This article puts forward a solution to the impending shortage of culturally and linguistically competent interpreters: the education of heritage signers as heritage language learners. It examines the current landscape of American Sign Language (ASL) as a course of study and the difficulties heritage signers report when they begin learning ASL. In…

An examination of the linguistics of American Sign Language (ASL) establishes beyond a doubt that ASL is a natural language distinct from English and provides insight into how the abstract cognitive system called language finds expression in the signed modality. (CB)