Writing about ASL begins with Socrates. Two features separate Socrates from those who have followed in his footsteps, especially today. One is the fact that, as we have already known, Socrates wrote nothing himself. The Socrates is a literary figure we find in Plato's dialogues. In Cratylus, published in 384 B.C. (2,395 years ago), for example, Socrates questions whether signs by the Deaf can be translated into spoken words.
The secondary feature that distinguishes Socrates from the rest of us is that we know much less about his life than we do about all others. For example, when Socrates appears in Plato's dialogues, he is ready-made; he is a fictional character that believes the human soul, the self, is itself in principle indivisible. That is a view that Socrates consistently exemplifies in his own life as Plato writes: Socrates always does what is the right thing to do.
Writing about ASL is like writing about Socrates--making oneself different from anyone else and doing ASL. Plato is able to be ironic toward us as the writer and the readers because he beguiles us into identifying our point of view with Socrates' own. Since Socrates' attitude toward his interlocutors is ironic, so are ours. Irony does not usually allow us to peer into the ironist's mind. Socratic irony is, in the broadest sense, a form of silence, especially when ASL is used with that point in mind: ASL does not have a spoken counterpart. No voice is allowed! ASL does not have a written counterpart. Writing about ASL is a skill that must be learned academically.
I identify with Socrates who loved life, Athens, and the world. Like Socrates, I have devoted myself to the improvement of my students but I am primarily concerned with the care of my own self. Teaching without learning is just talking. Writing about ASL without thinking about ASL is just jabbering about ASL.
I offer an overview of our intellectual development, from the forbidding of sign language of 1880 to today's compassionate advocacy of ASL.
~Professor Carl
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