Antw: Sign language 'fieldwork'

Thu Feb 2 09:10:42 UTC 2012

Hello all!

I'm not sure if I ever introduced myself, so a really short introduction. I'm CODA, sign language interpreter and researcher in the project at Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and the project is about collecting field material of sign language.

I was also included in the group proposing new signs for new terms and also recording signs from Slovene sign language (more for a tech support, since in the group were only natural signers). My experience while collecting signs without "free signing" and more of a: "show me a sign for that term" is not good. People tend to invent signs or go for the sign somebody else previously showed.

Current project is different involving a lot of field work (recording "free sign" from natural signers).
Oh, and the project is called SIGNOR (http://lojze.lugos.si/signor).

Regards,

Boštjan Jerko

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----
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On 2. feb. 2012, at 08:47, Franz.Dotter at UNI-KLU.AC.AT wrote:

> Dear Adam, dear all,
>  
> What you raise as a question, illustrates a deep fissure in the group of linguists: There are colleagues whose "theory" "believes" that asking a specific question to a speaker/signer of a certain language may bring an answer which is undisturbed from subjective and social factors (i.e. from politeness, accepting the question as a framework for the answer, opening the speech community to the asking linguist etc.).
> Observed objectively from pragmatics, any such question constitutes a situation of force for the speaker/signer: (S)he - consciously or unconsciously - feels forced to accept the hypothesis "there is exactly one correct answer to the linguist's question" (which is exactly also the linguist's false previous hypothesis which does not take the vagueness and context-dependency of language into consideration). Therefore a speaker/signer who would answer: "oh, I am not sure, there are several possibilities..." would appear as a person resisting to the legitimate wishes of the linguist. I have been reported complaints by deaf people who were considered as idiots because the rejected a single answer on their sign language.
>  
> Naturally, that does not mean that we as linguists must not use a "question book" for research or we must not ask goal-oriented questions. But the cautious and reflective use of these elicitation techniques and the acceptance of a speech/sign community into which we should submerge as "friendly strangers" with respect to the culture is indispensable for research in real communication (i.e. communication in as natural as possible context and linguistic analysis on the baiss of "neutrally" recorded corpora).
>  
> Best Regards
>  
> Franz
>  
> University of Klagenfurt
> Center for Sign Language and Deaf Communication
> Funded by: Provincial government of Carinthia, Bundessozialamt Kaernten
> Head: Franz Dotter (hearing)
> Collaborators: Elisabeth Bergmeister (deaf), Silke Bornholdt (deaf),  Luzia Gansinger (hearing), Simone Greiner-Ogris (hearing) Andrea Grilz (hearing, on maternity leave), Christian Hausch (deaf), Marlene Hilzensauer (hearing), Klaudia Krammer (hearing), Christine Kulterer (hearing), Anita Pirker (deaf), Nathalie Slavicek (hard of hearing), Natalie Unterberger (deaf)
> Homepage: http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/zgh
> Fax: ++43 (0)463 2700 2899
> Phone: ++43 (0)463 2700 /2821 (Franz Dotter),/2823 (Marlene Hilzensauer), /2824 (Klaudia Krammer), /2829 (Christine Kulterer)
> Email addresses: firstname.lastname at uni-klu.ac.at
>  
> 
> >>> "Adam Schembri" <A.Schembri at LATROBE.EDU.AU> 2/2/2012 6:03 >>>
> Hello SLLING-L and SLLS list members,
> 
> Recently, a language documentation colleague asked me why there were so few sign language researchers conducting 'fieldwork'. She was reasonably well-informed about the field, and could name a few sign language linguists who were collecting data from micro-community/ 'village' sign language communities (e.g., in Bali), or from macro-community sign language communities in developing countries (e.g., Uganda), and identified them as doing sign language 'fieldwork'. 
> 
> I could see her point, but I thought this was an interesting perspective, because (without wanting to diminish the challenges of those who work on sign languages in places like Bali and Uganda), I have always considered myself an 'urban fieldworker' working on the sign language varieties cities in Australia and the UK. I read the definition below, and I feel that the Auslan and BSL corpus projects I have worked on do (more or less) fit the bill:
> 
> Bowern (2008:7) “…what is ‘fieldwork’? My definition is rather broad. It involves the collection of accurate data in an ethical manner. It involves producing a result which both the community and the linguist approve of. That is, the ‘community’ (the people who are affected by your being there collecting data) should know why you’re there, what you’re doing, and they should be comfortable with the methodology and the outcome. You should also be satisfied with the arrangements. The third component involves the linguist interacting with a community of speakers at some level. That is, fieldwork involves doing research in a place where the language is spoken, not finding a speaker at your university and eliciting data from them". 
> 
> What do others think? Are many more of us 'fieldworkers' in Bowern's sense than our colleagues realise?
> 
> Cheers,
> Adam
> 
> 
> -- 
> Assoc. Prof. Adam Schembri, PhD
> Director | National Institute for Deaf Studies and Sign Language
> La Trobe University | Melbourne (Bundoora) | Victoria |  3086 |  Australia
> Tel: +61 3 9479 2887 | Fax: +61 3 9479 3074 |http://www.adamschembri.net/webpage/Welcome.html
> 

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