ASL (American Sign Language) is experiencing a pop-culture moment. In the past few years, ASL has been visible in TV-shows, movies, commercials, and in sports and news broadcasts. ASL programs are popping up in schools and colleges all over the U.S. Despite dips in enrollment for many college programs, student enrollment in ASL classes is at an all-time high, as it has quickly become one of the most popular languages to take on college campuses. But despite its growing popularity, the hearing world knows little about ASL, its role in Deaf culture, its status as a real, human language, or the daily frustrations many Deaf ASL signers experience as they fight for access and inclusion in a hearing world.

In this talk I will take you on a whirlwind tour of ASL and the signing communities who use it. In the first half of my talk, I will discuss ASL’s roots in Deaf Education and the role segregation played in the creation of ASL varieties. I will talk about the communities of signers who use ASL, why ASL is a Deaf language, and why language deprivation is still a very real problem for deaf children in the U.S.

In the second half of my talk, I will talk about some interesting linguistic properties of ASL and what research on ASL has taught us about language, and language learning. I will end with a discussion of how learning ASL opens the door to understanding Deaf culture, but also invites us to interrogate the ways we can disrupt the hegemony of hearingness, making way for a more inclusive and equitable society.