Younger Deaf People's Attitudes Toward American Sign Language Structure

Abstract

This dissertation presents the judgment of what is ‘correct’ American Sign Language(ASL) structure by the younger generation, using the word order strategies that were used in older generation signers, as well as younger generation attitudes towards the ideology of ASL being a SOV language. This study used an on-line survey to evaluate 83 participants in the United States and structured interviews were conducted with 10 participants. The analysis showed the younger generation accepted various ASL structures such as: SOV, SVO, the use of adpositions, unspecified/specified verbs and classifiers. Even though the younger generation knows the ideology that ASL is an SOV language, some of them could not tell the difference between SOV and SVO structures. It was concluded that the younger generation has the ideology of ASL being a SOV language, however, the real world ASL usage did not align with the ideology.