Sociolinguistic variation and language contact in the Deaf Community

1
Sociolinguistic variation and language contact in
the Deaf Community

• Robert Adam
• Postgraduate Researcher
• Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre

2
The sociolinguistic variable

• Fasold (1990) alternative ways of saying the
  same thing, although the alternatives will have
  social significance
• Milroy (1987) the bits of language..associated
  with sex, area and age sub-groups in a
  complicated way a sociolinguistic variable is a
  linguistic element (phonological usually, in
  practice) which co-varies not only with other
  linguistic elements, but also with a number of
  extra-linguistic independent social variables
  such as social class, age, sex, ethnic group or
  contextual style.

3
Variable units in spoken languages

• Segments of sounds/phonology assimilation,
  weakening, consonant deletion, substitution,
  addition
• word-sized segments
• Morphological units
• Discourse units
• Syntax
• Variation is highly systematic

4
Variation in American Sign Language

• Early observation of variation 1875 by the
  Principal of the Californian School for the Deaf
  in Berkeley which refers to lexical variation
• Croneberg (1965) in the first dictionary of ASL
  refers to variation cultural and social aspects,
  economic status, patterns of social contact, and
  the factors that contribute to social cohesion
• Refers to both horizontal (regional) variation
  and vertical variation (social stratification)
  being present in ASL

5
Pioneering research

• Lexical variation
• Woodward (1976) African Americans, Shroyer
  Shroyer (1984)
• Phonological variation
• Battison et al (1975) thumb extension in FUNNY,
  BLACK, BORING, CUTE - compositional features and
  not a relationship between linguistic variation
  and social factors,
• Woodward et al (1976) face to hand variation
  where New Orleans signers produced certain signs
  on the face which Atlanta signers produced on the
  hands
• Woodward and De Santis (1977) one handed/two
  handed forms of the sign - compositional
  variation. Southerners/non Southerners.
  Older/younger, African Americans/white signers

6

• Diachronic variation
• Historical change presents itself first in the
  form of variation different ways of saying the
  same thing whether those are sounds, parts of
  signs or grammatical structures, coexisting
  within the language.. Frishberg (1975)
• Milroy (1992) ..it eventually gives way to the
  use of one form to the exclusion of the other
• Historical precedent change from Old English to
  Middle English to Modern English Latin to
  Romance languages - synchronic variation

7
Recent studies in ASL

• Lexical variation more studies of social and
  occupational categories, gender differences,
  signs for sexual behaviour and drug use,
  interpreters, DeafBlind people
• Phonological variation Metzger (1993) handshape
  of 2nd and 3rd person pronoun, Lucas (1995) DEAF,
  Pinky extension Hoopes (1998) and Kleinfeld and
  Warner (1996) signs used to denote gay, lesbian
  and bisexual persons correlation with persons
  own identity

8

• Fingerspelling Battberg et al (1995) younger
  people use fingerspelling for proper nouns and
  English terms with no ASL equivalence but older
  people also resembled the use of locative signs,
  Maryland/Massachusetts in frequency of use,
  men/women.
• Discourse Haas et al (1995) in relation to
  Deafblind backchanelling, turntaking and
  question forms. Touch is often substituted for
  gaze.

9
Other research

• Woll and Sutton-Spence (1999) older signers used
  more fingerspelling and less clear mouthing
  patterns than younger people who showed more
  influence from English
• Small number of Deaf families discontinuity
  between generations
• Changes in the educational system for Deaf people
• Changes in technology

10

• Day (1995) found that signers from deaf and
  hearing families signed differently
• Le Master and Dwyer (1991) differences in men
  and women in Irish Sign Language due to
  segregation of schools
• Johnston, Schembri Goswell (2006) phonological
  variation of location. Signers (205) from a
  variety of backgrounds, learnt sign at age of 7
  THINK, NAME and CLEVER showed influence of
  linguistic and social factors - age, gender and
  region. Posed the question of lexical frequency.

11
Bilingualism

• It is probably true that no language group has
  ever existed in isolation from other language
  groups, and the history of languages is replete
  with examples of language contact leading to some
  form of bilingualism.
• Grosjean (19821)

12
Deaf people are everywhere!
From www.wfdeaf.org
13
Useful reading

• Ann, J. (2001). Bilingualism and Language
  Contact. In C. Lucas (Ed.), The Sociolinguistics
  of Sign Languages (33-60). Cambridge Cambridge
  University Press

14
Why am I interested in this area?

• My father went to school at the Victorian School
  for Deaf Children, St Kilda, Melbourne,
  Australia.
• His first language is Australian Sign Language
  (Auslan).

• My mother and aunt went to school at St Marys
  Delgany, at Portsea, Victoria, Australia.
• Her first language was Australian Irish Sign
  Language

15
What research has been done

• Lots of research into how sign languages and
  spoken languages come into contact
• But VERY little research into contact between
  sign languages.
• David Quinto Pozos published the only PhD in the
  world on contact between sign languages ASL and
  Mexican sign languages on the USA-Mexico border

16
Example of spoken language bilingualism Canada

• Canada is considered a bilingual country but most
  Canadians are monolingual.
• There are many languages spoken but English and
  French are the most well known
• There were laws which discriminated against
  French speakers
• Until the 1960s French speakers were very poor
• After that, French speakers became more
  politically aware and active.

17
Canada..

• Even though French and English are both world
  languages, both have never been at parity
• One interesting outcome
• The more bilingual our children become, the more
  they use English the more they use English, the
  less they find French useful the less they find
  French useful, the more they use English. The
  paradox of French-Canadian life is the following
  the more we become bilingual, the less necessary
  it is to be bilingual
• Grosjean (198217)

18
Other bilingual countries

• Belgium French speakers (Walloons) and the
  Flemish speakers (Flemings)
• Singapore 77 Chinese, 15 Malay, 6 Indian, 2
  others. There are 4 main languages Mandarin,
  Malay, Tamil and English, but they are not all
  equal.

19
Societal bilingualismDeaf Communities

• Marthas Vineyard for 250 years this community
  had a high of deafness. The last person died in
  the 1950s. People learnt sign language in
  childhood and did not seem to be concerned that
  sign language was different
• If there were more deaf than hearing there,
  everyone would speak sign language
• Groce (198560)

20
Societal bilingualismDeaf Communities

• Desa Kolok - Bali 43 kolok in a village of 2,000
  people everyone can sign and Deaf are full
  members of society.
• Mayan village - Mexico. 13 Deaf in a village of
  400 people all hearing adults can sign. But Deaf
  have a lower marriage rate, and do not access the
  majority of discourse which is in Mayan.
• No evidence that society forced a sense of
  majority/minority based on hearing status

21
Bilingualism in most of the Deaf world

• Most Deaf people live in societies that are
  dominated by hearing people
• This ensures that sign languages will come into
  contact with spoken languages eg schools
• Research has shown that sign languages are full
  languages but many parts of the world have not
  caught up with research
• There is a great diversity of bilingualism in the
  Deaf world.

22
Different kinds of sign bilingualism

• Native signers of SL who are fluent in a spoken
  language (reading, writing and speaking)
• Native signers of SL who read and write a spoken
  language fluently but do not speak it
• Native signers of SL who are fluent to varying
  degrees in reading and writing a spoken language
• Deaf signers of a SL as a second language who
  read and write a spoken language fluently but do
  not speak it
• Second language signers who first learnt a signed
  version of a spoken language
• Native signers of SL who learnt another sign
  language as a second language
• First/second language SL signers who speak a
  spoken language

23
Diglossia

• Function
• Prestige
• Literary heritage
• Acquisition
• Standardisation
• Stability
• Grammar
• Lexicon
• Phonology

• Occurs when two varieties of one language exist
  in the same community H and L
• Perhaps there is a diglossia in the Deaf
  Community.
• Deuchar (1984) Diglossia in British Sign Language

24
Language shift

• Happens when a community give up their language
  and use another language
• Examples native Americans. It happens in both
  immigrant and non-immigrant communities
• Changes in BSL - a result of this?
• loan vocabulary. Borrowing between signed
  languages not the same as borrowing between
  spoken languages
• Fingerspelling - not English but from the
  orthographic (writing) system of English?

25
Loan phenomena in sign languages

• Fingerspelt loan signs
• Initialised signs
• Syntax restrictions most are nouns. More nouns
  than verbs and not possible to inflect
  fingerspelt verbs
• Loan vocabulary from sign languages with
  character signs Taiwanese sign languages
• Mouthing adverbials, English mouthing

26
Code switching and code mixing

• Both refer to a switch from one language to
  another
• Code switching across the borders of a sentence
• Code mixing within a sentence
• Does not refer to speaking only within a signed
  sentence
• Phonological, morphological, syntactical, lexical
  and pragmatic features are often produced
  simultaneously, assigning stretches of discourse
  to ASL or to English seems like a fruitless
  exercise and also misses the point. The point is
  a third system which combines elements of both
  languages and may also have some idiosyncratic
  data
• Lucas and Valli (1992108)

27
Code blending

• Emmorey (2003) refers to code blending
• Bimodal (sign-speech) bilingualism differs from
  unimodal (speech-speech) bilingualism with
  respect to the temporal sequencing of languages
  during code-mixing.
• ASL-English bilinguals produce code-blends,
  rather than code-switches. Bimodal bilinguals do
  not stop speaking to sign or stop signing to
  speak. Sign and speech is simultaneous when in a
  bilingual mode of communication. In general,
  code-blends are semantically equivalent in ASL
  and English

28
Conclusion

• There is a lot of language contact between spoken
  and sign language communities
• There are parallels with many spoken language
  communities.