Black American Sign Language

Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf Black Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the American South. Like other schools at the time, schools for the deaf were segregated based upon race, creating two language communities among deaf signers: Black deaf signers at Black schools and White deaf signers at White schools. As of the mid-2010s, BASL is still used by signers in the South despite public schools having been legally desegregated since 1954. Linguistically, BASL differs from other varieties of ASL in its phonology, syntax, and vocabulary. BASL tends to have a larger signing space, meaning that some signs are produced farther away from the body than in other dialects. Signers of BASL also tend to prefer two-handed variants of signs, while signers of ASL tend to prefer one-handed variants. Some signs are… Read by PopularOutcast. Recorded August 18, 2017; the article may have changed since. The article as it stood when recorded: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=784175204 Article today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_American_Sign_Language Original recording: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:En-Black_American_Sign_Language-article.ogg License: CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0). This episode is a format-shifted (MP3) copy redistributed under the same license. Chapter images come from the recorded article via Wikimedia Commons; each chapter links its file page for credits. This show is an independent community project, not affiliated with or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation.