“Community engagement just might finish us off”: Authenticity and commodification in ASL

Abstract This article examines the 2025 controversy over Gallaudet University’s invention of a new American Sign Language (ASL) sign for Coca-Cola as a case study of resistance to the commodification of sign language in late capitalism. Drawing on discourse analysis of deaf social media reactions and satirical videos, this study explores how institutional authority and corporate branding collide with perceived deaf community norms of linguistic innovation. Situating the case within debates on language commodification (Heller 2010), symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1977), and sign language ideologies (Kusters, Green, Moriarty, & Snoddon 2020), this article argues that ASL is both a cultural emblem and an economic resource, and as such, a flashpoint for conflict. The backlash to the ‘new Coke sign’ reveals deaf resistance to top-down language planning and the creative reassertion of ownership through humor, critique, and digital activism. (Authenticity, commodification, minoritized languages, neologisms)