User:Jill Gu/sandbox

Critique of an article
The article I chose is Martha's Vineyard. I chose this article because I am interested in the deaf history and culture on the island, so I I want to focus on the part named "Hereditary deafness and sign language". There is not much related existed context in the article, so this part has no bias yet. However, the citation for this part is a mess, so besides adding content to this page, I will improve the citation. And I want to add information about deaf culture to this page.Another aspect I want to approach is that this part of the article mentioned Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) and American Sign Language (ASL), but did not explain the differences or the similarities well.

Hereditary deafness and sign language
Martha's Vineyard is known as an "everyone signed" community for several hundred years, and many Deaf people view Martha's Vineyard as an utopia. A high rate of hereditary deafness was documented on Martha's Vineyard for almost two centuries. The island's deaf heritage cannot be traced to one common ancestor and is thought to have originated in the Weald, a region that overlaps the borders of the English counties of Kent and Sussex, prior to immigration. Researcher Nora Groce estimates that by the late 19th century, 1 in 155 people on the Vineyard was born deaf (0.7 percent), about 37 times the estimate for the nation at large (1 in 5,728, or 0.02 percent), because of a "recessive pattern" of genetic deafness, circulated through endogamous marriage patterns.

Deaf Vineyarders generally earned an average or above average income, proved by tax records, and they participated in church affairs with passion. The Deafness on the island affected both females and males in an approximately same percentage. In the late 19th century, the mixed marriages between Deaf and hearing spouses comprised 65% of all Deaf marriages on the island, as compared to the rate of 20% Deaf-hearing marriage in the mainland. The sign language used by Vineyarders is called Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL), and it is different from American Sign Language (ASL). However, the geographical, time, and population proximities state that MVSL and ASL are impossible to develop in complete isolation from each other. . MVSL was commonly used by hearing residents as well as Deaf ones until the middle of the 20th century. No language barrier created a smooth communication environment for all the residences on the island.

In the 20th century, tourism became a mainstay in the island economy, and new tourism related jobs appeared. However, jobs in tourism were not as deaf-friendly as fishing and farming had been. Consequently, as intermarriage and further migration joined the people of Martha's Vineyard to the mainland, the island community more and more resembled the oral community there. The last Deaf person born into the island's sign language tradition, Katie West, died in 1952, but a few elderly residents were able to recall MVSL as recently as the 1980s when research into the language began.