Chapters 8, 9, and 10: Round-about Learning, Cross-Culture Variations in Humor, and Visual Accents

While reading chapter eight I could not stop thinking about the roles of hearing parents of deaf children in their children's language acquisition.  Of the options given for how deaf children learn ASL (learn from deaf parents or learn from deaf children when they enter school), no option was given of hearing parents teaching their deaf children ASL.  Surely the majority of hearing parents with deaf children want what is best for their children and would research and discover that ASL is the best option.  This chapter seemed to portray that all hearing people are against the use of ASL and either prefer oral methods (in the case of the teachers) or do not give their children much of a language foundation at all (in the case of the parents).  I cannot accept that this is truly the way things are in the current time, though I have no real-world experience with hearing parents with deaf children under school age to make any sort of connection.  This is an issue I would like to learn more about.

Variations on humor  cross-culturally is something I had not previously thought about though it makes sense.  I find it rather sad that in order to truly appreciate the humor of a language you really need to know it natively.  I am glad they included the letter to the editor by David Anthony with his sarcastic English puns and annoyance at the Deaf being treated like a subclass of human.  Deaf culture and ASL are completely native to him I would assume as he says that both of his parents are "true self born Deaf" which I think gives his perspective both strength and weakness.  He obviously understands the plight of the Deaf, but he has not experienced the plight of Deaf children with hearing parents.  I thought the reply was quite effective and polite.  The description of fake and real ASL humor was interesting, but experiencing it first-hand would help.  I suppose I'll never truly understand it, though, just as David Anthony has much to be desired in the area of English puns. 

I would imagine that accents in a visual language would cause more confusion than accents in a speaking language based on the examples of "birthday," "soon," and "outside" which appeared to be completely different signs more so than a slight difference in shape or motion (numbers 16-19) or some parallel to speaking pronunciation.  At least different accents of ASL are easier to understand that different accents of other visual languages.  I would like to see more examples of ASL accents in conversation form.