected area of language planning, in spite of the fact that ideologies underlie all forms of status planning’. In this article, the tentative classification of language ideologies proposed by Cobarrubias is discussed, and suggestions for expanding and modifying the taxonomy are made. Two specific Southern African cases are discussed in some detail to provide suppo...

Selected syntactic features of South African sign language: a preliminary analysis

In hierdie artikel verskaf ons voorlopige bevindinge wat op die sintaksis van Suid-Afrikaanse Gebaretaal betrekking het. Daar word aangetoon hoe die gebruikers van Suid-Afrikaanse Gebaretaal gekose aspekte van hul taal organiseer, en dit met ander natuurlike gebaretale (in die besonder Amerikaanse Gebaretaal en Britse Gebaretaal) vergelyk wat reeds in die literatuur gedokumenteer is. Wat in die artikel van besondere belang vir ons is, is die ruimtelike organisasie van Suid-Afrikaanse Gebaretaal.