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10:50am July 27, 2014
dataandphilosophy asked: I'm struggling to understand what an appropriative use of sign language would be. My perspective is that if, say, a hearing person uses sign language to communicate with their hearing friends at a loud club, this is no worse than pantomiming, and better because it is more people using and training themselves to use alternately accessible language. I don't get how using a different language could harm people. I think it would be a better world if everybody was fluent in multiple sign languages. ?

People were just talking about this, it’s not about knowing or learning sign language, it’s about when, for instance, churches of entirely hearing people use sign language with their songs because it looks cool but they aren’t being Deaf-inclusive in any way and may in fact be hostile environments for actual Deaf people.  Things like that.

Notes:
  1. darkladynyara reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  2. maikisan said: One thing I heard as appropriative is teaching kids to sign before speaking, but teaching them made up signs similar to asl but not quite – if they just tauight correct signs then it would be useful later in life without corrupting the asl language.
  3. bibliospork reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone and added:
    This is a good point. I think the absolute worst is when they take ASL vocabulary and mix it with random gestures that...
  4. withasmoothroundstone posted this