What is it about?
This article reviews how African American English and American Sign Language, including Black ASL, influence literacy development in Black Deaf students, highlighting how deficit-based educational practices marginalize these languages and calling for affirming, equitable literacy instruction.
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Why is it important?
This article is important for several reasons—especially within speech-language pathology and education: 1. It Challenges Deficit-Based Models in SLP and Education Historically, AAE and ASL have been framed as problems to remediate rather than assets to build upon. This article directly critiques those models and calls out how they: - Pathologize Black language practices - Contribute to misdiagnosis and inappropriate intervention - Limit literacy access for Black Deaf students This is especially significant in SLP, a field that has long centered white, hearing, monolingual norms as the benchmark for language and literacy. 2. It Centers Black Deaf Learners—A Group Often Overlooked Black Deaf students sit at the intersection of race, language, and disability, yet their experiences are often erased in both Deaf studies and Black education research. This publication intentionally centers their linguistic realities, including: - Multilingualism (AAE, ASL, Black ASL, written English) - Visual and multimodal literacy practices - Community and cultural language transmission 3. It Provides a Framework for Culturally Responsive Literacy Practices By integrating CRT and sociocultural perspectives, the article offers a roadmap for: - Culturally sustaining pedagogy - Inclusive literacy instruction - Policy reform that acknowledges linguistic diversity For practitioners, this means moving beyond surface-level “cultural competence” toward structural and ideological change.
Perspectives
1. It Validates What We’ve Always Known Many of us entered this field already understanding that Black language is not broken—but the profession often tells a different story. This article affirms that: - AAE and ASL are linguistically complex and cognitively robust - Literacy struggles are often the result of systemic exclusion, not language deficits - Students thrive when their full linguistic identities are respected Seeing this argument articulated in a peer-reviewed SLP journal is powerful—it legitimizes knowledge long held within Black communities. 2. It Forces Us to Reflect on Our Roles Within the System As Black SLPs, we are often navigating a profession that simultaneously: - Marginalizes our cultural knowledge - Relies on us to “bridge gaps” without changing structures This article challenges us to ask hard questions: - Are our assessment practices affirming or assimilative? - Do our interventions honor students’ home languages—or erase them? - Are we advocating for systemic change, or just surviving within the system? 3. It Calls Us Into Advocacy, Not Just Practice The authors’ emphasis on policy reform and inclusive frameworks aligns with our responsibility not just as clinicians, but as change agents. This means: - Pushing back against biased literacy standards - Educating colleagues about AAE, ASL, and Black ASL - Centering families and communities as linguistic authorities As Black women in SLP, our positionality allows us to see what others may miss—and this article reinforces the importance
Alexis Lawton
West Coast University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A Critical Analysis Exploring the Role of African American English and American Sign Language in Shaping Literacy Development, Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, February 2026, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2025_lshss-25-00122.
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