ASL as Visual Language: A Pack of Lies?

Though American Sign Language (ASL) is increasingly accepted as a legitimate language of academic inquiry, people still debate whether is should be taught to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing children. Some critics contend that it would be more valuable for those children to learn the language of high culture--Shakespeare's plays rather than Schroeder's tales of ASL Dragon. Their arguments often center on the issue of quality, as they assert that ASL lacks the lasting value and strong artistic merit of high culture.

We know exactly why Plato takes sign language so seriously he writes about it in his language book Cratylus. We know ASL affects life very profoundly and are indignant because Plato seems to want to empower us. We are drawn into argument with Plato about Socrates' experience with sign language, and the dispute centers on how to translate it and deal with it. This Socratic encounter of sign language not only helps to illuminate the phenomenon of ASL, but also provides a model of how we can profitably engage with a cross-lingual and cross-cultural interpretation. The very fact of our fury shows how much Plato understands what is dear and intimate to us. Yet we are little able to defend our experience with ASL, which has seemed "unquestionable until questioned."

If we can draw back, get a critical distance on ASL, come to doubt the ultimate value of ASL, we have taken the first and most difficult step toward the philosophic conversion. ASL is indignant because it is our soul's defense against the wound of language oppression by demanding for the social justice. Indignation is what justifies sentencing Socrates to death. Recognizing indignation for what it constitutes knowledge encompasses all that is today the Socratic formula, the lyrics--speech and, hence, reason--can be replaced by ASL, not any other so called "visual language."

Is the "visual language" term in the NAD position and Gallaudet Unversity mission statements the art of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get profit from it? Should we scruntize the ASL-as-a-visual-language phrase? Is it "manipulation"? It might be possible that we would not be conscious of replacing ASL with a visual language, but our "inconscious" would see it--and obey it. Am I subliminal in my thinking about this visual language assertion? I think not.

Hold your horses--I almost forgot. Do you really think the claim that ASL is a visual language gives you enough information about its embedded culture--Deaf people? I don't. It simply reminds me of the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections. Lies.

Hence, for those who are into psychological well-being, ASL is at the center of our life, both for giving the passions our due and for preparing us for the use of reason. This ASL philosophy doesn't censor the English language. It promotes the bilingualism of ASL and English. Visual language is like telling us philosophy on exactly who UPS is hiring.