lingua franca in SL

[Mark A Mandel]

>From LINGUIST List 13.258. Please do not reply to me!

Posted to LINGUIST List by Steven Schaufele, Ph.D.; contact information
at bottom.

                              Wed Jan 30 2002
     _________________________________________________________________


Almost two months ago, in response to a question from one of my students
i posted a query about cross-linguistic sign-language communication: Is
there some lingua franca commonly used by signers who have no native
language in common?  Several people asked me to post a summary of the
responses i got.

First of all, i would like to thank the following for the information
they provided: Dorothea Cogill-Koez <dcogill at pobox.une.edu.au> Susan
Fischer <fischer at mail.rit.edu> Nancy Frishberg <nancyf at fishbird.com>
Jennifer Herbold <jherbold at email.arizona.edu> Randall Hogue
<randallhogue at yahoo.com> Leland McCleary <mccleary at usp.br> Ken Shan
<ken at digitas.harvard.edu> Davide Turcato <turk at sfu.ca> Remy Viredaz
<remy.viredaz at bluewin.ch> Philippe Xu <philippeplus at yahoo.com.cn>

And now, the summary:

At one level, ASL was frequently mentioned as sharing within the
Deaf/Signing community the same lingua-franca status that English
currently enjoys within the more general international community,
including the same `fashionable cachet' as English enjoys in many
non-English-speaking countries.  One respondent noted that part of what
this means is that ASL has become an important source of loans into
other gestural languages. Another noted that, at a recent conference at
which there was much discussion about what language to use for the sake
of international participants, spoken English and ASL `were strong
candidates'.  A third pointed out that one factor contributing to ASL's
ascendancy is the existence of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C.
(at which ASL is presumably the primary medium of instruction?), a
university dedicated specifically to the education of the deaf, which
draws a sizable number of international students.  (One respondent
speculated that, with the gradual weakening of international boundaries
in Europe, a new generation of young deaf Europeans may eventually
succeed in developing a decent pan-European sign lingua franca to
contest ASL's hegemony.)

At another level, several respondents told me about an `artificial' sign
language, formerly known as `Gestuno' (a name i was already familiar
with and mention in my lectures), now increasingly referred to as
International Sign Language or ISL.  Several people compared ISL to
Esperanto as a deliberately-engineered, artificial language
(responsibility for this was referred to `a committee of the World
Federation of the Deaf') that can be used for communication across
language barriers but which has no native speakers.  One difference
between ISL and Esperanto, apparently, is that ISL lacks what one
respondent referred to as a `formal grammar' (another descriptive phrase
used was `moderately codified'); another, perhaps clarifying this
statement, described ISL as `more a vocabulary of signs that all agree
to use at international meetings'.  A third described the rules as `very
flexible'.  Many of the statements i got wrt ISL made it sound to a
comparative linguist like myself like a pidgin, koine, or trade jargon
-- indeed, one respondent used the word `pidgin' in describing it --
that different people adapt for use according to their own notions of
`reasonable' grammatical structure.  It was noted that it is used
primarily by Europeans, Australians, and North and South Americans --
basically, First-Worlders.  Asians and Africans from various countries
presumably use differing versions, and thus there is some difficulty
with communication in ISL between individuals from different countries.
Another respondent mentioned that ISL is used in international athletic
competitions, etc. involving the Deaf, and that interpreters for such
events often have to take short courses.

Turcato provided the following list of references on Gestuno/ISL:

British Deaf Association, 1975.  `Gestuno: International Sign Language
of the Deaf'.

Magarotto, Cesare, 1974.  `Towards an International Language of
Gestures'. (Unesco Courier)

Moody, Bill, 1987.  `International Gestures' in John V. Van Cleve (ed.),
_Gallaudet Encyclopedia of Deaf People and Deafness_ (McGraw Hill).

Websites: http://www.handspeak.com/isl
http://www.safat.com/pwsn/gestuno.html

While on the subject of references, Frishberg mentioned a couple of
papers by Battison and Jordan (both papers by both people), published in
1976 in _Sign Language Studies_, vol. 10, on the subject of mutual
intelligibility of sign languages.

At a third level, it was noted that signers are generally better at
interlingual communication than non-signers even without a lingua
franca; thus, there is less pressure on Deaf/Signers to develop or
recognize a lingua franca than is typically the case for users of
oral/aural language. Hypothetical reasons offered for this include: More
practice at interlingual/intermodal communication Greater similarities
between different gestural languages Greater role of general
`body-language' communication in connection with sign language.

Under the heading of `similarities between different gestural
languages', one respondent mentioned the importance of classifiers,
which supposedly carry a greater semantic and functional load than
classifiers in typical spoken languages that make use of them.  Another
alluded to common notions wrt the grammatical use of physical signing
space that `goes a long way to help create impromptu and effective
pidgins'.  This same respondent spoke of deaf people from different
national/linguistic backgounds `negotiat[ing] their communications' for
those occasions when they get together, which seemed to imply that each
such occasion tends to produce its own, ad hoc pidgin or lingua franca
-- based heavily on these general similarities; the respondent further
remarked, `The successful negotiations are a wonder to behold; the
extremely unsuccessful are the stuff of lawsuits'.

Best,
Steven

Steven Schaufele, Ph.D.
Asst. Prof. Linguistics, English Dept.
Soochow Univeristy, Taipei, Taiwan
(886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504 (O)
(886)(02)2835-6966 (H)
fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw