Just a bit of factoid thrown in here I think that would interest you.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Interest on ASL on the Decline?
Not just American Sign Language that has been on the down trend over the last several years in Google search but interest in terms like "deafhood," and "a*dism" are also on the downturn as seen in Google Trends. Check out the graphs below.
Just a bit of factoid thrown in here I think that would interest you.
Just a bit of factoid thrown in here I think that would interest you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
No one will miss deafhood or isms, I know I won't and it makes for a lot less unadulterated PC speak about culture. They were just diversions that split people. I think a lot is down to online usage of text to communicate, so much easier and more interactive with everyone than sign language is. These days sign is for deaf areas and nowhere else really, as indeed it always was. It also seems online, sign use cannot break though the hearing online barrier on any level, is not really viable as a communication 'bridge' to mainstream, where text is.
LOL, "factoid"...is there such a word?
Popularity of a concept is reflected in how many ppl support it. The "organic cure for deafness" movement listed 155 donors in 2011 on the Deafhood Foundation website.
That number doesn't rate much in the way of financial support, which is the backbone of any movement that intends to outlast its initial first wave of popularity.
Deafhood leaders have spent way too much energy and effort attacking CI's and the institutions that concentrate on hearing and speaking, instead of concentrating on their own mission and getting support. Unfortunately they lost a lot of ground with that negative PR.
The decline of online interest in ASL could be that few ASL vloggers will use text translation app's for those who don't understand ASL. The app's are out there, but ASL vloggers prefer to vlog to their own ASL audience and don't really want to communicate with those who don't know their language.
Which is too bad, the world is poorer for it.
Ann_C
I tried some non-deaf related topics: spanish language, astronomy, american history, russian language. All showed the same downward trend since 2005. So those trends on deaf-related topics don't mean anything at all, just shows a general downward trend in useage of the internet and especially Google. Gotta be careful about implying things here.
Also, those screenshots posted on this page are so tiny I couldn't see the details, might wanna make them bigger?
It means people are not looking up asl as often in Google searches. Whether this is the case in the overall picture on the internet remains to be seen. Google is not the only search engine around but the most popularly used one.
Mike, you didn't specifically respond to this:
>I tried some non-deaf related topics: spanish language, astronomy, american history, russian language. All showed the same downward trend since 2005.
If most terms indeed show downward trends like the commenter says, then this particular trend is meaningless.
Not necessarily meaningless since Google owns 67% of the search engine market. Two years ago it was 65%. Four years ago it was 63%. There are some factors as why trends may go up and down in a Google Trends result. But if people are using Google search more and more and that looking up key words show a downward trend, well, then it means those words are being used less and less in cyberspace. Simple as that. Which is why I said, "Interest on ASL on the decline?" regarding the term "American Sign Language." I'm addressing the term, and not about usage that is going down which I asked a question about it.
Oh, as for trends "baby signs" show an upward trend. According to your logic this particular trend is meaningless. "Pain remedy" show an increasing trend. So did "coupons" when it began its big up trend starting in late 2008 around when the economy was crashing. Meaningless I suppose
ASL floods our search options ! we cant find BSL ones here without difficulty. the problems are about those 'tone deaf' or 'dialogue of the deaf' or 'deaf and dumb' inclusions we do not want to read about, the search option is biased and too generalised. But thank God they haven't honed it to that capital D thing !
Here's Google Trends on the French language (using various phrases to signify interest in learning it):
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=French%20language%2C%20learn%20French%2C%20speak%20French&cmpt=q
German language:
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=German%20language,%20learn%20German,%20speak%20German
Spanish language:
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Spanish%20language,%20learn%20Spanish,%20speak%20Spanish
For whatever reason, Google Trends is showing that learning foreign languages are on a decline. Whether it's due to a loss of interest or mere statistical artifact, we can't say. I find it funny that you jumped off to random topics ("pain remedy"?!) as points of comparison instead of other languages.
Ben, typing out "xxxxx language" to see the tren result does not necessarily mean the interest on learning the language has gone down but rather that the search term showed a decrease in looking up those terms which was why I asked the question whether interest on asl is on the down turn.
The reason I included other terms was to show that, yes, some search terms do show an increase on trends on term usuage like "baby signs," for example.
Post a Comment