Sign of the times

Listening from the hall, you might assume that Cabell 132 is vacant on Tuesday and Thursday mornings — the classroom is silent. But a peek inside tells another story. The 16 students in American Sign Language (ASL) 202 are engaged in fluent discussion. These students are studying what is recognized by linguists as a complex, fully developed human language with its own lexicon, syntax and morphological processes.

American Sign Language is harder than it looks. “ASL is not derived from any spoken language,” says Bruce Sofinski, the ASL 202 instructor. “Many students struggle with the concept that English and ASL are separate and that there isn’t a one-to-one correlation between a word and a sign.”

The ASL 202 students are in their final semester of a four-semester sequence of classes offered through U.Va.’s American Sign Language Program. Since 1998, students have been able to fulfill the College of Arts and Sciences foreign language requirement by successfully completing the sequence. But ASL students attest to the program’s greater worth, particularly the exposure to the signing Deaf* community and its distinctive culture, history and literary and artistic traditions.

“We feel that the study of American Sign Language and Deaf culture fits in well with a liberal arts education,” explains Christopher Krentz, ASL program director and assistant professor of English. Krentz, who is deaf, helped found the program in 1996 while he was a doctoral student in English.

Today, 75 students participate in the ASL Program. Due to class size restrictions, the program can accept into its introductory sections only about 15 percent of interested students. Although most students come from the College of Arts & Sciences, some spots are reserved for students majoring in speech language pathology or audiology through the Curry School of Education. “For ASL 101, we usually maintain a waiting list of 100 to 150 students. There are doubtless others who are interested, but don’t even bother to sign up because it’s so difficult to get in,” Krentz said.

Why the high demand? “I hear that ASL has a reputation for being fun,” replied Krentz. “I think students enjoy the uniqueness of studying a language that is not spoken. ASL cannot really be learned from a book, and our classes have a lot of role-playing and stand-up activity. It makes them see language and culture in a new way.”

Krentz credits the ASL Program’s five part-time faculty as another draw. “U.Va. is very fortunate to have found such enthusiastic and talented instructors in an area with a rather small Deaf community,” noted Krentz. Four of the six instructors are deaf and all have graduate degrees. Consequently, all students taking introductory ASL classes have the opportunity to interact with deaf instructors, exposure that Krentz believes is vital to the students’ understanding of the language and community.

To practice signing, Jeanna Composti (Economics ’03), a former ASL 202 student, began attending signing suppers and lunches, which bring together faculty, students and members of the local Deaf community. Now, Composti looks forward to the get-togethers. “Getting involved in the Deaf community in Charlottesville has been a wonderful experience,” she said. “I’ve met many new people who I would otherwise not encounter had it not been for the ASL Program.”

She hopes ASL will be a part of her future. “Once you get involved in such a wonderful community, it’s hard to leave,” she says.

ASL 202 student Tiffany Harvey (Audiology ’03) put her ASL knowledge to use this past summer at the Rhode Island School for the Deaf, where she helped teach kindergarten and preschool to deaf children. “I was very nervous that my signing skills wouldn’t be adequate. But the teachers were very impressed, mainly because so many audiologists don’t know how to sign,” explained Harvey. “Even though U.Va.’s ASL Program is small, I know that my academic career — and perhaps even my future — would have been much different if the program didn’t exist.”

Many students who complete ASL 202 want to take more advanced classes, but none are currently available at U.Va. “We are grateful to the University for supporting the ASL Program and we’ve been working to develop rigorous classes,” Krentz said. “With time, we hope to be able to expand on the foundation we’ve laid and offer additional courses in topics like conversation, literature, history and culture, as other language departments do.”

The Annual ASL/Deaf Culture Lecture Series, which brings prominent Deaf scholars, artists and activists to the University several times a year, compensates for the ASL Program’s limited course offerings. “It is nearly impossible to understand any culture through language acquisition alone,” explained Lisa J. Berke, assistant director of the ASL Program, who coordinates the lecture series.

Series presentation topics range from the Black Deaf experience and deafness in the film entertainment industry to ASL poetry and Deaf humor. Berke said, “Listening to Deaf leaders in the various disciplines exposes [students] to ideas and concepts that they cannot possibly glean from a narrow course of study.”

Krentz said, “ASL students come from a variety of disciplines, such as history, African American studies and psychology, and it’s always a pleasure to see how many of them find that the study of ASL and the Deaf community broadens their understanding of their own fields.”

Krentz has found that ASL students gain an appreciation for what it means to be culturally Deaf. “There is a stigma that deafness is a lamentable disability. ASL students quickly realize that most Deaf people are very proud to be Deaf and wouldn’t want it any other way.”

* According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the rise of the Deaf Pride movement in the 1980s introduced a distinction between Deaf and deaf, with the capitalized form used specifically in referring to Deaf persons belonging to the community — also known as Deaf culture — that has formed around the use of American Sign Language as the preferred means of communication.