Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Discuss and explain the parallels between structural features of language, particularly English and American Sign Language for the purpose of defining and demonstrating the notion that ASL is a language
• Analyze and explain the terms of linguistics such as: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and others
• Collect data from research by interviewing several people and discussing the results with each other
• Develop linguistic competence with ASL from an analytical-theoretic perspective
• Analyze and explain how the structure of ASL is built and how it functions in its own term of language usage
• Develop language observation skills

Activities include readings, lectures, cross-cultural activity, discussion, small group problem-solving tasks, and hands-on activities.
 

Homework assignments, interviewing people, written examinations or quizzes.
 

This course introduces students to the study of ASL from a linguistics point of view, and covers the following topics:

• What is "Language" and What Do You Know When You Know a Language?
• Terminology used by linguists to talk about the linguistics of ASL
• Research and publications by various linguists in the field of ASL
• The impact of the research and publications in recognizing ASL as a language
• Phonology will be discussed and analyzed in depth to see how the language is formed
• Morphology will be discussed and analyzed in depth to see how the language is structured
• Syntax will be discussed and analyzed in depth to see how the grammar is structured
• Semantics, language in use, ASL discourse and ASL mouthing will be discussed briefly