Save Our Signs: Patterns in late capitalism

In late capitalism, languages have been increasingly commodified as resources with exchange value (Heller Reference Heller2010; Cameron Reference Cameron, Nevalainen and Traugott2012). Heller’s generative work on language in late capitalism draws on Marx’s theory of commodity production, specifically his theorization of the processes by which objects acquire exchange value, become alien from their producers, and circulate in markets independently of the labor that created them. Heller weaves Marx’s commodity production with Bourdieu’s (Reference Bourdieu1977) concepts of linguistic and symbolic capital, as well as Harvey’s (Reference Harvey1989) analysis of postmodernity. Heller builds on Gal (Reference Gal1989) and Irvine (Reference Irvine1989), who first brought political economy into conversation with linguistic anthropology, arguing that language ideologies actively produce and reproduce social structure. Heller’s (Reference Heller2010) particular contribution was to track how the production of value for language had intensified under late capitalism, shifting the analytical frame from a nation-state model in which language indexed bounded communities with a cultural heritage, to a neoliberal regime in which language is simultaneously packaged as a technical skill and as a marker of cultural legitimacy (Cameron Reference Cameron2000; Coupland Reference Coupland2003).

Duchêne & Heller’s (Reference Duchêne and Heller2012) framework describe a dialectic of pride and profit in which older nationalist ideologies that invest language with communal and rights-bearing value become bound up with newer neoliberal ideologies that invest language with economic added value. However, language does not exist as a commodity in isolation; it gains economic value through processes of objectification, alienation from its speakers, and circulation as a skill or resource within particular markets (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1977; Cameron Reference Cameron, Nevalainen and Traugott2012; Holborow Reference Holborow2015). Languages are accordingly assigned differential values depending on how, where, and among whom they circulate (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1977). In certain contexts, particularly among corporate conglomerates and social enterprises, sign language(s) can function as an index of diversity and inclusion in what Friedner calls ‘feel good’ diversity (Friedner Reference Friedner2017). Fries & Garcez (Reference Fries and de Moraes Garcez2025) present a similar case of commodification in which Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) appears on products aimed at hearing consumers.

Drawing on Heller & Duchêne’s Reference Heller, Duchêne, Duchêne and Heller2008 framework, Fries & Garcez argue that Libras is commodified as indexes of ‘inclusion’ and ‘empathy’ in what they term ‘ableist compassion’, a form of solidarity capital. These ‘complex processes of circulation, exchange, and social interaction’ make language use economically valuable (Cavanaugh Reference Cavanaugh2018:268), and in the case of sign languages, their capacity to visually depict products, brand identities, and cultural concepts makes them amenable to appropriation as corporate branding tools. Materialization operates as a dialectic process between discourse and objects, whereby cultural attributes become stabilized as commodities, enabling small languages to transition from ‘enclaved’ to ‘elite commodity’ status in global markets (Coupland & Kelly-Holmes Reference Coupland, Kelly-Holmes, Cavanaugh and Shankar2017). This transformation is driven by shifts in the political economy of language alongside globalizing and mediatizing forces that reframe authenticity and peripherality as marketable assets for global consumers (Coupland & Kelly-Holmes Reference Coupland, Kelly-Holmes, Cavanaugh and Shankar2017).

The pride/profit dialectic aligns with longer-standing tensions in language revitalization literature. The convention in language endangerment scholarship, anchored in Fishman’s (Reference Fishman1991) framework for reversing language shift, has understood endangered languages primarily through discourses of community rights, heritage, and the importance of maintaining ecological diversity. However, Heller & Duchêne (Reference Heller, Duchêne, Duchêne and Heller2008) deconstructed naturalized assumptions about language endangerment, revealing it as a complex discourse shaped by the interests of the state and transnational actors, tied to nationalist ideologies, and most fundamentally, concerned with managing linguistic and cultural diversity within globalized economic contexts rather than actual linguistic preservation. In short, concerns about the lexical purity of languages and the call to reinforce their presumptive boundaries are not necessarily about the language itself but rather a reflection of broader concerns about social order (Heller & Duchêne Reference Heller, Duchêne, Duchêne and Heller2008). Heller & Duchêne’s intervention reframed language endangerment discourse as a terrain of ideological struggle and opened space for asking how discourses of endangerment are entangled with, and sometimes co-opted by, the very market logics that threaten language communities in the first place and, crucially, how market actors may claim authority over a language by positioning themselves as its protectors or promoters. For example, Vodafone Germany launched an advertising campaign in 2013–2014 that claimed the company saved the endangered Mexican language Ayapaneco, spoken in a small village in Tabasco, Mexico, by reuniting its ‘last two feuding speakers’, building a language school, and creating an online ‘adopt-a-word’ dictionary (Suslak Reference Suslak2011; Davis Reference Davis, Leonard and De Korne2017). In fact, the advertising agency Jung von Matt fabricated the feud, and community-led preservation efforts had already been underway for years.

Recent scholarship that has examined the entanglement of neoliberal market logic and languages consistently shows that the question of who controls lexical innovation is inseparable from the question of who controls a language’s vitality. Pietikäinen’s (Reference Pietikäinen2015) research in multilingual Sámi communities argues that discourses of endangerment, commodification, and carnivalization circulate simultaneously and are mutually structuring: a language can be constructed as endangered, as a commodity, and as a living vernacular all at the same time. These different constructions authorize different actors to speak for the language and to shape its future. Pietikäinen & Kelly-Holmes (Reference Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes2011) demonstrated this in their analysis of souvenir labeling in a Sámi tourism destination, where the Sámi language is an index of authentic indigeneity for outside consumers, but its forms are deployed by commercial actors rather than the language community. In the Basque context, Urla (Reference Urla2012) documented what she called ‘total quality language revival’, which is the absorption of neoliberal managerial logics, such as metrics, efficiency auditing, and customer satisfaction, into revitalization movements. The issue, across these cases, is that external or institutional actors acquire the power to determine which new forms enter the language, under what conditions, and in whose interests, usurping community-based authority over language development that revitalization scholarship has long understood as foundational to language survival (Fishman Reference Fishman1991). This is precisely what happened in the case of the new sign for Coke: Gallaudet specially produced a sign for a global corporate product, converting ASL’s symbolic capital into a commercial asset for a brand that has no organic relationship to deaf communities.

Some scholars have questioned whether language can be commodified at all. Petrovic & Yazan (Reference Petrovic and Yazan2021) note the underdeveloped distinctions between language as a commodity and language as a resource and ask whether the conditions for genuine commodity production, which Marx defines as the separation of producers from the means of production and the alienation of the product from its creator, are consistently met. The examples cited in this article directly respond to these challenges and connect to the question of linguistic authority that runs through revitalization literature. Lexical innovation in sign languages makes the labor of language production visible, when it is usually invisible and naturalized. In the case of the sign developed for the Coca-Cola Company, the process involved eight months of labor (according to Gallaudet) and resulted in a discrete, transferable artifact that was subsequently gifted to a corporation: use value was produced, alienated from its producers, and transformed into exchange value in a single transaction.

Sign language lexical forms can be isolated, attributed, transferred, and even legally protected, as in the case of Bob Taylor’s copyright of a design for the ILY sign in 1974. In 2022, RoseBYANDER, the jewelry business of deaf civil rights attorney Alexis Kashar, accused the deaf-owned business 58 Creativity of design patent infringement over earrings shaped like the ILY sign. Brittany Castle, a deaf artist and owner of 58 Creativity, removed the earrings from the marketplace to avoid legal problems. The controversy played out on social media, with commenters arguing that claiming ownership over individual signs or handshapes violated Deaf community norms and foregrounding the classed asymmetry between the parties: Kashar’s high-end jewelry has been worn by figures such as Jill Biden and Marlee Matlin, while Castle’s work is for a more modest market. As one commenter wrote, ‘So many ILY designs out there—why go after a Deaf artist? They’re all hearing! Deaf vs. Deaf’. This dispute was not only about economic competition between two deaf businesses; it was also about who has the right to determine how a linguistic and cultural form circulates, and on what terms. Commodification drives a wedge between producers and consumers within what had been imagined as a community of shared interests (Duchêne & Heller Reference Duchêne and Heller2012). The ILY controversy also illustrates Pietikäinen’s (Reference Pietikäinen2015) observation that endangerment and commodification can be simultaneous rather than sequential: the community invokes the language as a precious, heritage resource requiring protection at the very moment its forms are being extracted and circulated as market commodities, with control over that circulation increasingly precarious.

The broader economic valuation of ASL in the marketplace raises analogous concerns. In a 2022 article, Gallaudet President Bobbi Cordano estimated the ASL-based economy to be worth at least $3 billion and possibly as much as $10 billion, encompassing interpreting services (∼$1.4 billion), Federal Communications Commission investment in video relay services (∼$500 million), deaf schools and programs (∼$575 million), postsecondary and vocational rehabilitation services (∼$313 million), and revenue from deaf-owned businesses and nonprofits. While Cordano intended to valorize ASL and position deaf people as economic drivers, this framing exemplifies what the endangerment literature has identified as a significant danger in economic arguments for language survival: it reduces the case for a language to market terms, displacing questions of community rights, cultural heritage, and, most importantly, a community’s authority over its own linguistic future (Breannan & O’Rourke Reference Brennan and O’Rourke2019). Cordano further articulated what she called the ‘signing ecosystem’ in terms legible to a neoliberal marketplace by invoking the signing Starbucks, a Chase Bank branch staffed by signers, a deaf-friendly Apple store, joining corporate branding to ASL in precisely the way Urla (Reference Urla2012) predicted: market logics have come to define the terms of a language’s vitality.

Comparable tensions persist in Ireland, where fluent Irish speakers contest the commercial use of Irish by less proficient speakers who adopt it for symbolic rather than communicative purposes, illustrating how commodification not only diminishes the value of genuine linguistic practice but also fragments consensus about who constitutes a legitimate speaker and who holds the authority to shape the language’s development (Breannan & O’Rourke Reference Brennan and O’Rourke2019). More active speakers of Irish have criticized the promotion of Irish in businesses, focusing on the perceived lack of authenticity and genuine commitment to the language, finding the use of visual Irish and cúpla focal, ‘a few words’ disingenuous (Breannan & O’Rourke Reference Brennan and O’Rourke2019). The issue was not the commercialization of the language itself, but the discrepancy between the bilingual branding and the lack of spoken Irish in those businesses. This critique points to emerging conflicts over language ownership, in which proficient speakers may see the commercial spaces they occupy being taken over by less proficient speakers, challenging the traditional link between proficiency and the economic capital derived from the language.

In that vein, the trend toward ASL as a marketable commodity has led to tensions between deaf creators and hearing people who teach signs online (Saunders Reference Saunders, Raja and Dewangan2023). Deaf creators who create ASL-related content draw on lived experiences and community norms to share signs that reflect regional variation, cultural nuances, and evolving usage, whereas some hearing influencers package ASL lessons as standalone content, often for profit, without engaging with deaf people (Saunders Reference Saunders, Raja and Dewangan2023). When hearing social media influencers claim expertise in ASL, they are commodifying ASL for social media ‘clout’ and income. Many deaf people on social media resist these influencers by mocking them in their posts and comments. Sheena Lyles, a deaf comedian who posts as msdeafqueen on Instagram, has a language policing campaign called ‘Secure Our Signs’ (SOS), where she posts satirical videos mocking specific hearing people who are non-fluent signers because they are teaching the ‘wrong’ signs. The commodification of ASL in the access marketplace has also led to the sidelining of deaf people, especially in situations where signed language interpreters have become a form of entertainment (Robinson Reference Robinson2022). Debates about signed language commodification, linguistic authenticity, and ownership are increasingly playing out on social media, a key site for negotiating deaf politics, such as language ideologies and practices within deaf communities, as they are performed, circulated, and contested. In the following sections, I explain my methodology and examples from social media that illustrate the ideas that circulate in deaf spaces online.

Methodology: Virtual deaf spaces and ASL communities of practice

Deaf space is often conceptualized as a physical space transformed by the presence of deaf signers (Gulliver Reference Gulliver, Friedner and Kusters2015); however, social media has led to the development of more expansive social networks on the national and international levels, especially because this kind of networked sociality does not depend on fixed locations or events (Valentine & Skelton Reference Valentine and Skelton2008). The increased affordability and availability of video-recording technology, as well as high-speed internet connections, has made it much easier for deaf people to post videos in signed languages on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, constituting new language ecologies: digital forums and platforms ‘constitute emerging social networks in which new linguistic conventions may arise’ (Hou, Lepic, & Wilkinson Reference Hou, Lepic and Wilkinson2020:32). These sites also facilitate national and transnational conversations about deaf politics and sign languages.

Social media is a space for the discussion and adoption of new signs, especially on video-based platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, where signers can share their proposed signs with a wide audience, which then debates and boosts variations of the sign, outlining reasons why that sign is the correct and appropriate one that should be widely used. In this article, I understand ASL signers in the United States who participate in metalinguistic discussions on social media as a community of practice, ‘an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations—in short, practices—emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor’ (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet Reference Eckert and McConnell-Ginet1992:464). A community of practice is defined by its membership and practices, particularly in terms of mutual engagement, joint enterprises, and shared repertoires (Wenger Reference Wenger1998:73ff in Ahearn Reference Ahearn2021:133). As a member of the signing deaf community, I had access to much of this metalinguistic engagement through my social media networks. I am a white, deaf researcher fluent in ASL and a native English writer with a special interest in language ideologies. I know many of the protagonists in this article through the deaf network; therefore, I was able to determine who was deaf or hearing, mostly because I knew them personally, which helped me filter through the data to focus on deaf-created content.

I first became interested in the commodification of sign languages during fieldwork in 2014–2015, after observing the ways in which Cambodian Sign Language was used to index disability enterprises in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap (Moriarty Harrelson Reference Moriarty Harrelson2017). I noticed a similar pattern during my project on deaf tourism and subsequently, in the geographical area surrounding Gallaudet University, where I worked at the time. My interest in the discursive practices surrounding deaf entrepreneurship and the so-called ‘sign language economy’ led me to collect data on examples of the commodification of sign languages in advertisements and on merchandise sold online by deaf businesses, such as mugs, jewelry, and t-shirts.

The data for this study were collected to examine how deaf people use social media to negotiate language ideologies, as well as deaf-authored concepts such as the Deaf Ecosystem (Maryland Office of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing 2017), which encourages deaf people to support deaf-owned businesses. Data were collected from social media platforms where deaf participants post short videos, circulate memes, and debate signing practices in ways that make language itself a central object of interaction. Metalinguistic discussions about sign languages are a regular feature of deaf spaces on social media, such as ASL That!, a Facebook group that posts and discusses signs for various concepts in ASL.

Data were collected over several years as part of a larger project focused on sign languages(SLs), deaf tourism and deaf entrepreneurship. For the larger project, I collected over 200 screenshots of videos, posts, and threads that involved overt metalinguistic commentary (e.g. debates about ‘correct’ signs, sign comparison videos), addressed broader questions of SL commodification (e.g. the ILY jewelry controversy), or generated extended discussions (e.g. more than fifteen comments or sustained exchanges with multiple participants). Given the density and vast scale of deaf social media activity, I employed purposive sampling for this study (Patton Reference Patton2002) to focus on interactional events in which the new sign for Coke was explicitly foregrounded. For this analysis, I prioritized the videos announcing the new sign for Coke, two satirical videos made in response, and an Instagram vlog, as well as comments on Facebook and Reddit related to the Coke sign and the ILY controversy.

Data were archived through manual collection (e.g. screenshots of photo or video captions, comments in English and transcription of vlogs posted in ASL) of posts on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube. It is difficult to quantify the percentage of this data in which modality because deaf people often post signed videos, captioned posts, emojis, and GIFs in the same post, especially on Facebook. Usernames and identifiers were anonymized unless the creator was a public figure with an unlocked account or provided permission, whereas timestamps and engagement metrics were retained when relevant to understanding the progression of this discourse. Posts from open forums, such as ASL That! were treated as public texts, whereas permission was obtained from individuals and/or moderators in closed or semi-public groups/accounts.

This study employs discourse analysis to examine how ASL signers use social media to construct and contest linguistic authority. Discourse analysis attends to language as social action, or in other words, how utterances position speakers, circulate ideologies, and reproduce or challenge power relations (Johnstone Reference Johnstone2008; Gee Reference Gee2011). In this discussion, the data are metalinguistic: language itself is the object under discussion, making discourse analysis particularly appropriate for tracing how communities negotiate authenticity and ownership (Johnstone Reference Johnstone2008; Gee Reference Gee2011). An inductive coding process identified recurrent themes, including contestations over legitimacy, anxieties about ASL ownership, and efforts to stabilize or enregister certain ASL signs. I argue that the ways in which deaf people discuss ASL on social media constitute a community of practice based on a shared awareness of a shared history of sign language suppression and power disparities between deaf and hearing people.

Coke, a new sign, and reaction

In 2025, Gallaudet released two videos on YouTube. The first video, We Want to Teach the World to Sign (GallaudetU 2025a), was a reimagining of Coca-Cola’s iconic 1971 Hilltop television commercial that featured the jingle, I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke. The 1971 advertisement featured a diverse group of young people, some dressed in ‘traditional’ cultural attire, standing on a hilltop in Rome at sunset. The key lyrics in this song are, ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company … it’s the real thing, what the world wants today’. The Gallaudet Hilltop video, with a duration of one minute and nineteen seconds, was edited to jump backward from the contemporary moment on the Gallaudet campus to 1971. Superimposed over this image, in the center of the frame, is the text, ‘In 1971, Coca-Cola taught the world to sing together’. As the camera frame widens, the text changes to ‘In 2025, we’ll teach the world to sign together’. The camera pans the group of students, signing the Hilltop jingle, but with the addition of the ASL sign for sign just before the sign for ‘song’, so it becomes ‘We’d like to teach the world to sign sing’.

At the forty-four-second mark, the new ASL sign for Coke appears for the first time, as the lead signer signs Coke with a flourish and then drinks from the bottle. The screen then becomes bright red, Coca-Cola’s signature color, with text in the center: ‘Thank you to Gallaudet University for gifting us our sign name’. The final frame is simply, ‘Love, Coca-Cola’. In the second video (GallaudetU 2025b), the signers demonstrated a new sign for Coke, which is produced by fingerspelling C-O-K-E with the handshape for ‘K’ becoming a swooping movement that mimics the ribbon in Coca-Cola’s branding logo. According to this announcement, the new sign was developed over ‘eight months of linguistic research, international community feedback, surveys, and real collaboration with Coca-Cola’s team’.

Almost immediately after the videos were posted, deaf people took to social media to criticize the newly coined sign. The most common sentiment was, ‘They spent eight months researching that?’. The overwhelmingly negative response highlighted skepticism about the research for what, in the view of the commenters, should have been an organic process. Reactions included “…that’s it?”, “The new name sign for Coke is just fingerspelling Coke?”, “The new name sign is…CooKeee?!”, and finally, “Fuck Coke, and fuck Gallaudet admin”. Anger targeting administrators at Gallaudet signals that this commenter was incensed by the prescriptive and elitist connotations of Gallaudet developing this sign.

Adrean Clark, an artist and writer who is active on deaf social media, recorded one of the first vlogs on Instagram reacting to the new Coke sign. In the comment section, Clark wrote, ‘Remember the Burger King promo with Gallaudet years ago that had most if not all of their materials in fingerspelling? Are we compromising ASL in order to chase fame and money?’. As Clark pointed out, the Coke sign is one of many instances in a broader trend in which companies attempted to capitalize on deaf people and sign languages for marketing purposes. Additional responses included a subtitle meme posted on YouTube titled Hitler’s Reaction on Gallaudet and Coke Sign Fiasco (Snow Reference Snow2025; henceforth Reaction). In addition to Reaction, Charles Ainsworth created a video posted on Instagram titled A New Sign for God (henceforth God).

The online responses, ranging from critical commentary to satirical videos, reveal the underlying tensions between institutionalized language planning and community-driven linguistic practices. These reactions contest the legitimacy of top-down sign creation and foreground broader ideological concerns regarding authenticity, representation, and deaf linguistic ownership. Such responses can be understood as expressions of culturally situated beliefs about language that mediate the relationship between communicative practices and social structures (Woolard & Schieffelin Reference Woolard and Schieffelin1994; Rosa & Burdick Reference Rosa, Burdick, García, Flores and Spotti2017). To illuminate these dynamics, the following section offers a critical analysis of how humor and parody function as discursive tools for deaf resistance to hegemonic language changes.

Satirical videos: Gollyudeaf and a Berlin bunker

In this section, I critically examine two satirical video responses to Gallaudet University’s introduction of a new ASL sign for Coke, highlighting the complex interplay between institutional authority, linguistic innovation, and community reception. The first video, posted by the Instagram account @angrydeafpeople, features a fictional character performed by deaf filmmaker Charles Ainsworth, Dr. Velvet Fingers, Chief Linguist at the fictitious ‘Gollyudeaf University’, who announces a new sign for God. Through parody, the video critiques the performative nature of institutionalized language creation and the perceived disconnection between academic processes and community values.

The second video, posted on YouTube (Snow Reference Snow2025), repurposes a scene from the 2004 German film Downfall, employing subtitle parody to satirize the backlash against the Coke sign. In this reimagining, Gallaudet’s leadership is portrayed as authoritarian, with Hitler representing institutional rigidity and disregard for community input. The video underscores the tensions surrounding representation, cultural ownership, and the commodification of ASL and deaf identity, ultimately suggesting that top-down linguistic decisions incur these risks. Together, these videos offer insights into the sociolinguistic dynamics at play in this situation, illuminating how humor and satire function as tools of resistance and critique online. The transcript below, which was posted with the video by its creator, has been edited for brevity.

The protagonist is Dr. Velvet Fingers, identified as the chief linguist at Gollyudeaf University. The combination of ‘doctor’ and ‘velvet fingers’ refers to two different assumptions of authority in terms of the ability to engage in sign innovation: academic credentials and being a skilled signer. However, in the case of the invention of the new sign for Coke, academic credentials and Gallaudet’s position as the premier academic and cultural institution for deaf people worldwide did not matter to deaf community members in terms of credibility or authority.

Dr. Velvet Fingers said that he solicited “international community feedback”, mocking Gallaudet’s virtue signaling of community involvement. Also, it seems counterintuitive that people who are not part of the US deaf community would have input on a new sign for Coke in ASL. Both the God and Reaction videos (discussed in detail below), mock Gallaudet’s justification for the new sign as being based on linguistics research and community consultation. Dr. Velvet Fingers emphasized that Gollyudeaf University consulted with “Catholics, Baptists, Orthodox Jews, Evangelicals, several witches, two Mormon Deaf elders, a Satanist in Ohio, and one guy on TikTok who insists he is God”. The marketing people who crafted the announcement video knew that community involvement in the creation of a new sign was important and signaled this by highlighting ‘consultation with international deaf people’, but this seems to have been a superficial effort and critics picked up on this.

The second video, Reaction, is a meme based on a scene from the 2004 German film Downfall. The modification of this particular scene of Adolf Hitler in a bunker with his generals is a form of subtitle parody, which is the parody of a video clip in a foreign language, such as a clip from a film or online video, made by adding bespoke subtitles and completely changing the meaning of the video. Reaction is an ‘insider’ video with references most legible to those familiar with US deaf institutions and community controversies. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.

At the beginning of Reaction, General 1 explains that “three deaf students were recruited, sir. Along with linguistics professors and Coca-Cola’s PR guy”, suggesting that this was a legitimate process because deaf students and linguists were involved; however, the linguistics professors named in this video were not involved and actually refused the request from Gallaudet’s marketing department. In the next few seconds in Reaction, the people in the bunker realize that there is backlash online. General 2 says, “they excluded the very people they claimed to uplift. Scholars. Advocates. The community itself”. Hitler then responds, “Gallaudet doesn’t ask permission. We declare, we publish, we present—and they applaud”. Reaction is caricaturing Gallaudet’s role as both an academic and cultural institution, mocking its claims to authority through the involvement of deaf linguists. Reaction is also poking at the perceived elitism of Gallaudet as “sacred Deaf soil”. Hitler then defends the process of innovating the new sign for Coke by claiming that he sat through “hours of focus groups” with linguists to “push this sign through”. At the end of Reaction, Hitler says, “We survived oralism, Congress, and NAD drama…but community engagement might finish us. Dammit… all I asked for… was loyalty. But the Deaf community chose liberation instead”.

These lines index familiar controversaries, such as oralism, which remains a lightning rod for deaf people worldwide. Oralism became the dominant pedagogical approach in deaf education after a vote was taken at the 1880 International Congress on the Education of the Deaf in Milan, stipulating that speech should have ‘preference’ over signs in the education of deaf children. This led to the loss of deaf economic power as hearing people took over teaching and leadership positions in schools (Burch Reference Burch2002). It is a refrain among the general deaf public that oralism almost destroyed sign languages and the deaf community; however, this is not historically accurate because there was significant resistance by deaf people (c.f. Burch Reference Burch2002). The legacy of institutional efforts to marginalize sign languages in deaf education continues to inform contemporary debates.

The other reference in this video is to the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the United States. At the time this video was made, NAD was going through a leadership crisis, with several Board members resigning, and this all played out on social media, with multiple vlogs and conversations across platforms. At the end of the video, Hitler states that all he asked for was loyalty; however, “the Deaf community chose liberation instead”, offering a fascinating insight into the ethos of the online deaf community in the United States, specifically, that the collective power and authority of its members—gathered in online deaf spaces—transcend deaf organizations and deaf institutions, such as the NAD and Gallaudet. These videos highlight complex deaf community dynamics in the United States during periods of conflict and leadership challenges, illustrating how online deaf activism privileges collective empowerment over organizational allegiance. In the next section, I expand on the ways in which the regulation of SL forms and practices plays a role in the reproduction of the social order, especially in terms of struggles over authenticity, standardization, and variability (Heller Reference Heller2010).

Tensions in lexical innovation, transmission, and conventionalization

In linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics, the process by which new signs become part of sign language lexicon is an under-researched area. Very few publications have focused on the dynamics involved in larger community acceptance of new signs and how they spread through deaf networks, except for brief mentions in older work about the spread of a new sign from southern California to DC (Bellugi & Newkirk Reference Bellugi and Newkirk1981), signs spreading through a network of schools for the deaf (Lucas, Bayley, & Valli Reference Lucas, Bayley and Valli2003) and more recently work on New Zealand Sign Language interpreting (Vale & McKee Reference Vale, McKee, Klosa-Kückelhaus and Kernerman2022). Collective memories and metalinguistic knowledge embedded within sign language lexicons play a crucial role in deaf sociality, especially in terms of metalinguistic discussions about the iconic origins of certain signs and the comparison of signs from different signed languages, which indexes cultural authenticity in transnational encounters, such as deaf tourism (Moriarty, Kusters, Iyer, Le Maire, & Emery Reference Moriarty, Kusters, Iyer, le Maire, Emery, Kusters, Moriarty, Iyer, le Maire and Emery2024). Deaf people have always played an active role in developing and adapting sign languages, from the calibration involved in the use of International Sign (IS) (Moriarty & Kusters Reference Moriarty and Kusters2021) to movements to ‘purify’ American Sign Language (ASL) to remove English influences (Brentari Reference Brentari2003) (e.g. initialized signs such as the sign for family, which is signed with the handshape for the letter ‘F’).

A feature of sign languages is the diversity and fluidity of deaf languaging practices and the ongoing creation of new signs by users. The creation of new signs can occur as a natural part of language change, as a form of language play, or for educational purposes; however, the same expansiveness of SLs leads to heightened anxiety about its vulnerability to dominant languages, such as English and/or ASL (Moriarty Reference Moriarty2020). This contradiction ‘leads to competition over who defines what counts as legitimate and commodifiable language, over what counts as such, and over who controls the production and distribution of linguistic resources’ (Heller & Boutet Reference Monica and Boutet2006 in Heller Reference Heller2010:103).

Anxiety related to the authenticity of certain signs or signing styles also include concerns about who is inventing signs, as well as the intrusion of ‘foreign’ signs into a less well-documented sign language (Kusters Reference Kusters2020; Moriarty Reference Moriarty2020). Similar patterns appear among other minoritized languages, such as Breton in Brittany, an area in northwestern France. While many speakers consider the Breton of older native speakers as most authentic, they simultaneously rate Celtic-based neologisms as more authentic than the French borrowings those same native speakers actually use—a paradox rooted in competing language ideologies among different speaker groups (e.g. native speakers, neo-Breton elites, and ‘native authenticists’; Hornsby & Quentel Reference Hornsby and Quentel2013). This ideological conflict shapes Breton’s lexicon, as new speakers overwhelmingly use neologisms over French borrowings, suggesting a significant generational shift toward standardized, Celtic-rooted vocabulary despite ongoing debates over authenticity and language purity (Hornsby & Quentel Reference Hornsby and Quentel2013; Cox Reference Cox2025). In a minority language setting, it is most likely for a neologism to be coined and used by a very small, literate elite whose authority is questioned or simply not recognized by the majority of speakers (Hornsby & Quentel Reference Hornsby and Quentel2013; Cox Reference Cox2025).

Often, deaf people posting ideas for a new sign will justify its appropriateness for wider community use by explaining their process in a vlog or some kind of announcement on social media, such as in the new sign for Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic candidate for President of the United States, who is of Black and Indian descent, which was created by a group of Black and Indian deaf women (The Daily Moth 2021). These announcements often include an explanation of the process and claims to authority for the new sign that are based on lived experiences and categories of identification, such as in the case of the sign for transgender. According to a YouTube video posted by Alex Leffers, a deaf transman, the current accepted ASL sign for transgender was developed in 2003 when a group of seven deaf trans and gender-fluid people came together at the Rainbow Alliance of the Deaf Conference in Orlando, Florida (Leffers Reference Leffers2016). This group had a metalinguistic discussion about the need for a more appropriate sign for transgender, because the sign in use at the time was T-G fingerspelled in a location and motion that resembled the sign for ‘no good’, and the other sign in use denoted a derogatory label. A transwoman from Europe participated in the discussion and showed the group signs that she had seen throughout her international travel. After discussion, the group decided to adopt a sign inspired by the ASL sign for ‘beautiful’, but located at the center of the chest. This sign combines several concepts, such as ‘beautiful’, ‘inside’, and ‘change’, to index the transgender experience of changing the external body to better reflect the internal gender identification (Leffers Reference Leffers2016). It almost always seems to be the case that only people who have relevant lived experience, professions, or identify as members of a certain group are accepted as authoritative creators but these are also often contested processes.

The centrality of sign languages to a deaf identity drives ideological anxiety about what Padden (Reference Padden1998:46) referred to as ‘foreign elements in a natural sign language’, for example, initialized signs. I argue that the anxiety about ‘foreign elements’ in ASL that Padden describes also includes anxiety about the authenticity of certain signs, especially related to who invented the new sign and in what context the new sign emerged. This anxiety is not simply about linguistic purity; it carries the weight of a much longer history in which hearing scholars and institutions have exercised authority over sign languages that deaf communities themselves were denied. Moriarty termed this linguistic technoscience: the deployment of scientific and technological frameworks to intervene in deaf children’s language, ostensibly to fix the perceived ‘problem’ of deaf literacy (Moriarty & Robinson Reference Moriarty, Robinson, Robinson, Moriarty and Henner2025). During the 1970s and 1980s, researchers affiliated with the university invented and disseminated a range of sign systems—Seeing Essential English (SEE1), Signing Exact English (SEE2), the Linguistics of Visual English (LOVE), Cued Speech—designed primarily to render English visible on the hands of deaf children. Cued Speech was developed by R. Orin Cornett, Gallaudet’s former Vice President for Long Range Planning, who held a doctorate in physics and had no background in pedagogy or deaf education. That a physicist at a deaf institution could become an authoritative voice on how deaf children should communicate captures, in miniature, the structural dynamic at stake.

As Moriarty & Robinson (Reference Moriarty, Robinson, Robinson, Moriarty and Henner2025) document through Frances Parsons’ archive, Gallaudet-affiliated educators spread ASL-adjacent and English-coded signing systems across the Global South during the Cold War, displacing indigenous sign languages in the process. The long-term consequences are still legible: contemporary concerns about ASL as a ‘killer language’ (Kusters Reference Kusters2020) are, in part, the residue of linguistic technoscience exported from Gallaudet under the banner of deaf liberation.

The dominance of hearing scholars in the production of knowledge about sign languages has been equally marked within academia. Kusters observes in a recent interview that there are ten to fifteen hearing full professors in Deaf Studies and sign language research in the UK alone, while she herself was the first deaf scholar to reach that rank—in a field that has existed since the late 1970s (Salguero González Reference Salguero González2026). The asymmetry she describes is not merely a matter of professional access; it reflects who has historically held the authority to describe, define, and legitimate deaf language practices. Against this backdrop, the invocation of ‘eight months of linguistic research’ to authorize the new Coke sign was unpersuasive to deaf communities; it activated a deeper institutional memory in which expertise has repeatedly been deployed to intervene in deaf language from a position of power that was not deaf-controlled. The anxiety about ‘foreign elements’, in this reading, is also an anxiety about foreign methods, or in other words, the scientific apparatus of linguistic technoscience, being turned on ASL once again, this time wearing the face of corporate partnership, instead of oralism.

This continuous process of linguistic innovation and adaptation ensures that sign languages remain relevant, serving as living archives of deaf experiences and perspectives (Padden 1990/Reference Padden and Bragg2001). Discussions on social media, in television and theater productions, and during transnational deaf encounters illustrate tensions between lexical innovation and the desire to maintain language authenticity and comprehensibility (Kusters Reference Kusters2021; Kusters & Fenlon Reference Kusters and Fenlon2022; Moriarty et al. Reference Moriarty, Kusters, Iyer, le Maire, Emery, Kusters, Moriarty, Iyer, le Maire and Emery2024). Kusters & Fenlon (Reference Kusters and Fenlon2022) found that certain linguistic styles might be deemed more ‘authentic’, such as in the case of sign language productions for television in the UK that involve deaf ‘language monitors’ who advise on the ‘naturalness’ and accurate production of signs, a process developed in response to ‘inauthentic’ signing seen in previous productions. ‘Authentic’ signing is often described as more smooth, visual, and ‘deaf’, less beholden to the structure or influence of a spoken language (Kusters & Fenlon Reference Kusters and Fenlon2022).

In the case of sign languages, debates about lexical innovation, language ownership, and authenticity often center on hearing hegemony (Eichmann Reference Eichmann2009; Adam Reference Adam2015). Deaf people often view sign language standardization as compulsory and resent these efforts, perceiving it as a threat to sign languages and deaf communities (Eichmann Reference Eichmann2009:304). In an example illustrating resistance to perceived ‘hearing hegemony’ during the Covid-19 crisis, many sign language interpreters working during news broadcasts on New Zealand television effectively became what Vale & McKee (Reference Vale, McKee, Klosa-Kückelhaus and Kernerman2022) called ‘lexical inventors’, coining new signs before deaf New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) speakers widely adopted them. This resulted in concerns about linguistic authenticity, as these interpreters were ‘second language’ speakers of NZSL (Vale & McKee Reference Vale, McKee, Klosa-Kückelhaus and Kernerman2022). NZSL interpreters experienced tensions between the need to innovate quickly in an emergency and the limited opportunities for consultation with the deaf community due to lockdown conditions. Some faced criticism on social media from deaf users who objected to vocabulary choices or apparent innovations introduced by hearing interpreters. This suggests a tacit understanding that legitimate lexical innovation in sign languages should be deaf led, involve people with expertise in that particular arena (lived experience and/or technical knowledge), and some form of public discussion on social media or during community events.

In other cases, groups of deaf people with specialized expertise have created new signs for concepts in STEM. There are many projects to develop and standardize STEM lexicons, such as the STEM Sign Language Summit hosted by Gallaudet University in March 2023 and 2024, and Atomic Hands founded by two deaf scientists to translate STEM concepts into ASL, as well as the long-running Scottish project, led by Dr. Audrey Cameron, a deaf scientist at the University of Edinburgh, to develop a glossary of BSL signs for the sciences. Signs created in this way seem to be more readily accepted because this process is focused on making concepts accessible for deaf children, and most importantly, involves deaf people who have the technical and scientific expertise necessary to develop iconically appropriate signs. This process is consensus-driven, involving multiple deaf stakeholders, such as scientists and teachers; therefore, this form of lexical innovation appears to be unchallenged.

There is no formal process or ‘committee’ for the moderation of new signs in ASL; however, the data suggest an implicit community-driven process in which specific signs or ways of expressing a concept in ASL become accepted parts of the language. In general, there seems to be a consensus-based process of adding new lexicon to ASL, such as in the invention of a new, non-initialized sign for ‘poem’, ‘poet’, and ‘poetry’ by attendees at Deaf Way I, an international arts and culture festival that took place at Gallaudet University in July 1989 (C. Krentz p.c., October 2, 2025). A person or group of people might create a new sign, which is then adopted by other signers and spreads through networks of deaf people, either in person or on social media.

Although Bellugi & Newkirk (Reference Bellugi and Newkirk1981) did not explicitly discuss the social processes of the circulation of new signs within deaf networks, they showed that sign creation is a natural part of language use among deaf signers. They mentioned an instance in which a newly coined sign for streaker spread quickly across a wide geographic area. This suggests that new signs can spread rapidly when they fill the lexical gap for a culturally relevant concept, implying that new signs gain acceptance within specific communities before spreading more widely. More contemporary but similar patterns of linguistic innovation can be observed on social media, such as the sign for Bad Bunny, which quickly spread after his 2026 Super Bowl performance became a topic of conversation on deaf social media.

Ultimately, the tensions surrounding lexical innovation in ASL and other signed languages reflect a deep-seated conflict over language ownership. New signs do not simply fill lexical gaps; they are referents to specific times and places, carrying cultural freight. Although there is no formal governing body that adjudicates which signs enter the ASL lexicon, the data suggest that an implicit but powerful set of community norms guides this process. These norms privilege deaf authorship, collective deliberation, and ideologies of a ‘natural’ and organic spread through deaf social networks, online and/or offline. When these norms are violated, whether by hearing interpreters coining signs or by institutional standardization efforts such as the invention of the new sign for Coke at Gallaudet, resistance follows. Conversely, when lexical innovation emerges from within the deaf community, explicitly rooted in lived experience, identification categories, and driven by consensus, new signs can be absorbed into the lexicon with remarkable ease and speed. This community-driven process functions as both a mechanism of linguistic vitality and a form of resistance to hegemony (hearing and/or what may be perceived as academic elitism), especially where language planning and policy are concerned.

Conclusion: Languages as sites of ongoing creation, negotiation, and adaptation

Sign languages are sites of ongoing creation, negotiation, and adaptation; however, reactions to the new sign for Coke are a reminder that these are contested processes. This is especially true when new signs are perceived as hegemonic. Online platforms now function as deaf spaces where language ideologies are actively contested and reshaped. These virtual arenas facilitate the negotiation of linguistic authenticity, ownership, and representation, especially in the context of ASL as both a cultural resource and a commodified product. The research and invention of a new ASL sign for Coca-Cola at Gallaudet and subsequent reactions from deaf people on social media raise important questions about the linguistic authority and ownership of ASL (and any other local or national sign language). As Gallaudet sought to leverage a new ASL sign as a means of building a relationship with potential corporate sponsors, it elided historical struggles over linguistic ownership and deaf identity.

The satirical responses examined here (A New Sign for God and Hitler’s Reaction on Gallaudet and Coke Sign Fiasco) demonstrate precisely how this elision is named and refused. Dr. Velvet Fingers, whose very name encodes the credential the deaf community actually assesses (embodied signing skill), parodies Gallaudet’s claim to institutional legitimacy. Reaction maps Gallaudet’s leadership onto authoritarian rigidity, staging the eventual concession: “the Deaf community chose liberation instead”. These are not merely comic responses; they are acts of collective discursive governance, performed in public, on platforms accessible to any signer with a phone.

The dynamics of lexical innovation in ASL illuminate a broader tension between language as communal heritage and language as commodity. When new signs emerge organically from within deaf communities, they function as expressions of collective ownership, reinforcing shared identity and resisting external control. However, as signed languages gain visibility in global media markets, the very signs that embody community authorship become subject to commodification, circulated and consumed by hearing audiences often detached from their cultural origins. This commodification risks displacing the community-centered norms that govern lexical innovation, subordinating questions of who has the right to create and disseminate language to the logics of marketability and mass appeal. Neologisms, then, are not merely linguistic artifacts; they are sites of contestation where the politics of ownership, authenticity, and commodification converge. The Gallaudet × Coca-Cola campaign raises critical ethical concerns regarding language ownership and the exploitation of deaf cultural emblems for institutional gain. The standardization of sign languages has historically been associated with hearing hegemony (Eichmann Reference Eichmann2009), and the backlash to the Coke sign can be read as community resistance to its latest iteration—one in which zombie linguistics (Perley Reference Perley2012) wears the face not of the oralists, but of a deaf institution in the throes of end times capitalism.

This study extends existing scholarship on language commodification in two ways. First, it demonstrates that deaf spaces on social media function as a form of distributed community governance over lexical innovation (and other political issues) that activates faster, and with greater authority and reach, than an institutional body. The satire (God and Reaction) that unfolded in real-time was not peripheral to the debate; it was the debate that took place in an equalizing forum in which community norms were publicly articulated, consensus was signaled, and institutional authority was denied. Second, it demonstrates that humor and parody are undertheorized discursive tools in the language ideologies literature, capable of performing the work of language policing while simultaneously refusing its authoritarian form. The Coca-Cola controversy is unlikely to be the last instance of a corporation or institution seeking to commodify a sign language. The question it leaves open (who has the right to invent a sign, and, on whose terms does it enter a language) is one that ‘community engagement’ may never fully resolve, as the unruly deaf social media likes to remind us.