Sign Language Studies (SLS)

JOSEPH J. MURRAY Linguistic Human Rights Discourse in Deaf Community Activism

Abstract The past three decades of activism for linguistic human rights (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000) have witnessed examples of language planning by various national and supranational actors in national and international spaces, with an exchange of ideas and strategies employed by national, regional, and worldwide organizations. In many countries a key goal of deaf-led advocacy organizations has been promotion of the right to use sign language in a variety of settings, from those involving the larger society to those surrounding deaf children’s use of sign language.These organizations maintain that this is a core right, one that can ensure that deaf people are able to fully participate in society at large.This article traces the formation of a sign language– based human rights discourse by deaf communities and outlines what appear to be the main tenets of this discourse. It examines the historical period preceding the era of sign language legislation to explain why a particular form of language planning—status planning—fgures so prominently in legislative measures to date.The application of this discourse can be seen in an overview of the legal recognition of sign language in subnational, national, and international settings. A look at research on the outcomes of existing legislation (and legislative eforts) reveals that subsequent outcomes have not fully realized deaf organizations’ stated linguistic human rights goals. A specifc failure noted by deaf organizations is that current legislation has not brought about legally codifed sign language rights for deaf children.

Joseph J. Murray is an associate professor in the Department of ASL and Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University,Washington, DC.

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The Turn to Linguistic Human Rights Deaf community organizations’ current focus on linguistic human rights was not inevitable. In fact, a wide variety of issues related to deaf people demands attention. As with other people with physical, sensory, or cognitive diferences, deaf people are either unemployed or underemployed (World Report on Disability 2011). In some countries today deaf people are denied basic citizenship rights, such as equal voting rights during public elections (World Federation of the Deaf 2014).While Deaf community organizations in Western countries advocate for bilingual education for deaf children, in many other areas of the world, deaf people do not have access to any school whatsoever. The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) estimates over 80% of deaf children do not have access to education (World Federation of the Deaf, n.d.). Clearly, a range of challenges exists for deaf people and deaf community organizations, challenges that vary due to developed or developing country status, rural or urban status, political system, gender, and other factors. Currently a number of organizations of deaf people have designated linguistic human rights as one of their key priorities. A 2014 WFD survey of its 133 member organizations, made up of one national association of deaf people per country, asked deaf associations to share items from their present strategic plans. The WFD uses the World Bank’s classifcation of countries by gross national income to deter- mine membership fees, and this article adopts the same classifcation when reviewing the data presented here. Of the 73 countries that returned the survey, 49 had strategic plans, and 48 listed their main objectives. The data from the survey have not been fully analyzed as of this writing, but an initial review shows wide heterogeneity in strategic goals across country income categories. Economic development, employment, and capacity-building objectives, while perceived as more common issues in low-income countries, are also strategic priorities for high-income nations as well.At the same time, advocacy for implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and goals related to sign language rights and/or sign language planning activities also feature as strategic goals in countries in each income category. Advocacy for human rights via sign language, seemingly more prevalent in developed countries, Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 381

is nonetheless found across all three World Bank categories (World Federation of the Deaf Ordinary Member Survey 2014). This turn to sign language rights and human rights discourse ofers deaf advocacy organizations a way of packaging a number of rights within a framework that seems to ofer relatively simple legislative solutions to complex problems related to the full acceptance of deaf people as linguistic minorities and their participation in the larger society.According to this framework, deaf people can achieve equality when national sign languages are given full support by governments and society.The reality has proven to be diferent, however (also see De Meulder and McKee and Manning, this issue). In this article I describe some central tenets of this human rights discourse by reviewing public documents from international organizations in which a human rights discourse based on sign language rights has emerged and been articulated. Little work has been done on the emergence and transmission of this discourse among national deaf advocacy organizations (for one upcoming study, see De Meulder forthcoming), but the phenomenon of transnational activism in deaf communities has been noted in the contemporary era (Valentine and Skelton 2007) and in the nineteenth century (Murray 2007). It is useful to view the deaf community’s sign language based rights discourse as a form of language planning activity.The promotion of legislation related to sign languages is a form of language planning. Reagan (2010) describes four aspects of language planning relevant to sign languages: eforts to set spheres of use for languages, such as designating ofcial languages, is status planning.This has been the dominant focus of much linguistic human rights efort by deaf communities. Corpus planning is concerned with the standardization and elaboration of a language. Corpus-planning bodies include language-planning councils. Adam (this issue) writes of power dis- parities that lead to standardization eforts in sign languages, both within a nation and across several nations.Anyone familiar with sign language research will be familiar with a number of corpus-planning measures that have occurred with regard to sign languages in the past few decades. Acquisition planning involves policies that are designed to increase the number of users of a language. A key area of acquisition planning has long been educational policy.The teaching 382 | Sign Language Studies of a language ensures its transmission to a new generation of users. As will be seen, in acquisition planning for deaf children, the current wave of advocacy for linguistic human rights has been unable to achieve widespread instrumental rights.Attitude planning involves eforts to change individual and group attitudes about a language or ways of using language (such as opinions about monolingualism and bilingualism) (Reagan 2010). The basic contours of this human rights discourse in deaf communities can be found in several documents released by the World Federation of the Deaf and the European Union of the Deaf (EUD). A 2009 Global Survey Report issued by the WFD, which positions claims to equal citizenship for deaf people as a “paper status” unless governments take measures to promote the use of sign languages and allow deaf people to access information in sign language. “It is thus necessary to recognise and promote the use of sign languages to secure that the fundamental right to freedom of expression and opinion is granted to Deaf people” (Haualand and Allen 2009, 22).The report contains an illustration (fgure 1) that gives sign language a central role in the attainment of human rights.The report also outlines four “basic factors for human rights of deaf people.”These are: • “Recognition and use of sign language(s), including recognition of and respect for Deaf culture and identity • Bilingual education in sign language(s) and the national language(s) • Accessibility to all areas of society and life, including legislation to secure equal citizenship for all and prevent discrimination • Sign Language interpretation.” (Haualand and Allen, 2009, 9) Three of these four points explicitly mention sign language as fundamental to the achievement of human rights, covering status, acquisition, and attitude planning activities.The illustration in fgure 1 further emphasizes the need for sign language in the realization of access and in the prevention of discrimination. The report further notes that “When Deaf people, whose natural language(s) are sign language(s), are denied the use of sign language in interaction with other people or experience discrimination in various areas of life because they use sign language, the consequence is violation of their human rights” (Haualand and Allen 2009, 9).The phrase “discrimination . . . because they use sign language” points to a view of deaf people as primarily Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 383

Figure 1. Basic factors for human rights for deaf people. World Federation of the Deaf Global Survey Report (Haualand and Allen 2009).

a linguistic minority, one whose rights need to be respected in order to prevent discrimination and ensure equality. Indeed, the report states that sign language plays a unique and critical role as a “prerequisite for [the] enjoyment of many human rights” (ibid.). The centrality of sign language in the achievement of human rights is also evident in the WFD’s stated aims during the drafting of the 2006 CRPD. Liisa Kauppinen and Markku Jokinen, who led the WFD delegation to the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee meetings during the drafting of the CRPD, write that their overriding objective was “the recognition of deaf people’s linguistic rights,” which included “explicit recognition for sign language(s)[,] and to ensure its use in communication and in access to information and education throughout life.” A central part of this recognition was “acceptance of Deaf people’s linguistic identity, Deaf culture,” and access to sign language interpreters (Kauppinen and Jokinen 2014, 132–33). Human rights discourse that focuses on sign language rights as a means of achieving equality starts with a recognition of the cultural and linguistic identity of deaf people, which then justifes access to sign language in diferent areas of life: education, public services, cultural life, and access to information. In this way, equality for deaf people in the larger society can be achieved. 384 | Sign Language Studies

The European Union of the Deaf has promoted the visibility of sign language legislation via two editions of a book, titled Sign Lan- guage Legislation in the European Union (Wheatley and Pabsch 2010, 2012).The EUD’s stated goals are “the recognition of the right to use an indigenous sign language, empowerment through communication and information, and equality in education and employment” (EUD website 2015). Each of the EUD’s three position papers (on Interna- tional Sign, education, and cochlear implants) make reference both to deaf people’s right to use sign language and to language access as a human right.The introduction to the book by Wheatley and Pabsch (2010, 2012) promotes sign language rights as equivalent to human rights for deaf people in an illustration titled “Sign Language Rights = Human Rights.” The illustration (fgure 2) has at its core the concept of sign language rights.According to this diagram, sign language rights comprise linguistic rights, disability rights, human rights, and minority rights. In the illustration, linguistic rights overlap with human rights to form linguistic human rights. The combination of these, the EUD book notes,“are necessary for Deaf people to become citizens in their own right.”This combination of diferent rights is necessary because “Deaf people form part of a group that is not easily categorised and whose rights are therefore to be described in a number of ways” (Wheatley and Pabsch 2012, 21–22). The EUD’s defnition seems to be an attempt to reconcile a number of perspectives of deaf people under the rubric of sign language rights.The authors’ elaboration of the illustration explains how sign language rights can draw upon UN and European protection for national minorities, as well as UN and European human rights measures. The book claims the minority model has limits:“[A]s often, the disability system is much more advanced and has more fnancial stability than the minority movement” (ibid., 24). Although the European Union has ruled out measures for minority languages with legislative or statutory consequences on the national level, it does promote language-planning activities for minority languages (Krausneker 2000). It is unclear, however, how much the minority model has been used by national deaf associations in their political organizing activities to date. The incorporation of the “disability system” is not seen as detrimental Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 385

Figure 2. Sign language rights = human rights. European Union of the Deaf (Wheatley and Pabsch 2012).

but as part and parcel of sign language rights. (This use of disability frameworks for linguistic rights has been contested by some scholars, as I explain later). The preceding paragraphs may overstate the centrality of the WFD and the EUD in the formation of a sign language–based human rights discourse as a political organizing tool by organizations of deaf people. The story is necessarily much more complex, with an array of actors and interests coinciding to make sign language the primary ideological site of activism for human rights among some deaf advocacy groups. A focus on cultural and linguistic rights certainly owes much to decades of academic research in Deaf studies, linguistics, and other felds, as well as to community activism by deaf people and their allies around the world (Ladd 2003), as I explain later on.When 386 | Sign Language Studies exploring this shift, we must also take into account the emergence of human rights mechanisms as a preferred means of achieving the goals of international NGOs. Keeping this multivalent background in mind, we can still conclude that political discourse built around the promotion of linguistic human rights has been used by regional and international organizations of deaf people, that this discourse appears to be particularly prominent in European countries, and that it appears to have emerged on a wider global level in the last decades of the twentieth century. Further research is needed to confrm each of these observations. Some form of recognition of sign language has taken place in a number of countries. The WFD’s 2009 report (Haualand and Allen 2009), compiled from answers given by national deaf associations, shows that some form of such recognition has occurred in 44 of the 93 countries surveyed. Data from the report are organized on a regional basis following the WFD’s Regional Secretariat structure. In South America, 4 of 9 countries responding to the survey have formally recognized sign language. In Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, half of the 12 countries surveyed have done so, and in eastern and southern Africa, the same holds for 10 of 19 countries. The situation is very diferent among the 16 countries surveyed in western and central Africa, where only Niger has granted any form of government recognition of sign language. In the Arab region, including the Maghreb countries, only 4 of 15 nations have not ofcially recognized sign language.The survey received responses from only 14 Asian and Pacifc nations, and of the 7 that had formally recognized sign language, 3 are high-income countries (Japan, New Zealand, Australia), and 2 are upper-middle-income countries (Thailand and Malaysia) (ibid., 22–23). The data presented in this article show that sign language recognition of some sort exists in diferent areas of the world and in countries with dissimilar social and economic conditions. Moreover, this “recognition” of the status of sign language ranges from a provincial ofcial’s proclamation on sign language to constitutional acknowledgement of sign language as a national language, with actual instrumental rights highly variable, perhaps even nonexistent, in each case. Most of the countries are developing nations, and since North American and Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 387

Western European countries were not included, the actual number of countries that have granted some form of sign language recognition is greater than the number given here. Furthermore, recognition does not necessarily mean legal status: De Meulder states that thirty-one countries, the majority of which are in Europe, have accorded sign languages explicit legal status (De Meulder, “The Legal Recognition of Sign Languages,” this issue). However, an important exception is that the poorest countries are most often those that apparently have not granted legal or similar status to sign language. Ten countries (Benin, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Haiti, Suriname, Laos, Myanmar, Eritrea, Seychelles, and Swaziland) were alone among the ninety-three respon- dents that had not recognized sign language, had no sign language dictionary, and evinced a perception by the responding organization that deaf people were not equal to hearing citizens (Haualand and Allen 2009).1 In addition, a number of countries did not respond at all to the survey or had no apparent deaf association. It is difcult to see that a sign language–based human rights discourse had even taken place in these countries in the period leading up to the report. Government recognition of sign language does not necessarily mean that a sign language–based human rights discourse is to be found among the deaf associations of any country. However, the data presented to this point may allow us to conclude that this discourse is not primarily confned to Western or high-income countries.The perceived political utility of such discourse (as opposed to other political strategies), and thus the adoption of this discussion and the frequency of its use in organized advocacy, certainly varies according to the cal- culations of the various deaf organizations and their leaders. Regard- less of where aspects of this dialogue emerge, national organizations of deaf people will necessarily tailor the particulars to the political, economic, and social conditions of their own country. Exploration of political advocacy based on sign language–based human rights discourse will necessarily study variations of this in diverse situations.

Historical Overview This shift to linguistic human rights spurred work among deaf organizations with the aim of enhancing the status of sign language in their societies as a means of securing instrumental rights for deaf people. 388 | Sign Language Studies

In the late twentieth century these eforts emerged after a century- long struggle over the place of sign language in deaf education and the wider society. In 1981 the Swedish Parliament’s recognition of Swedish Sign Language as the language of deaf people apparently made “Sweden the frst country in the world to give a sign language the status of a language” (Svartholm 2010, 159).This milestone came after more than one hundred years in which sign languages around the world were suppressed in schools and deaf people were discouraged from using sign language. This suppression came after a period in the early nineteenth century when a number of schools for deaf people used sign language as a language of instruction and deaf people had a confdent view of their use of sign language (Ladd 2003; Baynton 1996;Van Cleve and Crouch 1989). The frst generation of American educators of deaf people were members of the clergy or scholars who had received classical or religious training. They saw sign language as a “natural” language, as opposed to the “artifciality” of speech (Baynton 2002). Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, the cofounder of the frst school for deaf people in North America, believed hearing children would beneft from learning sign language, which would “supply the defciencies of our oral intercourse [and] perfect the communion of one soul with another” (cf. ibid., 22). Sign language was seen as the “original language of humanity” (ibid., 24) and accorded a positive status among teachers of deaf people in the United States. In the late nineteenth century, scientifc thought emerged as a way of understanding the world, and in this worldview, humans and societies were constantly evolving for the better. Oralists portrayed sign language as a relic of an earlier period in human evolution which humankind had now transcended. By the end of the nineteenth century, what had been seen as a linguistic gain at the beginning of that century had become a loss—not just for the individual but for the nation as a whole.The suppression of sign language in this period needs to be viewed in the context of communal identity building during nineteenth-century nation-building projects.Through a collective language, including a written form, people from dispersed geographical areas could consider themselves as having a shared national identity (Anderson 1991). State support of a language, via language policies Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 389

designed to promote a particular language and foster its acquisition among citizens, plays an important role in elevating the status of a language from a regional to a national language. A classic example is the rise of a particular dialect of French, spoken largely in Paris, to become the primary language of people throughout France. Histo- rian Eugen Weber shows that the Parisian dialect of French was little used outside the Paris region in 1835, but language planning by the government and elites ensured that, by the dawn of the twentieth century, French would become the language of the majority of the country (Weber 1976). Linguistic nationalism related to nation-building eforts in nu- merous Western countries was echoed in the feld of deaf education. From the latter third of the nineteenth century on, educators of deaf people in many Western countries turned away from sign language and adopted monolingual spoken-language methods in their schools. They justifed this suppression of sign language by portraying it as “foreign” (Baynton 1996). A common trope, at least outside France, was to call sign language instruction “the French method,” efectively labeling it exotic and not at all in accord with nationalist sentiment in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain (Murray 2007).The job of educators was to promote a purely oral method that would ensure that deaf people spoke the national language and could thus become citizens along with others in the nation. Oralist hopes for the extinction of sign languages were not realized. Sign languages never disappeared during the century (or more) of their banishment from deaf education.The application of the purely oral ideology was inconsistent in the Western nations, and wide variations occurred even within nations. Some schools continued to use sign language both for instruction and during extracurricular activities. Deaf people educated orally turned to sign language on the sly or learned it after graduating from school. However, sign languages’ loss of status had serious consequences. Their prohibition in educational institutions hindered their genera- tional transmission and led to a general sense of stigma surrounding their use. Before the advent of sign language research, accounts of deaf people’s attitudes toward sign language reveal that they rejected the very idea of it as a legitimate language. Deaf people considered its 390 | Sign Language Studies

public use shameful. One comment that Danish researchers received after a 1974 television broadcast on sign language was “We don’t want the stigma of sign language placed upon us” (Hansen 1980, 250).This and other accounts (Padden and Humphries 1988; Ladd 2003) show the consequences of the suppression of sign languages. This suppression had an impact on deaf people’s political strategies. Most obviously, a linguistic human rights perspective was not always the main political framework employed by deaf people in political advocacy, as shown by a review of the themes of the quadrennial World’s Congresses of the World Federation of the Deaf (table 1). While we should be careful to not draw too broad a conclusion from one data point, congress themes can be said to represent a con- cise distillation (into a single sentence) by the WFD and the congress host organization of what they see as issues facing deaf communities

Table 1. Themes of World Congresses of the World Federation of the Deaf Year Location Theme 1951 Rome, Italy (none) 1955 Zagreb, Yugoslavia (none) 1959 Wiesbaden, Fed. Rep. of Germany (none) 1963 Stockholm, Sweden (none) 1967 Warsaw, Poland The Deaf among Hearing Persons 1971 Paris, France The Deaf Person in the World in Evolution 1975 Washington, DC, United States Full Citizenship for All Deaf People 1979 Varna, Bulgaria The Deaf People in Modern Society 1983 Palermo, Italy Deafness Today and Tomorrow: Reality and Utopia 1987 Espoo, Finland One World, One Responsibility 1991 Tokyo, Japan Equality and Self-Reliance 1995 Vienna, Austria Towards Human Rights 1999 Brisbane, Australia Diversity and Unity 2003 Montreal, Canada Opportunities and Challenges in the 21st Century 2007 Madrid, Spain Human Rights through Sign Languages 2011 Durban, South Africa Global Deaf Renaissance 2015 Istanbul, Turkey Strengthening Human Diversity Table can be found at http://wfdeaf.org/whoarewe/world-congress. Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 391

worldwide at the time of the congress.The changing orientation of themes over the past six decades shows a clear shift towards a perspective of deaf people’s political campaigns as informed by human rights discourse and a view of deaf people as a cultural and linguistic minority. The frst four congresses did not have themes; the frst theme appeared at the 1967 meeting. Until about 1987, these themes dealt with how deaf people interacted with hearing people and with society at large.The 1967 congress in Warsaw, Poland, was titled “The Deaf among Hearing Persons,” which resonates with the subject of the 1979 congress in Bulgaria:“The Deaf People in Modern Society.”The 1971 theme, “The Deaf Person in a World in Evolution,” portrays a lone deaf individual facing a changing world, a position far from that of a cultural and linguistic minority.The 1975 congress, which took place in Washington, DC, focused on citizenship rights. The topic (“Full Citizenship for Deaf People”) presented a sociological perspective on deaf people as a group struggling for civil rights, a message reinforced by the opening address, in which the WFD president expressed the hope that the issue would “stimulate governments and the public to grant to hearing-handicapped persons economic, cultural, and social rights equal to those which other citizens have and to add the right to be fully rehabilitated” (World Federation of the Deaf 1976, 13). This sense of deaf people as struggling to make their way in society reappeared in the 1983 theme,“Deafness Today and Tomorrow: Reality and Utopia,” a topic that additionally uses a term for a medical con- dition and not deaf people or sign language. From 1987 on, themes largely turned away from a view of deaf people versus wider society and toward a rights-based discourse that emphasized diversity, a pre- sumed global unity within deaf communities, and human rights (the 2003 theme was an exception).The 1987 subject, “One World, One Responsibility,” celebrated the idea of a global deaf community, as did the 2011 theme,“Global Deaf Renaissance,” selected for the frst WFD congress to be held in Africa.The idea of global unity is also found in the 1999 theme, “Unity through Diversity,” which was also the frst to use the word “diversity” in relation to deaf people, conveying the perspective of a cultural minority.The 1995 Vienna congress was titled “Towards Human Rights,” and the 2007 Madrid congress theme 392 | Sign Language Studies was “Human Rights Through Sign Languages,” both clearly focusing on human rights.The 2015 topic, “Strengthening Human Diversity,” more explicitly places deaf people in cultural and linguistic minority discourse. On the 2015 congress website, the theme is explained as “recognizing deaf people as part of human diversity” and acknowledg- ing diversity within the deaf community (World Federation of the Deaf, 2015).2 The diversity perspective here has roots in human rights discourse. Article 3(d) of the CRPD states that one of the principles of the convention is to be “[r]espect for diference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity” (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2006). This shift in convention themes over time parallels broader developments in the late twentieth century related to the emergence of a cultural and linguistic minority perspective on deaf people, one that informed the political advocacy of deaf communities.

The Emergence of a Cultural and Linguistic Minority Perspective The rediscovery of sign languages as legitimate human languages came about over several decades beginning in the mid-twentieth century. This reemergence is a story of academics working alongside a minority language community to relegitimize the language as both an object of academic inquiry and a legitimate language. The starting point of this endeavor is commonly traced to interest in sign language by William Stokoe, an English professor at Gallaudet University in the 1960s. Stokoe’s interest led to the publication of A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles with two deaf coauthors (Stokoe, Casterline, and Croneberg 1965) and to the establishment of the frst sign language linguistics laboratory of the modern era, the Linguistics Research Laboratory, in 1971 (Armstrong 2000). Sign language research emerged in the 1970s in several European countries, particularly the Nordic nations, and research was done on the sign languages of Japan and India during this decade. During the 1980s and 1990s, linguistic research on sign languages took place in a wider array of countries around the world (McBurney 2012).The Linguistics Research Laboratory and ongoing ASL research served as a resource for and an inspiration to researchers from other lands who wished to Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 393

study sign languages in their country (Brennan and Hayhurst 1980; Hansen 1980). The sharing of these academic studies of sign language proved to be emancipatory for many deaf communities, galvanizing a generation of deaf people into greater awareness of the legitimacy of their language. In 1980 two British linguists wrote that “Recognizing the real worth of Sign Language is bringing about a renewal at various levels within and around the deaf community” (Brennan and Hay- hurst 1980, 236; emphasis in the original). In 1985, at the frst German congress on sign language, linguists told deaf people and teachers of deaf people that German Sign Language is “an independent, fully developed linguistic system” spurring a key moment in the German deaf community’s self-awareness (Mally 1993, 189). In Spain, the 1992 publication of the frst linguistic description of Spanish Sign Language and subsequent interaction with European and U.S. sign language researchers at a series of international conferences led to a “major turnaround in the attitude of community leaders . . . regarding the relationship between language and identity” (Gras 2008, 167). This change aided the development of both an understanding of the deaf community as a linguistic minority and “a claim for cultural identity inspired by nationalistic principles such as language loyalty, language standardization, protection, and ‘purifcation’” (ibid.). A similar process of language empowerment occurred in Flanders, Belgium, in the 1990s (Van Herreweghe, De Meulder, and Vermeerbergen, forthcoming). This emerging movement toward linguistic awareness and empowerment in these countries was likely repeated elsewhere and was a signifcant moment in the shift to organized political campaigns for legal recognition of sign language. The understanding of one’s sign language as a legitimate language was supported by examples and inspiration from other countries (e.g., Spain, mentioned earlier). At the 1971 WFD congress in France, the hosts were “impressed by the American interpreters.Was it really pos- sible to say everything with the hands?” (Mottez and Markowitz 1980, 223). Participation at the next WFD congress, in Washington, DC, in 1975, more fully impressed on French deaf people that “French Sign Language could have a status like that obtained by deaf people in 394 | Sign Language Studies

other countries for their signed languages” (ibid., 224). A German account of the process of sign language recognition notes encourage- ment from research emerging in the United States, as well as Sweden and other European countries (Mally 1993).While extranational in u- ences inspired national deaf communities, the battles fought for sign language were closely tied to the particular contexts of each country. The German linguistics conference was followed a month later by a countercongress called the “Congress for the Preservation of the Oral Method and Its Development” (ibid., 189), pitting a powerful oral establishment against eforts to recognize sign language, a con ict with long historical roots within German Deaf history (Murray 2007; Sderfeldt 2013). Extranational impulses both stimulated and gave external support to local campaigns, which necessarily took place in place in local and national contexts. In a number of countries, sometimes alongside this process of recognizing national sign languages, attempts were made to create a signed code system that closely corresponded to the national spoken language. Such eforts took place in the United States (Padden and Humphries 1988), Flanders (Van Herreweghe and Vermeerbergen 2004), and Norway (Schroeder 1993), among others.This was a major corpus-planning efort that had the support of deaf people and, in some cases, deaf organizations. This article does not delve into the particulars of this efort, but it is a historical moment that deserves further study as part of the history of the twentieth-century transi- tion away from an oral-language-dominant discourse on deaf people.

A Brief Review of Legislation on Sign Language With this history in mind, it is easier to understand why so much national and state-level (in the United States) sign language legislation is concerned with one particular aspect of status planning: establishing that the national sign language is indeed a legitimate language.A review of a 2004 overview of state-level legislation on ASL shows that of forty U.S. states with legislation on ASL that year, at least twenty-seven explicitly recognized ASL as a language in the text of the law and/ or, as in fve states (Colorado, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Utah), via a linguistic description of the language.3 The majority of these states use wording similar to that employed by Alabama: Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 395

“Legislature of Alabama recognizes American Sign Language as the ofcial and native language of Deaf people in Alabama” (Clerc Center 2004). Rhode Island’s linguistic description is typical of the fve states listed in the 2004 overview. It recognizes ASL as “a fully developed, autonomous, natural language with its own distinct grammar, syntax, vocabulary and cultural heritage” (ibid.). Other state laws provide for instruction in ASL at the secondary or postsecondary levels, most often by according ASL the status of a foreign language for educational credit.A review of the published laws on sign language legislation in Europe shows a similar preponderance of legal measures that confer a symbolic recognition of national sign languages (Wheatley and Pabsch 2012). De Meulder (“The Legal Recognition of Sign Languages,” this issue) makes a useful distinction between “explicit” and “implicit” recognition of sign languages.Those with explicit recognition do what is implied: explicitly recognize the sign language under consideration as a language, perhaps even a national language. Implicit recognition is acknowledgment in legislation that indirectly recognizes sign language via the provision of interpreting services or other access measures. There is some debate over the usefulness of these laws conferring recognition of a sign language as a language. Reagan (2011) considers cases of explicit recognition that simply recognize the national sign language as a language as of limited utility. Moreover, the fact that it is necessary to pass a law recognizing a sign language as a language reveals more about the weak status of sign languages.After all, other spoken languages taught in higher education do not need legal intervention to establish that they are languages (ibid.). Krausneker acknowledges the limitations of this form of recognition but says that one advantage is that legal recognition may enable deaf communities “to stop the tiresome work of constant self-defense” and give them space to plan further action for linguistic rights. Sign languages are recognized in legislation separate from dedicated language laws. Implicit recognition can be found in legal frameworks concerned with disability access, most commonly related to access via sign language interpreting.An example of implicit recognition is the Americans with Disabilities Act, which provides for interpreting services.This has taken form today via not only live interpreting but also video relay services in ASL. Other examples of implicit recognition 396 | Sign Language Studies by means of disability legislation can be found in Lithuania, Mexico, Chile, and other countries (De Meulder,“The Legal Recognition of Sign Languages,” this issue). A disability framework is sometimes seen as detrimental or in opposition to eforts to promote a view of deaf people as a cultural and linguistic minority.“The disability construction (both social and medical) has been an impediment to the emergence of policy thinking that supports sign language policy to deliver much needed language justice for SLPs [sign language peoples]” (Batterbury 2007). This is especially noticeable when a negative view of deaf people’s capabilities is inserted into language legislation.A problem arises when grouping sign language with communication aids, such as Braille or assisted communication, in disability legislation such as the German Behinder- tengleichstellungsgesetz and Article 2 of the UNCRPD (Krausneker, this issue). A subset of these shortcomings relates to the blending of disability perspectives into language laws. Proposals for legislation for British Sign Language (BSL) state that “persons who represent users of British Sign Language” should be consulted along with actual users of BSL for language-planning activities related to BSL. Such consulta- tion with nonusers of the language would be inconceivable for other minority languages such as Gaelic (De Meulder,“A Barking Dog That Never Bites? The British Sign Language [Scotland] Bill,” this issue). Another form of indirect legislation relevant to sign languages appears in education laws. In Sweden, recognition of Swedish Sign Language is granted in a law establishing bilingual education for deaf children (Wheatley and Pabsch 2012).A similar educational law exists in Norway (where a separate language law, although promised, is still pending) (ibid.). Education laws that secure sign language as a right for deaf children are still fairly uncommon globally, yet such legislation is critically needed. Only about 2 percent of deaf children are estimated to receive an education in their native sign language (World Federation of the Deaf n.d.). Even in countries that ofer bilingual education to deaf children, the practice of bilingualism at school does not always live up to the deaf community’s expectations (Delvert 2014; Na.se 2015). These are all stumbling blocks in terms of acquisition planning, in ensuring that deaf children have access to sign language in educational settings. Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 397

Court cases related to deaf children’s right to sign language in educational settings in Canada, Australia, and the United States have been studied. These cases have concluded that disability legislation “has in fact proved inefective . . . for upholding language rights in education” (Snodden 2009, 292).The disability framework seems to divert from a focus on language-planning activities that would put sign language rights on a par with other language rights. Indeed, as I explain later, sign language legislation in general has not fulflled the deaf community’s expectations for language rights for deaf children. On the other hand, one can argue that disability laws that mandate access in sign language provide an expanded space for sign language in national policy and increased visibility for it in public settings. Legal mandates and governmental funding for sign language interpreters can be viewed as a form of status planning for the national sign language, one not necessarily accorded to other minority languages.“Pragmatic considerations” have been noted in the disability framework, such as access to free (for the individual) sign language interpreting in courts and higher education in the United States, services not provided to linguistic minorities in that country (Baynton 2008). As mentioned earlier, the EUD considers disability laws as providing stronger protections for sign language rights than the minority rights perspective, at least within the European Union, although it is unclear whether the minority perspective has been attempted at the national level in any European country.4 In addition to providing deaf people access to society, the pres- ence of interpreters in public settings can be seen as promoting public awareness of, and changing public attitudes toward, sign language. In the past few years, live ASL interpretation during crisis broadcasts by political fgures on television, usually related to weather events, has grown noticeably.A projected snowstorm in the northeastern United States in January 2015 led to such broadcasts by the governors of Mas- sachusetts and Connecticut and the mayor of New York City, all with sign language interpreters next to them and prominent on television screens. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a broadcast by then mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City with interpreter Lydia Callis went viral, generating spoofs on comedy television shows and multiple articles in news outlets about ASL and ASL interpreting (Deafriendly 398 | Sign Language Studies

.com n.d.).This public recognition of sign language has run the gamut from informed discussion of sign language linguistics and interpreting to parodies and headlines intended to drum up clicks on social media. Such attention has not been received with unreserved praise by deaf organizations. In fact, the U.S. National Association of the Deaf and the U.S. Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (the national interpreter association) issued a joint statement requesting “the media and members of the public to seek understanding from those with knowledge” (National Association of the Deaf 2014). Such exposure to sign languages has played out on international media ows, most noticeably at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in 2013, which included the use of an “interpreter” who in reality did not know South African Sign Language. This incident brought global media attention to sign language interpreting. In Flanders, the elec- tion of a deaf person to the Flemish Parliament in 2004 promoted positive attitudes toward Flemish Sign Language among members of Parliament (Van Herreweghe, De Meulder, and Vermeerbergen forthcoming).These highly visible platforms bring sign languages to wider public notice and legitimize them by their proximity to powerful political leaders. The New York Times’ coverage of the Mandela interpreter fasco was illustrated by four photographs of the “interpreter” stand- ing next to President Barack Obama (New York Times 2013). Giving such prominent space to sign language in ofcial settings and a variety of media outlets would have been inconceivable for most of the twentieth century. This visibility can be said to represent a signifcant change in the status of sign languages in the wider society and theoretically should lead to greater public acceptance. However, this valorization of sign language does not necessarily translate into widespread support of deaf organizations’ political goals. A disconnect exists between idealized images of sign language circulating in the global media and instrumental rights demanded by deaf users of sign language, particularly with regard to linguistic human rights in education.

Outcomes of Sign Language Legislation Scholarly studies of the outcomes of sign language legislation show that the instrumental rights obtained as a result have been limited.As Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 399

mentioned earlier, De Meulder (“The Legal Status of Sign Languages,” this issue) lists thirty-one countries with legislation explicitly address- ing sign language status or sign language rights. Of these, eleven have made a constitutional recognition of sign language. In 1995 Uganda became the frst nation in the world to acknowledge its sign language at the constitutional level. It was soon followed by Finland (Lule and Wallin 2010). Article 24 (iii) of the Preamble to Constitution of Uganda states, “The State shall . . . promote the development of a sign language for the deaf.” Although deaf communities have hoped that constitutional recognition would provide stronger protections for their sign language and establish instrumental rights for users, this has not proven to be the case. For example, the Constitution of Finland states that “The rights of persons using sign language and of persons in need of interpretation or translation aid owing to disability shall be guaranteed by an Act” (1999). It also recognizes Finnish Sign Language in Section 17,“Right to One’s Language and Culture,” which lays out the right of citizens to use Finnish and Swedish and acknowledges the rights of the Sámi peoples, as well as “the Roma and other groups,” before turning to “people who use sign language.”This theoretically puts Finnish Sign Language alongside other languages used in Finland. However, the Finnish Deaf Association maintains that “constitutional recognition has not sufciently guaranteed the realization of linguistic rights in practice” (Alanne 2011). Despite mention of sign language in a number of diferent acts or decrees (Wheatley and Pabsch 2012), a distinct Finnish Sign Language Act was passed only in 2015. In contrast, the Sámi Language Act of 2003 has operationalized this recognition by providing access to government information and services and establishing concrete measures to promote linguistic rights (Sámi Language Act 2003). One of the better-documented examples of outcomes of sign language legislation can be found in studies of the New Zealand Sign Language Act of 2006, in which the government accorded New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) ofcial status along with English and Māori. Nonetheless, McKee and Manning (this issue) make it clear that the promise of the act has not been fulflled in practice. A large gap exists between the expectations held by the New Zealand deaf community during the run-up to the act and the actual fnal text. 400 | Sign Language Studies

McKee (2010) examined the public submissions to Parliament during hearings on the bill and noted the deaf community’s four main expectations of this bill: 1. Restoring esteem to NZSL users through linguistic and cultural recognition 2. Access to public services and information in NZSL and communication access more generally 3. Education of deaf children in NZSL as a right 4. Material support for the maintenance and promotion of NZSL within the deaf community and in the larger society (McKee 2010, 108–109) These expectations are consonant with Reagan’s four aspects of language planning.The frst is typical of sign language legislation in that it seeks formal recognition of NZSL as a legitimate language.The second also relates to status planning in that it seeks formal government support of NZSL as a language that the government needs to use in order to provide information to deaf citizens.The third, which relates to acquisition planning within the deaf community, is a classic goal of minority language communities: to ensure the continuation of this language by the next generation of potential language users. Sup- port for the maintenance and promotion of NZSL can be considered under status, acquisition, and corpus planning if research assistance should materialize. Passed in 2006,Article 3, Purpose of the New Zealand Sign Lan- guage Act, has four main objectives: The purpose of this Act is to promote and maintain the use of New Zealand Sign Language by— (a) declaring New Zealand Sign Language to be an ofcial language of New Zealand; and (b) providing for the use of New Zealand Sign Language in legal proceedings; and (c) empowering the making of regulations setting competency standards for the interpretation in legal proceedings of New Zealand Sign Language; and (d) stating principles to guide government departments in the promotion and use of New Zealand Sign Language. (New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006) Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 401

Comparing the stated purposes of this act with the deaf community’s expressed hopes for the law reveals a gap between deaf people’s expectations and the actual outcomes.Although the deaf community anticipated a full range of language-planning activities to result from the proposed law, particularly with regard to the right of deaf children to receive NZSL in education, the actual act concerned itself largely with status-planning activities. As mentioned earlier, NZSL was accorded ofcial status along with two other languages, English and Māori.This is in line with other status-planning activities around the world intent on achieving recognition of a national sign language as a genuine language. The provisions for legal interpreting are access measures, also common in legislative initiatives in both direct and indirect legislation related to sign language. Refell and McKee (2009) note the disparity between the recognition of NZSL and that of the Māori language:The latter was accompanied by a budgetary alloca- tion and an implementing body, the Māori Language Commission. Acquisition planning in terms of a codifed right for deaf children to use sign language in educational settings is conspicuously absent from the act. McKee and Manning (this issue) describe the steps that have been taken after the passage of the act to promote outcomes more in line with the deaf community’s goals.A 2013 inquiry by the New Zealand Human Rights Commission emphasized the need to promote sign acquisition planning in the education of deaf children. In response, the government announced plans to establish an NZSL advisory board to “lead promotion and maintenance and . . . provide an expert voice on NZSL.”As of this writing, the advisory board has been named, with a deaf chair and several deaf members (Ofce of Disability Issues, 2015). A lack of provisions for acquisition planning for deaf children is also a current topic of concern in the British deaf community. Recog- nition of British Sign Language by a government department in 2003 came with £1.5 million in funding for corpus-planning measures aimed at training interpreters and BSL teachers (Batterbury 2014; De Meulder, this issue). Members of the British deaf community have organized on social media to express frustration with the act and demand changes. A Facebook group called “Spit the Dummy [paci- fer] and Campaign for BSL Act,” which acquired eleven thousand 402 | Sign Language Studies

supporters in its frst month, stated aims that resonate with the goals of a sign language–based human rights discourse:“We wish for BSL to be as equal in the eyes of the law as English and Welsh. . . . We advocate bilingual education for deaf children in BSL and English, and for all children to be encouraged to learn BSL” (Smith, Clarke, and Robertson 2013). Acquisition planning has proceeded apace in one area. In the United States, the next most prevalent attribute of sign language legislation after recognition deals, as mentioned earlier, with acquisition planning, that is, conferring on ASL the status of a foreign language for the purpose of credit in secondary or postsecondary education. Indeed, a comprehensive and well-funded acquisition policy for ASL is in place in the United States—for hearing nonsigners.5 Between 1998 and 2002 the number of students enrolled in ASL classes increased by more than 430 percent (Welles 2004). Between 2002 and 2006 this number increased a further 29 percent (Furman, Goldberg, and Lusin 2007). In 2007 the Modern Language Association ranked ASL as the second most frequently taught language in community colleges (ibid.) and the third most frequently taught in four-year colleges and universities as of 2013 (Goldberg, Looney, and Lusin 2015).The second most frequently taught language in 2013 was French, with 197,757 students, while ASL ran a close second with 109,577 students that year. Although French enrollment declined by 8.1 percent between 2009 and 2013, enrollment in ASL was up 39 percent in the same period (Spanish accounts for 50 percent of all enrollments in foreign language classes). A widespread and growing interest in learning ASL clearly exists in institutions of higher education in the United States. This boom has led to a corresponding upsurge in corpus planning, with instructors, instructional materials, and curricula for ASL teaching, as well as a national association of sign language teachers (ASLTA), which holds regular conferences and sets professional certifcation standards. Interpreter training and certifcation is another area where the recognition of sign language has led to training, professional certifcation, and professional bodies. As noted earlier, this preponderance of forms of recognition that confer legal status on sign languages but impart few instrumental rights has been criticized by a number of scholars (Reagan 2011; Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 403

McKee and Manning, this issue; De Meulder, this issue).The recognition of Spanish Sign Language has revealed a disparity between the deaf community’s “holistic and global” expectations of linguistic and cultural recognition on the one hand and the Spanish government’s “concrete and reductionist” understanding of recognition, the result of which has been laws for interpreter provision (Gras 2008). Gras (ibid.) portrays this as an example of “remunerative forms” (outlined in Skutnabb-Kangas 2000), in which deaf communities can get services but are not granted the full range of recognitions accorded to linguistic minorities. Indeed, the cases of New Zealand, Finland, and the UK mentioned earlier point to such an interpretation. Govern- ments recognize the need to fund interpreting assistance and access services for deaf adults as disability resources but resist implementing acquisition planning in deaf education (i.e., full implementation of bilingual deaf education). The current investment in linguistic rights by deaf associations as a way to achieve instrumental rights for education, access, and equal opportunities can be furthered by using the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its enforcement mechanisms. The CRPD mentions sign language or deaf culture eight times in fve diferent articles, including Article 24, on education. Batterbury calls the CRPD the “best chance” of moving toward a situation of “language justice where full sign language access is provided” (Batter- bury 2012, 253), a point also endorsed by Kauppinen and Jokinen (2014).Those countries that have ratifed the CRPD are obligated to implement its provisions in its laws and submit regular reports to the CRPD committee on their progress.The committee has made several comments supportive of sign language recognition and the need to promote sign language in education. Its concluding observations on Denmark contain a strong statement on the need for sign language in the education of deaf children, including those with cochlear implants: “The Committee recommends that the State party recognize all deaf person’s [sic] and deaf born person’s [sic] right to have the possibility to learn and communicate in DSL [Danish Sign Language] regardless of medical treatments acquired; take efective measures to promote DSL as a communication method without necessarily resorting to a speech therapy” (CRPD Committee 2014). 404 | Sign Language Studies

The CRPD is one means by which deaf organizations can further promote instrumental rights within the framework of a sign language–based human rights discourse, although more work needs to be done to promote interpretation of the convention to ensure that deaf children receive real access to sign language environments (Murray, De Meulder, and le Marie 2015).

Conclusion More than two decades of work by deaf organizations around the world have resulted in the recognition of sign languages in a number of countries.This sign language-based human rights discourse has also succeeded in achieving the recognition of sign language in an international human rights treaty, the CRPD. Sign language instruction for hearing people has become common in the United States and several high-income countries. Legislation-making provisions for access in sign language, often via sign language interpreters, has indubitably led to opportunities for deaf people in employment, access to society, and participation in social and cultural life.The promotion of deaf people as a cultural and linguistic minority has resulted in increased visibility for sign languages, placing them in the public arena.Although mostly dominated by provisions for access and second language learning, real change has been brought about in a number of countries by a sign language–based human rights discourse.As noted earlier, we still know little about the geographical reach of this discourse, and its variations in diferent countries need to be determined to see how it is playing out according to local contexts. However, this discourse has not yet fully addressed current challenges facing deaf communities: deaf children’s reduced access to sign language (Humphries et al. 2012) and a genetic discourse stigmatiz- ing deaf bodies (Bryan and Emery 2014). Analysis of the situation in Scotland (De Meulder, this issue) and New Zealand (McKee and Manning, this issue) includes case studies in pitfalls to avoid when examining sign language legislation related to deaf children’s linguistic rights.The CRPD ofers another means by which deaf organizations can advocate for these rights. Further work toward the full realization of the promise of a sign language–based linguistic human rights discourse would see funding and implementation of all four aspects Linguistic Human Rights Discourse | 405

of language planning, from status and corpus planning to acquisition to attitude planning.

Acknowledgments I wish to thank Maartje De Meulder, Kristin Snodden, and H-Dirksen L. Bauman for comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes 1. The report notes that some countries simply did not respond to the questions about the status of sign language. 2. I have been afliated with the WFD since 1995 and was involved in the WFD board’s drafting of the themes for the 2007, 2011, and 2015 congresses. 3. This author is working on an updated overview of ASL legislation in the United States.As this overview was compiled a decade ago, the number of states with some form of recognition of ASL may have changed. 4. I thank Maartje De Meulder for making this point. 5. I am grateful to Dirksen Bauman for this insight.

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