Antw: Re: Sociolinguistics Symposium 14 and the standardisationof sign languages

[Franz Dotter]

Dear Angus!

If you compare the situation of a signed with a non-written spoken language, containing more than one dialect: 
A linguist has two possibilities to make recommendations to the native speakers in order to decide on writing (I am convinced that linguists have only to give recommendations, the respective language community then has to decide):
1. If the speaker's community decides on having one unique language, they will have to sort out one variant as the standard or merge some variants to a standard or to invent a new standard in order to have a unique writing.
The same is even the case when you think about broadcasting: Either by decision or by practice you will get a more or less rigid standardization. The same is valid for language teaching in school or for foreigners.

2. The speakers do not want a unity; then they have to declare that the diverse dialects should have different writing (and broadcasting, and education). In this case you will soon have the development or declaration of the dialects as independent 'languages'.

Now I come back to sign languages: What we observe is a big diversity in sign language variants of one country, depending on region, age, education and even individual socialisation and development. This big diversity exists in a rather small community.
I hold the hypothesis: A fully fledged language has at least one 'standard' for certain 'official' purposes (in non-written languages this could be the speech of priests or of the government or of some peers). This standard has eto be used for teaching the language (especially as a foreign language). The situation of sign languages even enforces the need for soft standardization (for soft, see below). 
There are two arguments for standardization: One is a very strong historical one: It simply appears if there are some official functions (ritual, negotiating, writing,..) in the respective culture. The second is the practical one discussed so far within our list: If we do not ave standardized variants we increase the difficulties of acknowledgement and use in education. Hearing persons (including teachers) cannot be forced to learn all variants; interpreters should learn them to a certain extent, however.

As we know: Every lexicon of e.g. ASL will have an implicitly normative function to learners and partially to deaf people also (learners and teachers need material for language learning/teaching). I think, instead of publishing a lexicon with restricted representation of variants, it is more honest to invite the sign language community to undertake the hardship and to decide on a 'soft' standardization. 'Soft' means that they accept that there is a standard to be told to learners but that they are not forced to give up their variants, so that - like in most spoken languages - we have more than one 'variant' or 'register' of the respective sign language.
You need not fear that the standard 'extincts' the other variants if (and only if!) there is a living native users community. Take the 'Englishes of the world' for another example on the range of lingua franca: We can assume that it is told relatively similarly, but the outcome...


We had a concrete case now in Austria:

A company wanted to complete their lexicon (a CD-ROM) for deaf children with signs. We told them that there would be about 3-6 variants for many of the Austrian signs. The response was: There is not enough space on the CD-ROM and this will be unteachable or not arguable to parents and teachers. Our reaction was to record all variants and then to organise deaf conferences in order to decide whether there could be a selection. Although we invited persons who earlier had sign language teacher courses at our university, almost nobody was ready to take the responsibility. Therefore three deaf members of my team selected 1 or maximally 2 signs for a certain meaning (follwoing linguistic and deaf-oriented criteria) and delivered the results. When the company now showed theme to some deaf people, they rejected this solution because it would not represent the whole Austrian Sign Language.
There we are: Concerning the CD-ROM we will try to represent all variants of Austrian Sign Language.

But the condition will be demanded by educational authorities:


A second example from our last Klagenfurt EU-conference on deaf issues: A very talented representative of the young deaf community (Corrie, I remember you!) proposed that the deaf community should decide to use only one sign language as a lingua franca for deaf conferences (ASL or BSL) and to exclude people who cannot use it (this sounds hard, but has its parallel in the spoken languages exclusion in favor of English). I will not discuss this issue here, I only want to ask: How would you be able to teach ASL or BSL 
to Austrian deaf without standardization?

Best Regards

Franz


>>> "Angus B. Grieve-Smith" <grvsmth at unm.edu> 29.08.2001  13.10 Uhr >>>
On Wed, 29 Aug 2001, Franz Dotter wrote:

> In any case, there is some truth in the demands and we should deal
> with them with respect to the linguistic identity of the sign language
> community.

        Hm.  I'm open to that possibility, but at this point I don't see
it.  Is it because they want to have a terminology list to give teachers
and interpreters, and they have difficulty with the idea that the list
might contain different signs for different regions or social classes?

--
                                -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
                                Linguistics Department
                                University of New Mexico
                                grvsmth at unm.edu