The Discombobulated ASL Body

Broken ASL? Perfect ASL? SEE, SE, and PSE are not (modes of) communication by David? Perfect ASL?

Calling PSE or English order signing as ASL where Patti said that "ASL has even made it into outerspace" by a female astronaut signing inside a space ship to mother Earth?

But the astronaut is signing in Signed English (SE) but not in ASL according to Dianrez and Boutcher.

Yet SE, according to, um, experts say it's not a language, so it cannot be ASL though it falls under the same category as PSE and SEE as signing in English word order.

But not surprisingly we have a poll result of over 75% of the participants saying that the female astronaut signs mostly in some form of English word order whether it's PSE, SE, or SEE and not strictly in ASL.

Don admits to signing in PSE (or at least he acknowledged he signs heavily in signed English word order) and not strictly in ASL although as professor he "teaches" ASL. But he hasn't accepted the challenge to strictly sign in ASL in a video demonstration? 

Right now it seems to me that most signers regularly use English word order in their signing as part of their visual language of communication rather than strictly in ASL. Perhaps those who took the survey poll might be confused as thinking their signing is in ASL but in reality uses more English word order (e.g. PSE, SE, SEE) than they care to admit and perhaps their signing actually fall under the category as either SE, SEE or even PSE? Perhaps like David or Don, for example?

People seriously need to make up their minds instead of making things up along the way in the effort to tout ASL as the all encompassing signing umbrella by those who sign in SE, PSE or even SEE just so they can put a few more notches on their ASL bedpost and call those signing as "ASL." All of sudden it appears we're seeing these incestuous relationships happening among many culturally deaf people in their exhaustive efforts to label just about any signing, part and parcel, as "ASL."

Here's a clue.

Just don't call any English word order signing as "ASL" if you're adamant of calling them as "not a language." Just call it sign language instead. Now, when you sign ask yourself, "Am I really signing strictly in ASL or am I just fooling myself here calling it as ASL?"

Folks, can you say, "discombobulated"?