ASL stands for American Sign Language.
ASL is a natural language as proved to the satisfaction of the linguistic community by William Stokoe, and contains phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics just like spoken languages. It is a manual language or visual language, meaning that the information is expressed not with combinations of sounds but with combinations of handshapes, palm orientations, movements of the hands, arms and body, location in relation to the body, and facial expressions. While spoken languages are produced by the vocal cords only, and can thus be easily written in linear patterns, ASL uses the hands, head and body, with constantly changing movements and orientations. Like other natural sign languages, it is "three dimensional" in this sense. ASL is used natively and predominantly by the Deaf and hard-of-hearing of the United States and Canada. (Wikipedia Encyclopedia.)
American Sign Language (ASL) is a visual-gestural language used primarily by deaf residents of the United States and parts of Canada. It became a fully developed communication system only in the early nineteenth century, following contact between the American reformer Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and deaf Frenchman Laurent Clerc. (US History Encyclopedia Sign).
What is a True Definition of 'Deafhood'?
Deafhood means a process, a journey for all Deaf people. It is not a measurement who is Deaf and who is not. It is a process of becoming the best Deaf human being one can become.
There are two definitions of Deaf: deafness and deafhood.
Deafness is a term often determined by the medical field that focuses on abnormality, diagnosis, and handicap. It also focuses on looking at deaf people as individuals with hearing loss.
Deafhood is a process, not a state, which focuses on people's existential stances. Their existences strongly tie to normality, collectivism, and recognition of the shared beliefs and values. (credit by Gertz, Eberwein and Lentz )
For more information, check out this website: http://www.csun.edu/~patrickb/DH/DH.html
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