Hi! So recently I started watching this YouTube channel called Sign Duo. They’re a Deaf and hearing couple who post about their relationship.
The woman, who is hearing, definitely uses English grammar. I assume this is because she grew up speaking/reading/writing English and this bled into her sign.
However, the guy, who is Deaf, also uses a more English based way of signing. In one of the videos about “Things we Love and Hate” the caption reads “what is one big pet peeve you have about me?” I would expect him to sign “ixME ANNOY ixYOU HOW?” or something like that. Instead he signs it exactly as the caption reads with the question word at the beginning. The rest of his sign also follows an English word order.
So I guess my question is why some people don’t use ASL grammar. I was taught that an english sentence structure is incorrect because it’s just PSE, which I understand. But then I see native signers using English grammar to communicate.
If anyone can explain this I’d be very thankful.
Or maybe the wife uses English grammar because she's hearing and knows her husband's signing style is based on an English based system like PSE. The point is she wants to be able to communicate with him regardless of the reasons and using English grammar is easier for him to understand.
Thanks for your question. The answer would take a book to answer really but I will try to summarize some of the reasons you will see this mixture of ASL and English.
Deaf and hard of hearing people come in all "shapes and sizes." Their particular communication style and preferences will be influenced by their background, how they were educated, whether their parents are deaf or hearing and when they learned to sign themselves.
Most (about 90%) of deaf children have hearing parents and most of these parents choose not to learn sign language to communicate with their deaf child. The parents may choose to raise their child using speech and listening predominantly. The child may receive a powerful hearing aid or a cochlear implant and the doctors and audiologists may counsel the parents not to learn or use sign language in order to optimize the child's reliance on hearing and speech reading etc. In this case the deaf child may not learn any sign language until some point later in his life. Sometimes not until he or she may become a teenager or adult and start to make his/her own decisions about communication. In other words some Deaf people may have English as a dominant first language whether it is fully accessible to them or not or whether they learn English very well or not. Once a Deaf person with this type of experience enters into the Deaf Culture and Community they are a late learner of ASL and research tells us they may never really achieve full native fluency in ASL. A Deaf person with this type of background may sign more in English word order but using ASL signs and a lot of the other grammatical features of ASL but not the word order. Typically this is called PSE as you referenced.
Deaf people in general who use ASL have a range of capabilities to adjust their signing to the situation they are in. So for example a Deaf person my communicate with hearing people using more PSE like signing just because the expectation is that hearing people will understand this form of signing more easily. This same person may turn to his/her Deaf friend and immediately go into full blown ASL. So often the situation where the person is using sign language will influence how much ASL word order they use. In the case of this videotaped conversation it could be that the "formal nature" of signing to a camera is influencing how this person signs. It could be that he is accustomed to communicating in the presence of his wife in a more PSE like mode. Also, the example you give was rendering the title of the video segment which was written English and often when rendering a title, in other words glossing the English words of the title it is common to render the title in English word order not in ASL word order. You may have seen the person use the quotation marks sign just prior to rendering the title. This indicates that he will be quoting exactly using signs the English title. This would be very common in this situation.
Finally, ASL exists within a strong predominantly English speaking culture. So there has always been an influence from English on ASL. Even the most skilled ASL communicators will frequently mix English with their ASL.
I hope these points help you understand this sociolinguistic phenomenon that occurs within the Deaf signing community.
