It's hard to articulate why I find that signing seemed to be a purer form or communication than I was used to. Perhaps it was much more noticeable in Korea, where society shaped the language, and now language works to shape society. Many of the deaf people I knew did not have the opportunity to learn Korean in schools due to their socioeconomic circumstances, and the way society as a whole looked at them (this has changed remarkably since I was first there). I always felt when I was signing with them that I was always getting what was really being "said" with no interference from a structured language. The culture of the deaf community was also different in Korea, of course closer to Korean than our own, but almost independent.

I'm certainly no expert in linguistics, but I do consider Korean sign to have been a third language when I was proficient at it, mainly because I could communicate with a group of people that most Koreans could not.

I do see your point about ASL. I stand to be corrected, but to me, ASL seems like a standardized communication built as another way of expressing ideas in English, without the power of speech or benefit of sound.

I do not think that sign language is subordinate to another language in all cases. For most of the people I knew, if only one family member was deaf, the sign language was standardized to Korean. In other cases, Korean was definitly a second language to some of my friends, and many were amazed that I was able to read and write it better than they were. Through a church connection, I met one impovershed family with a deaf daughter. The mother was deaf, but the father and brother were not. None were well educated. The mother had been sent to prision shortly after the daughter was born for stealing (to feed her family), and the daughter was raised without her. There was little communication between the father and the daughter as he did not sign, and she had never been taught. She had developed a series of basic signs that her father and brother had picked up on over the years (she was about 6 when I met her). There was no resemblance between her signs and standardized Korean sign language.

Nothing I have to offer on this topic is anything other than personal observation, so I don't know how helpful that is in contributing to your discussion in an academic setting. One thing I am fairly confident in is that standardized sign languages were not developed for the benefit of deaf people, as they are able to communicate with each other without a standardized language (the less standardized their signing, the more they seem able to communicate with deaf people of other cultures), it seems more likely they were developed to help deaf people communicate with each non-deaf people and vice-versa.

I had two deaf friends who travelled to Japan on separate occasions. One was well educated and used standardized Korean signing exclusively. She told me she was unable to communicate with any deaf people in Japan as their sign language was different. The other was not as rigorous in using standard sign language, and told me it was not easy, but she managed to get along and made friends with deaf people in Japan.

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
1995 E420 - retired
1986 420SEL - retired