This paper deals with foregrounding structures in American Sign Language (ASL), which are compared to those in other languages such as English, Catalan and Russian, and in particular with the pseudocleft as a major focusing construction and not as a rhetorical question-answer sequence. Other foregrounding structures in ASL do not participate in the focusing process but foreground non-focused, topical material. The specific variations found in ASL cannot be attributed to the fact that ASL is a signed language.