The Amsterdam Manifest

[Christian Rathmann]

Adam, you made two clear points: first, under economic circumstances it would be
wise to choose a (or two) signed language(s) as (a) lingua franca(e) at an
international conference, and second, the fact is that many educated people
*indeed* know ASL as a second signed language. To your question why BSL has been
included in the manifesto, your assumption was right. The main argument is that
at some European Deaf institutes (in this case: in Catalonia and Norway), BSL
has been used to teach English to Deaf children. Also, one question came up
during the meeting: what would be a lingua franca at an European meeting where
no Deaf Americans were present? ASL?

However, from our view it is not as important to discuss about which
signed language should be treated a lingua franca in general. Rather, the goal
of the manifesto is to make people aware that conference languages MUST be
chosen in such a way that both deaf and hearing conference participants have
*equal* access to academic discourse. In this manifesto we suggested that ASL
and BSL seem to be signed languages that most Deaf conference participants would
follow (as it was shown in Amsterdam). Again, as Patrick Boudreault mentioned in
his most recent posting, the manifesto is the outcome of our meeting of (most)
Deaf scholars in Amsterdam. Moreover, many European Deaf conference participants
who were not able to bring their own interpreters due to economic reasons (and
you should be not surprised) assumed that most presentations would be translated
into ASL (and/or BSL). But, unfortunately, there were not enough ASL-English
terps available -- even if we consider the fact that there was one ASL-English
terp who worked 'pro bono'! Who is responsible for the situation? Those who
brought their "personal" ASL-English terps? Is this a problem only for Deaf
scholars? We don't want to have the same experience again the next time.
Therefore our experience necessarily calls for taking concrete steps to provide
*equal* access to academic discourse for both deaf and hearing conference
participants in the future.

Best,
Christian