Definition
American Sign Language (ASL) is the natural and national sign language of the deaf community in the United States and parts of Canada (Neidel et al. 2000). It is a natural language because it has developed out of a need for deaf individuals to communicate with each other, and it is a language that is in constant evolution. It is a national language because it is mutually intelligible and separate from the sign languages that are used in other countries such as British Sign Language (Great Britain), Mexican Sign Language (Mexico), and so forth. ASL is a separate language from spoken English (Lane et al. 1996), and it is distinct from manual codes of English such as Seeing Essential English (SEE I), Signing Exact English (SEE II), Linguistics of Verbal English (LOVE), or Conceptually Accurate Signed English (CASE). Unlike most other languages, ASL is typically learned from peers rather than from one’s parents (Padden 1980). This may be due to the fact that most deaf children...
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References and Readings
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Mueller, V.T. (2017). American Sign Language (ASL). In: Volkmar, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_1654-3
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