[Slling-l] Springer Nature to retract chapter on sign language critics call “unbelievably insulting”

[Mike Morgan]

As a linguist who lives and works in India part-time, let me say that such
"research" is indeed the flavour of the month among South Asia (or at least
Indian, pakistani and Bangladeshi) IT graduate students, it seems...

And the terminology, appalling though it is, finds its way into the pages
of some of the nation's best daily newspapers (and even more often into
lesser ones). There ARE moves in the "right" direction; just a year or a
bit more ago the All india Railways  issued a memorandum (if memory serves)
that the terminology "and Dumb" would no longer be used (for example, on
rail passes).

While the temrinology "deaf-dumb" or "deaf and dumb" has been an issue on
which many leaders in the Deaf community have spoken, it must be remembered
that there are local Deaf Associations  which maintain their old names
"Such-and-Such-a-Town Deaf and Dumb Society" etc. Note, however, these tend
to exist mostly in smaller towns and in areas where English is a language
used naturally by very few people ,...and also that such names are
inherited from generations ago and it was not all that long ago when this
was  British usage as well, and not just in  the colonial territories ...
NOT that that is an excuse.

Returning to the "research" it should also be noted that quite often
(possibly more often than not), the "sign language" which is "studied" is
ONLY the finger spelling system... and the finger spelling system studied
is also quite often that of ASL NOT of India's own indigenous finger
spelling system(s). This is perhaps not quite so big a problem as it could
be, as there are localities (the metropolitan area of Bangalore/Bengaluru)
where Deaf use the ASL system primarily.

One could go on and on about this problem... but as a linguist and a
(peripheral) member of the Deaf community, whenever I get any requests for
collaboration, advice, etc, I always immediately deposit them where they
belong... in the garbage. (Although, if I was in it for the money, I should
probably say "yes!"... I am guessing that such projects are much better
funded than the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre in Delhi.)

On Sun, Feb 7, 2021 at 6:20 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com> wrote:

> The article, dated February 1, 2021, has 37 comments as I write this.
> It begins:
> ____________________________
>
> *Springer Nature to retract chapter on sign language critics call
> “unbelievably insulting”*
> <https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-8391-9_14>
>
> Julie Hochgesang
>
> *Springer Nature is retracting a book chapter describing conference
> research after scholars in the deaf community blasted it for being
> “unbelievably insulting.”*
>
>
> The chapter, “Implementation of Hand Gesture Recognition System To Aid
> Deaf-Dumb People,” <
> https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-8391-9_14>
> appeared in *Advances in Signal and Data Procesing: Select Proceedings of
> ICSDP 2019*. The authors were  Supriya Ghule and Mrunalini Chavaan, of
> the [Maharashtra Institute of Technology] Academy of Engineering in Pune,
> India.
>
> According to the abstract:
>
> *In recent years, the population of deaf-dumb victims has increased
> because of birth defects and other issues. Since a deaf and mute person
> cannot talk with an ordinary person in order that they ought to rely on
> some kind of communication system. The gesture shows some physical
> movements of the hand that convey a piece of information. Gesture
> recognition is the analytical interpretation of the movement of an
> individual through an information processing system. Linguistic
> communication provides the most effective conversation platform for the
> mute person to speak with an ordinary person. The aim of this paper is to
> build up a time system for hand gesture recognition that acknowledges hand
> gestures and then converts them into text and voice. In this paper, efforts
> have been done to detect 8 different gestures. Each gesture has assigned
> unique sound and text output. In experimental results, 800 samples were
> taken into the consideration out of which 760 samples were detected
> correctly and 40 samples were detected wrongly. Hence, the proposed system
> gives accuracy of 95%.*
>
> The work caught the eye of an international group of researchers and
> members of the deaf community led by Julie A. Hochgesang <
> https://my.gallaudet.edu/julie-hochgesang>, of the Department of
> Linguistics at Gallaudet University, in Washington, D.C., who were
> “appalled” by the project, which they say was marred by a lack of
> understanding of the field, pejorative and outdated language and other
> problems.
>
> *...*
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
Dr Michael W Morgan
mwm || *U*C> || mike || माईक || માઈક || মাঈক || மாஈக ||  مایک ||мика ||
戊流岸マイク
sign language linguist / linguistic typologist / Deaf education consultant
"Have language, will travel"
=====================================
"People who are always looking down at the bottom line will always fail to
see the stars"
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