Confidentiality Issues and sign language

[G.Morgan]

Dear list members,
I have been reading recent discussion of video data and confidentiality
with interest as those of us working in sign language acquisition are
always faced with issues regarding data on video.  Sign language has to be
recorded on video with children as clearly visible as possible (may mean
running behind them or under a table - ouch!), and concealing faces is
impossible, as often facial grammar is the object of study.
In studies of adult-child interaction the adult must also be clearly seen,
meaning the child can be identified, making pseudonyms irrelevant as the
mother may be a known person to the audience.  This becomes very
problematic if you are talking about delayed or disordered language.

At conferences and in teaching, it is always a problem whether to show the
clip of the brilliant example of child language or sign it yourself (not so
brilliant), in publications it is even more of a dilemma even with adult
informants.  Often a written gloss only reveals part of the information and
looks like Egyptian hieroglyphics.

When I collected data for my PhD thesis on BSL morpho-syntax, I designed an
informed-consent form which parents or teachers had to sign.  The form said
that the data would be shown at different levels of exposure from -nobody
but me-within research group-for teaching-conferences-publications.  The
legal guardian chose at what level they were happy for the data to be
available.  I also had to give the option that the video would be destroyed
after the project.

There are some good examples of how video can be used in child language in
the sign language research community developed through 25 years of
encountering problems of confidentiality.  I can direct people to these
practices in more detail if there is a need expressed.  With the advent of
digitised video in web archives I would like to know what other child
language researchers are doing to protect informants anonymity.

Yours
Gary Morgan

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Gary Morgan
Dept of Linguistics, UCL, London
tel: 0171 4193162 (voice/text)
fax: 0171 3834108