Of course, immigrants seeking to become US citizens should learn the national anthem in English but why does this preclude an interpretation? All kinds of folks LOVE American Sign Language interpretations of the national anthem, does the Deaf community’s desire to embrace patriotic sentiments in their own language minimize their integrity?
The assertion from the right that concepts of national identity and multiculturalism are somehow naturally in conflict is a lie. These notions are being used in political debates for the agenda of maintaining economic power.
let’s see if i remember what i said here.. oh yes, just that when my parents and i were watching the news the other night and the report about the national anthem came on, one of my comments was about ASL as well. I couldnt imagine people complaining about someone using ASL. I also wondered in here about how others percieve ASL, whether they would accept that as an argument.
the british have recently relaxed their rules for english (ie: they say it doesnt matter whether you use “that” or “which”). back when they were the imperial power, they were really strict about English and saw English as equating identity and so forth, much as we are beginning to see here in the U.S. and while i cannot say for certain, at all, i wouldnt be surprised if someone found evidence for a relationship between the US’s involvement in the rest of the world and its position on English. i’ll leave it to Chomsky to answer that.. ok so that wasnt in my original comment, so what! 😉
thanks for trying to reconstruct after my deletion blooper. :-/ I think you’ve captured most of what you said and added a bit more. 🙂 Now, to recall my response! You’d also mentioned not being sure that the general population thinks of ASL in the same way that they think about Spanish or other spoken languages. I think you’re right, on one level, but on another level I’m not sure the difference matters? I mean, most folk that I encounter while interpreting, or when conversation about interpreting comes up just “get” that it’s another language (even if they might also still have prejudices or stereotypes about what it means to be deaf).
Hmmm….there was also something I said about disability – that the general public might view being deaf as a kind of disability, but that people are also beginning to recognize disability as having its own culture too…
what I didn’t say before, and am thinking about now, is whether the increasing acceptance of ASL has to do with the perception/belief that it is an accommodation in lieu of choice. Non-deaf people are somehow *supposed* to be able to learn other languages (and there’s an assumption this is easy?), whereas people are more generous (?) with the recognition of the feat it is for a deaf person to learn to speak, and perhaps more aware (?) of the inadequacy of hearing aid technologies for most people who are born deaf.