Does Music Have a Place in ASL Pedagogy?

Translated and produced by John S. Pirone
To cite this published work, copy this line:
Pirone, J. (2018). Does Music Have a Place in ASL Pedagogy? Journal of American Sign Languages and Literatures.
Does Music Have a Place in ASL Pedagogy? by John S. Pirone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

[@katebodisatva]

I very much enjoyed this Vlog and your opinion. I was involved in a ASL interpreter program and we had one project were we had to interpret a song. Sure, it helped me to have to break down the meaning of the lyrics and think of how I could express that visually with ASL. BUT it did feel like we were stepping out of Deaf culture into a value (music) that is apart of the hearing culture. I would have preferred more ASL poems or story telling. There are Deaf/HH people that do love music and will want an interpreter for that . I think that should be a field that an interpreter should then specialize in, like legal or medical interpreting. There are some great CDI out there who could help in that training. For basic ASL classes, I agree that Deaf culture and ASL skills should be the focus. An ASL class should be as you said: as much emersion into the Deaf world as possible. Focusing on music can take away from that. ASL isn't just another language: it's the foundation of Deaf culture in American. If a hearing person posts a video of themselves interpreting a song they should consider this. To respect Deaf culture one must respect how you use ASL.