We Should Teach ASL/Interpreting Students Profanity.

This is a brief overview of the presentation I gave at the European Forum of Sign Language Interpreters (EFSLI) in September 2022. I also offered a workshop on this topic on April 27, 2023 to the Association of Sign Language Interpreters of the United Kingdom (ASLIUK). Many thanks to linguist Maureen Kosse for her assistance with the literature to ground this discussion.

Image description: bald white man with a thin beard wearing a black t-shirt against a light blue background. His facial expression is stern and he is signing. A dining table set and masks are in thebackground.

Hello, today I’d like to talk about the question of should ASL/Interpreting programs and ASL/Interpreting teachers teach swearing and taboo gestures to our students? Language that society views as vulgar, rude, negative, and reflects poorly on the person swearing? My position is yes, absolutely. We should teach our students profanity and about taboo gestures.

Maybe some of you wonder about teachers standing in front of the classroom swearing, saying things like fuck, shit, damn, motherfucker, etcetera? That seems inappropriate. Perhaps transgressing some unspoken boundaries about this type of language being used in a classroom.

First, I want to remind everyone that deaf people are very diverse and have diverse language practices. Last Thursday, I presented at ASLIUK (Association of Sign Language Interpreters of the United Kingdom), about swearing in interpreting. One person recollected their experience in interpreting the word cunt. This deaf person used the word cunt to describe their vagina. That was the word she used, that was the word she understood as that part of her anatomy. She did not know or use the word vagina. The interpreter had to work with what the deaf person knew and understood to ensure that she had full access to information and what was happening in that context. So the interpreter used the word cunt.

I taught for a while in an ASL/Interpreting program. Some students who graduated went into the communities to interpret. They’d come back upset, distressed, and feeling incompetent because they were seeing language they didn’t recognize. They didn’t recognize language outside of what they had learned from ASL textbooks. The teachers followed the textbook closely. So going into the communities was a bit of a shock for the graduates. Language was far more varied and included taboo language. They weren’t prepared to navigate those contexts. Just how are those signs supposed to be translated? And sometimes the deaf person’s demeanor and affect, and the overall context, would not match the seemingly obscene gestures being used. It didn’t make sense. So was that gesture supposed to be an expletive or did it mean something else? Remember, deaf people are diverse so interpreters should be prepared for diverse language usage and to interact with all kinds of people.

Second, swearing has sociopragmatic functions and roles that isn’t limited to the intention to offend or injure. Swearing has important social functions that deaf people capitalize upon.

Those social functions include belonging. Swearing can function to promote a sense of belonging through bonding in particular contexts like fraternities, sports teams, or the factory floor. This language can promote intimacy and kinship.

Another function of swearing is to communicate categories. A person’s class or educational background or identities. A person’s usage of taboo speech can be a signal to others of similar backgrounds or identities and build trust or signpost that we have shared experiences.

Another function of swearing is emotional. Swearing can help us release stress or other negative feelings, while offering us a safe outlet to vent those feelings. Swearing can also signal refusal as in showing that a person does not want to do something. Swearing offers us a venue for complaint while offering a neutralizing effect. Like our boss telling us to clean the bathroom and we respond, “fine, I’ll clean the fucking bathroom.” It communicates unhappiness and complaint without necessarily leading to aggression or confrontation.

Swearing can be relational and help mediate relationships and differentials in power dynamics.

Studies have shown that swearing can reduce feelings of physical pain like when you stub your toe or hit your head and you shout fuck! And that takes the edge off the physical pain you’re experiencing.

Last, swearing has linguistic functions like showing emphasis, to offend, to call someone’s attention, or to communicate negative feelings.

In sum, swearing has many different linguistic purposes. Swearing helps us belong, participate in different groups, and fully express ourselves.

Swearing is not meaningless nor is it limited to specific groups of people. Deaf people swear for different reasons, to feel belonging, to communicate backgrounds and identities, to express feelings, manage relationships and power dynamics, and fully express our thoughts and feelings. Interpreters should be prepared to do this.

Also, sign language is really pliable and deaf people engage in language play as well. And so some gestures that would be interpreted by hearing people as vulgar are not actually vulgar in the signs being produced. For example, the middle finger.

The middle finger is usually interpreted as fuck, fucking, etcetera among hearing people. But this becomes a handshape in ASL that can be used in many different ways. And they don’t necessarily need to be translated as profanity.

Here’s a few examples using the middle finger.

It can be integrated with other signs for emphasis. Like boring. Boring is usually produced with the index finger but replacing it with the middle finger adds emphasis. The interpreter can translate this in several ways:

This is tedious.

This is really boring.

This is boring with the emphasis being delivered via volume and tone changes.

Interpreters have the option to use different word choices, adverbs and adjectives, and change tone or volume. All of this can be done without using profanity.

Or you know what, just go ahead and say this is fucking boring. As interpreters, it’s your job to figure out contexts and intentions. For example, does the deaf person want to achieve belonging by uttering to their classmate that this is fucking boring and bonding over that. Or to the teacher to complain about the nature of the homework assignment.

I’d like to offer a few other examples of non-profane meanings of gestures typically understood as obscene. Here I’ll focus on the middle finger and the chin flick.

My two friends [Showing signs with middle fingers opposing each other]. This means they had a falling out, they’re not getting along, they aren’t on speaking terms. It doesn’t mean they fucked each other.

In terms of showing refusal, here’s another example. I [uses middle finger in downward direction] my homework. That means I did not do my homework. I just didn’t want to do it. Or I [uses middle finger in downward direction] work, called in sick. It doesn’t mean I fucked my homework or workplace.

Here’s another one. I [uses two middle fingers in sweeping outward arc] the world. This doesn’t mean I fucked the world or am angry at the world. It means I wanted solitude, to be left alone unbothered to do my own thing.

So the handshape in those signs might be interpreted as vulgar by hearing people but are not necessarily intended to be vulgar in signed language.

Now onto chin flicks. This is a rude gesture among hearing people. But in signed language, this gesture can be understood as not vulgar. Like, I’m not afraid of something. Oh, my friends want to go bungee jumping. [Chin flick], no problem. I’ll join in. I have no fear in this activity.

Chin flicks can also mean I don’t care. As in I don’t care about following the rules, I don’t care about getting into trouble. So novice interpreters might see all of those so called vulgar gestures- the middle finger and the chin flick used in different ways and be puzzled at how that gesture fits into a context, the person’s intention or demeanor.

For example, I [uses two middle fingers in sweeping outward arc] last weekend. I feel so relaxed, I’m ready to get back to work. So the interpreter sees me say it like this and think, oh he doesn’t seem angry, he’s not expressing a complaint, he’s not seeming to express a negative feeling, so what is this? What does this mean?

So I think that ASL/Interpreting programs should intentionally teach those gestures and profanity. So I’ve shown you some examples of how some vulgar gestures become non vulgar signs as well as the social and cultural functions of profanity. Deaf people intentionally use profanity for reasons and we want our interpreters to be able (and comfortable) to swear.

I believe this doesn’t emerge in the ASL classroom or curriculum because of the teacher’s personal discomfort with such language, cultural norms, and language ideologies. Maybe there’s the thinking that the classroom isn’t an appropriate place for that kind of language or teaching. Cultural conditioning, especially for women, means swearing is considered unladylike. It’s important to remember at this juncture that the vast majority of interpreting students are women. So swearing to women students might seem or feel uncomfortable.

There’s cultural expectations at play too for interpreters. Interpreting is viewed as a helping profession and interpreters have a responsibility to “manage” the deaf person, to take care of the deaf person (because this is a paternalistic society and interpreting, like many other helping professions, is riddled with paternalism). Interpreters have many reasons for discomfort- perhaps due to religious, educational, or geographical backgrounds. There may simply be lack of exposure and using this language just doesn’t feel natural for the interpreter.

A lot of those issues also relate to language ideologies and attitudes. Some of those beliefs include women shouldn’t use certain types of language, that vulgar language is only used by “low class” people or “unintelligent” people, or that such language is acceptable in very limited contexts.

Ideologies also emerge in ASL textbooks and curricula. These books and curricula communicates to new hearing students learning sign language what language they can and can’t use. There’s also very much a tradition of protecting the purity of ASL as a language, to protect it from critical judgement. For example, deaf elites did not want deaf peddlers to use sign language in their work or sell alphabet cards because it would cause hearing people to have a low opinion of signed languages and deaf people or to associate ASL with poverty. There’s a desire to protect ASL from being seen as vulgar or deaf people as “low class.” There’s clearly respectability politics involved in sign language ideologies and politics. This is a brief discussion of my view on using profanity in signed language and that being intentionally taught as part of the ASL/Interpreting curriculum.

Later, I’d like to talk more about the impact of those ideologies and respectability politics on ASL teaching.