VARIATIONS ON SIGNING

American Sign Language (ASL) has a torrid history. Given the close historical ties between Britain and America, you might expect ASL to originate from the same language family, and share the same linguistic genealogy, so to speak, with British Sign Language; in the same way that German and English share the same roots. They are, however, entirely distinct from each other: BSL in its original form, Old British Sign Language, was first taught by Edinburgh teacher Thomas Braidwood. When in 1815, American minister Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet travelled to Europe in order to research ways in which he could begin teaching Deaf students, he was disheartened to find that Braidwood would not impart his wisdom upon him. That was when Gallaudet upped sticks and travelled to France, where he would learn Old French Sign Language. As a result, a modern French Sign Language is more intelligible to a modern ASL signer than BSL! actively desegregate their classrooms until the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s. This created a chasm of difference between ASL signers and BASL signers: in studies by Gallaudet University, an American further education facility for Deaf students, Black Deaf people noted that in moving from environments where they had been signing with other Black people to an education environment organised by white people, both groups had difficulty understanding each other’s signing, because the BASL variation had acquired some level of difference.

Where ASL typically uses one hand to sign, BASL - like BSL - has a tendency to use both hands. The space which BASL signers use tends to be larger than ASL signers, and they use more sign variations involving areas of the body like the forehead. Older BASL signers are more likely to use variant signs than their younger counterparts, and that’s because these variants will have been commonly used in segregated schools - bearing in mind that schools in America were only desegregated 67 years ago, and many people who attended segregated schools are very much alive. By the same token, younger signers, who do not attend segregated schools, are less likely to use the variants, but are aware of them due to their interactions with older BASL signers. Nakia Smith, also known as Charmay, went viral last year after posting a video of herself signing in BASL with her grandfather. In a video for Netflix’s Strong Black Lead, she says: “The biggest difference between BASL and ASL is that BASL got seasoning!” Watching someone sign BASL is incredible because there’s a huge amount added to the language - seasoning - through the strong presence of extra-linguistic information: body language, facial expressions, and mouthing all play a huge part in what makes BASL different from ASL.

BASL also borrows heavily from African American Vernacular English (AAVE), so terms like “and that’s on peridodt,” which roughly means “end of discussion,” “stop tripping” and other idioms commonly used in AAVE have their own signs in BASL. There are also additional variations for words like “embarrassed,” “hurt,” and many others. As with all Black culture, there is an unfortunate and completely unnecessary degree of racism that follows BASL. It’s considered non-academic or informal, much in the same way AAVE is, meaning a lot of BASL signers are required to code switch - that is, move between BASL and ASL - in order to feel like they are being taken seriously. BASL is a valid variation of ASL, however, and is inadvertently acting as a form of preservation for the older styles of ASL, of which it is more closely related due to its origins from language socialisation coming out of segregation. To learn more about BASL, you can watch the brilliant documentary Signing Black in America, which features fantastic interviews with BASL signers, academics, and interpreters, or check out Charmay’s TikTok @ItsCharmay.

Nakia Smith, also known as Charmay, went viral last year after posting a video of herself signing in BASL

Like any language, sign languages have dialects and variations. Black American Sign Language (BASL) is one of those variations, and like African-American English and its variations, its origins come from the segregation of Black Americans, which stemmed from the enslavement of Black African people in the colonial United States as early as the 16th century. It is important to remember that the United States did not grant equality in the eyes of the law to Black Americans until 1968, when the decades-long struggle of Black Americans to be recognised and live without disenfranchisement, racial segregation, and institutional racism culminated in, among other things, the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

The American School for the Deaf was founded in 1817, opening originally only for white children, and was integrated eight years later. Few schools specifically for Deaf Black students were opened at a time when segregation was still rampant throughout the United States - especially in the South - and where education was offered for Black Deaf students, it was provided on the campuses of Deaf schools labelled specifically for “coloured” students, segregating Black children further in their education, and resulting in BASL arising as a variation of ASL, which was not being taught correctly to Black students, many of whom were encouraged to learn orally (using sound) instead of manually (using signing). Some Deaf schools took up to sixty years to offer an education to Black children, and while many were opened in the 1800s, they did not begin to