Foreign language ideology and American Sign Language in US public education

Abstract American Sign Language has been used at schools and programs for signing deaf and hard of hearing students in US history. Recently, American Sign Language (ASL) was offered as a foreign language to students who speak and hear for foreign language credit at American secondary schools. The movement of the language from its place in deaf education to one of the foreign languages taught in public general education is due to changing ideologies about ASL as a language and as a foreign language. Studies in spoken foreign language ideologies in education presumed ties between languages and national and sub-national ethnic and migrant language groups. No national and sub-national ethnic and migrant language groups have sign language as their mother tongue or are dominated by a signing populace. It raises theoretical issues in foreign language ideology, education, and sign language. Theoretical implications of this study for foreign language ideologies in education are discussed.