Language Attitudes in the American Deaf Community

Conventional wisdom dictates that individuals who learn American Sign Language (ASL) at a young age possess a higher level of proficiency than those who acquire ASL later, but Joseph Christopher Hall shows how diversity in the deaf community belies such generalization. Hall dissects affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses to ASL, Signed English, and contact signing across variables of generation, race, and age of language acquisition to identify differing conceptions of a signing standard that, in turn, results in differing perceptions of language proficiency.