Shared Sign Research Articles

The effect of sociolinguistic factors on variation in the Kata Kolok lexicon

Abstract Abstract (International Sign) Sign languages can be categorized as shared sign languages or deaf community sign languages, depending on the context in which they emerge. It has been suggested that shared sign languages exhibit more variation in the expression of everyday concepts than deaf community sign languages (Meir, Israel, Sandler, Padden, & Aronoff, 2012). For deaf community sign languages, it has been shown that various sociolinguistic factors condition this variation. This study presents one of the first in-depth investigations of how sociolinguistic factors (deaf status, age, clan, gender and having a deaf family member) affect lexical variation in a shared sign language, using a picture description task in Kata Kolok. To study lexical variation in Kata Kolok, two methodologies are devised: the identification of signs by underlying iconic motivation and mapping, and a way to compare individual repertoires of signs by calculating the lexical distances between participants. Alongside presenting novel methodologies to study this type of sign language, we present preliminary evidence of sociolinguistic factors that may influence variation in the Kata Kolok lexicon.

The effect of cultural transmission on shared sign language persistence

In this paper, we revisit a mathematical model of sign language persistence by Aoki and Feldman (Theor Popul Biol 39(3):358–372, 1991), which investigates the evolution of genes causing deafness, affected by an assortative mating parameter, and the cultural transmission of sign language. To assess their model, we reimplement it as an agent-based simulation to be able to easily represent structured relationships in a finite population. We study the persistence of shared sign languages, a categorization of sign languages, which are typically shared by deaf and hearing members of a small community with a high incidence of hereditary deafness (Nyst, 2012. Shared sign languages. Sign language: An international handbook, pp. 552–574). We observe how shared sign language persistence is affected by hearing signers, marriage patterns, and various modes of sign language transmission: vertical, horizontal, oblique, and grandparental transmission. In contrast to Aoki and Feldman’s (Theor Popul Biol 9(3):358–372, 1991) finding that modes of transmission other than vertical are negligible, in the agent-based model we find that adding modes of transmission helps to ensure shared sign language persistence. A better understanding of sign language persistence has relevance for processes of cultural evolution, (sign language) linguistics, and language endangerment.

Sign language interpreting in the Pacific: A snapshot of progress in raising the participation of deaf people

Abstract Barriers to acquiring and using a shared sign language alienate deaf children and adults from their fundamental human rights to communication, education, social and economic participation, and access to services. International data collected by the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) identify that in economically developing countries, deaf individuals are at particularly high risk of marginalization, which applies to countries in the Pacific region. This report provides a snapshot of the status of deaf people as sign language users in six Pacific nations: Fiji, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor Leste and Kiribati. Information was contributed by sign language interpreters from these countries during a panel convened at the first Oceania regional conference of the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters, in Fiji, 2018. The report outlines conditions for education through sign language and the emergence of sign language interpreting as a means of increasing access and social equity for deaf people in these countries, albeit this remains largely on a voluntary basis. While Fiji and PNG governments have recognized the status of sign languages in their respective countries and allocated some resources to the inclusion of sign language users, practical support of deaf sign language users tends to be progressed on grounds of disability rights rather than language rights; e.g., several Pacific countries have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights for People with Disabilities, which includes provisions for sign language users, and deaf advocacy efforts have gained political traction from alliance with disability organizations.

Numerals and Timelines of a Shared Sign Language in Japan: Miyakubo Sign Language on Ehime-Oshima Island

Numerals and Timelines of a Shared Sign Language in Japan: Miyakubo Sign Language on Ehime-Oshima Island

The use of signing space in a shared sign language of Australia

The use of signing space in a shared sign language of Australia

Language ideologies in the shared signing community of Adamorobe

AbstractThis article analyzes language ideologies with regard to sign language in Adamorobe, a “shared signing community” in southern Ghana. Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL) is a “shared sign language,” used by all deaf people and a large number of hearing Akan-speaking people. Deaf schoolchildren from Adamorobe attend a school where Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL) is taught. Hearing interviewees have experiential knowledge that everything can be said in AdaSL, emphasise the shared roots of AdaSL and Akan, and called AdaSL “natural.” Deaf interlocutors describe Akan, AdaSL, and GSL as three distinct but equivalent languages. AdaSL is said to be a “hard” language, more pleasant to use, and more expressive than GSL, but sign bilingualism is highly valued. These findings are compared and contrasted with accounts on language ideologies with regard to other shared sign languages and larger urban/national sign languages. (Language ideologies, language practices, Ghana, Ghanaian Sign Language, Adamorobe Sign Language, Akan, shared sign languages, shared signing communities, village sign languages)*

Signed languages and globalization

AbstractDeaf people who form part of a Deaf community communicate using a shared sign language. When meeting people from another language community, they can fall back on a flexible and highly context-dependent form of communication calledinternational sign, in which shared elements from their own sign languages and elements of shared spoken languages are combined with pantomimic elements. Together with the fact that there are few shared sign languages, this leads to a very different global language situation for deaf people as compared to the situation for spoken languages and hearing people as analyzed in de Swaan (2001). We argue that this very flexibility in communication and the resulting global communication patterns form the core of deaf culture and a key component of the characterization of deaf people as “visual people.” (Globalization, sign language, international sign, Deaf culture, language contact, multilingualism)*

Medical Signbank: Bringing Deaf People and Linguists Together in the Process of Language Development

In this article we describe an Australian project in which linguists, signed language interpreters, medical and health care professionals, and members of the Deaf community use the technology of the Internet to facilitate cooperative language development. A web-based, interactive multimedia lexicon, an encyclopedic dictionary, and a database of Australian Sign Language (Auslan) are being used to create an effective, accepted, and shared sign language vocabulary for the discussion of medical and mental health issues by deaf clients and health professionals in interactions mediated by Auslan interpreters. The site, called Medical Signbank, is a means of monitoring Auslan vocabulary use and innovation by interpreters and of providing an explanation of basic medical and mental health terminology to deaf people with limited English or literacy skills. Medical Signbank will use the interactive capabilities of the Internet to turn the tables on language planning and standardization—from “top down” to “bottom up”—and, by so doing, encourage an organic and more natural process of language development.

Sign-deaf spaces The Deaf in Cape Town creating community crossing boundaries constructing identity

The paper examines how adults in Cape Town who were born deaf or who became deaf as children and whose first language is South African Sign, strategise to deal with being marginalised in a hearing world. The paper draws on a long-term study (September 1995 to December 2001). Using ethnographic evidence it demonstrates sign-deaf spaces as community. ‘Community’ entails networks of social relationships that function to create spaces of shared sign language familiarity sociability and communality in an often hostile hearing world. The boundaries of the sign-deaf spaces are difficult to determine. In sociable contexts signed language facilitates interactions across spoken language barriers locally and internationally. Sign language proves to be a marker of Deaf identity in certain hearing contexts but importantly it serves to disperse identity in the sign-deaf space. The paradoxical outcome is that in the sign-deaf space the Deaf are rarely ‘deaf certainly not in any socially handicapped or deficit way.

Semantic and formational clustering in deaf and hearing subjects' free recall of signs.

To investigate whether formational properties of sign language are used spontaneously to organize long-term memory, 16 deaf college students were given a free recall task with items that could be categorized either by shared semantic category or by shared sign language hand shape. Both presentation and response modes (signed or written) were varied between subjects. Analyses revealed no effects of mode on trials to criterion or number of items recalled at 1 week. The clustering that occurred was exclusively semantic, with significantly higher clustering scores during acquisition trials in subjects required to sign their responses. In Experiment 2, formational clustering was encouraged by including formational similarity as the only experimenter-defined basis of categorization, by increasing formational similarity within categories, and by testing only subjects with high signing skills. Input and output modes were again varied between subjects. Subjects were deaf college students with deaf parents (n = 10) or hearing parents (n = 16), and hearing adults with deaf parents (n = 8). Again, spontaneous clustering by formational similarity was extremely low. In only one case— deaf subjects with hearing parents given signed input—did formational clustering increase significantly across the eight acquisition trials. After the categorical nature of the list was explained to subjects at a 1-week retention session, all groups clustered output by formational categories. Apparently, fluent signers do have knowledge of the formational structure of signs, but do not spontaneously use this knowledge as a basis of mnemonic organization in long-term memory.