Understanding Signed Music
Cripps & Lyonblum
for signed music, 2) background on music and deaf people, and 3) the place of signed music in
music theory.
ASL and Deaf Culture
Music is a universal experience for human beings, and deaf people cannot continue to be
excluded from this experience. Individuals who are deaf since birth, for example, may not have
the opportunity to hear and enjoy music in the traditional sense, but they can appreciate a parallel
experience known as signed music. Signed music is real and meaningful to the person who knows
ASL. The recognition of ASL as a full-fledged human language has been supported through
linguistic research over the last several decades (see Meier, 2002 for a historical review of ASL
research). In the United States and parts of Canada, ASL was formed and used by deaf people who
are primary signers. 1 ASL is part of the human language family and shares linguistic properties as
reported for spoken languages (Sandler & Lillo-Martin, 2006; Stokoe, 1960; Valli, Lucas,
Mulrooney, & Villanueva, 2011; also see Bergman & Wallin, 1990; Sutton-Spence & Woll, 1999;
Zeshan, 2000 for similar analysis on the linguistic principles for Swedish Signed Language, British
Sign Language, and Indo-Pakistan Sign Language).
Both signed languages and spoken languages are known for having five linguistic
properties: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics (Akmajian, Demers,
Farmer, & Harnish, 2010). All of these properties are found in the lyrical component of signed
music, suggesting that signed music uses ASL as its linguistic basis. With non-lyrics, one must
also be receptive to the idea of a signer performing abstract hand movements without any signed
words in use. The hand movements would be visually analogous to sound and need to be
perceptually enjoyable by following the general principles of how music works (see Padden &
Humphries, 1988 for a similar discussion regarding hand movements in ASL poems that resemble
sound). The popular perception that ASL is a soundless language (e.g., Petitto, Langdon, Stone,
Andriola, Kartheiser, & Cochran, 2016) requires response. Traugott and Pratt (1980) stated that
“each language, indeed each sub-variety of a language, has its own unique ‘sound,’ yet the number
of possible sound distinctions that can be made in any language is quite limited, and all languages
share at least some sets of sounds” (p. 41).
The reality of signed music centers on an interwoven relationship of language and culture
and culture with music concerning deaf people. Supporting this, Saville-Troike (2003) affirmed
that “there is no doubt … that there is a correlation between the form and content of a language
and the beliefs, values, and needs present in the culture of its speakers” (p. 28). Similarly, Brown
(1994) pointed out that “[a] language is part of culture and a culture is part of a language; the two
are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of
either language or culture” (p. 165). Kramsch (1998) further elaborated on how language is used
in a culture as described, “When [language] is used in contexts of communication, it is bound up
with culture in multiple and complex ways” (p. 3). This kind of paradigm led to comments from
scholars like Padden (1980) and Rutherford (1988), who asserted that American deaf people have
their own culture based on two important sources. First, they have their own signed language:
1
The description of deaf people as primary users of ASL distinguishes them from hearing people who may know
and use signed language. Signing hearing individuals enjoy access to both ASL and spoken language(s). Individuals
who are deaf since birth or become deaf before the age of two may not have the auditory experience of learning and
internalizing English or any other spoken language. Accessibility is a key issue regarding how ASL becomes the
primary language for deaf people (see S. Supalla & J. H. Cripps, 2008 for the concept of linguistic accessibility).
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