P1: MRM/FYX P2: MRM/FYX P3: MRM/UKS QC: MRM CU009-FM CU009/Lucas July 4, 2001 19:42 Char Count= 0 The Sociolinguistics of Sign Languages Edited by Ceil Lucas iii P1: MRM/FYX P2: MRM/FYX P3: MRM/UKS QC: MRM CU009-FM CU009/Lucas July 4, 2001 19:42 Char Count= 0 PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, VIC 3166, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon´ 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org C Cambridge University Press 2001 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2001 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeface Times 10/12 pt. System LATEX2ε [TB] A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data The sociolinguistics of sign languages / Ceil Lucas, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 79137 5 (hardback) – ISBN 0 521 79474 9 (paperback) 1. Sign language. 2. Deaf – Means of communication. 3. Sociolinguistics. I. Lucas, Ceil. HV2474 .S62 2001 306.440872 – dc21 ISBN 0 521 79137 5 hardback ISBN 0 521 79474 9 paperback iv P1: MRM/FYX P2: MRM/FYX P3: MRM/UKS QC: MRM CU009-FM CU009/Lucas July 4, 2001 19:42 Char Count= 0 Contents List of figures page ix List of tables x List of contributors xi Foreword xv WALT WOLFRAM Preface and acknowledgments xvii List of abbreviations xviii 1 Introduction 1 CEIL LUCAS 2 Multilingualism: The global approach to sign languages 8 BENCIE WOLL, RACHEL SUTTON-SPENCE AND FRANCES ELTON 3 Bilingualism and language contact 33 JEAN ANN 4 Sociolinguistic variation 61 CEIL LUCAS, ROBERT BAYLEY, CLAYTON VALLI, MARY ROSE AND ALYSSA WULF 5 Discourse analysis 112 MELANIE METZGER AND BEN BAHAN 6 Language planning and policy 145 TIMOTHY REAGAN 7 Language attitudes 181 SARAH BURNS, PATRICK MATTHEWS AND EVELYN NOLAN-CONROY Bibliography 217 Index 249 vii P1: MRM/FYX P2: MRM/FYX P3: MRM/UKS QC: MRM CU009-FM CU009/Lucas July 4, 2001 19:42 Char Count= 0 Figures 2.1 Proposed relation of “South-West European Sign Languages” 26 2.2 Proposed relation of “North-West European Sign Languages” 27 3.1 Taiwan Sign Language, JIE 53 3.2 Taiwan Sign Language, GONG 53 4.1 (r) indices for three social classes in five styles in New York City 69 4.2 -t, d deletion by grammatical class, following environment and social class in Detroit African American English 72 4.3a, b WONDER, TOLERATE, citation and non-citation forms 98 4.4a, b, c DEAF ear to chin, chin to ear, contact cheek ∧ (DEAF CULTURE) 103 5.1 Narrative from a multiparty conversation including five deaf native signers of ASL 126 7.1 The two primary sociostructural factors affecting language attitudes: Standardization and vitality 201 7.2 What’s in a name?: “Friends First” advertisement 214 ix P1: MRM/FYX P2: MRM/FYX P3: MRM/UKS QC: MRM CU009-FM CU009/Lucas July 4, 2001 19:42 Char Count= 0 Tables 2.1 Percentages of signers in various European countries who replied they could always understand another signer from (a) a town 100 kilometers away and (b) their own town 25 4.1 Centralization and orientation toward Martha’s Vineyard 68 4.2 (r) indices for three social classes in five styles in New York City 69 4.3 Percentage of multiple negation in Detroit African American English by gender and social class 70 4.4 Percentages of -t,d deletion in Detroit African American English by linguistic environment and social class 72 4.5 Variability in spoken and sign languages 90 4.6 Variable processes in spoken and sign languages 92 4.7 Internal constraints on variable units in spoken and sign languages 94 7.1 Factors that influence judgments 200 x P1: GHM CU009-01 CU009/Lucas May 6, 2001 16:31 Char Count= 0 1 Introduction Ceil Lucas Recent history has included some major events in both the American Deaf community∗ and around the world, and many of the events have been funda- mentally sociolinguistic in nature. For example, 13 years ago, in March 1988, the campus of Gallaudet University erupted into a week of protests stemming from the selection of Elizabeth Zinser as the seventh president of the 124-year- old institution. The outcomes of the Deaf President Now (DPN) movement are history: the resignation of the newly appointed president and of the chairman of the Board of Trustees, the reconstitution of the board to contain a majority of deaf people, the selection of a deaf president and the promise of no reprisals against the protesters. In The Sociolinguistics of Society, Ralph Fasold (1984) observes that the essence of sociolinguistics depends on two facts about language: first, that lan- guage varies, which is to say that “speakers have more than one way to say more or less the same thing” (p. ix); and, second, that language serves a broadly encompassing purpose just as critical as the obvious one of transmitting infor- mation and thoughts from one person to another. Namely, language users use language to make statements about who they are, what their group loyalties are, how they perceive their relationship to interlocutors and what kind of speech event they consider themselves to be involved in. Critical to an understand- ing of the events at Gallaudet University is the critical purpose that language serves in defining one’s identity, group loyalty, relationship to interlocutors and understanding of the speech event. The major demand of the protest was for a deaf president, and the issues underlying that demand are fundamentally sociolinguistic in nature. On the one hand, it was repeatedly declared with disdain during the protest that Dr. Zinser could not sign and had only just begun learning sign language. On the other hand, in remarks following her resignation, Dr. Zinser stated that signing is important symbolically to the Deaf community, and that it is important for members of the board to “learn a little sign ...just a few basic phrases, some ∗ I have adopted the use of “deaf” (with lower case d) as an adjective referring primarily to hearing loss and the use of “Deaf” (with upper case D) as an adjective referring to social collectivities and attitudes arising from interaction among people with hearing losses. This distinction is employed throughout the volume. 1 P1: GHM CU009-01 CU009/Lucas May 6, 2001 16:31 Char Count= 0 2 Ceil Lucas warm sentences when they meet people around the school” (Washington Post, 12 March 1988). For deaf people and their supporters, Dr. Zinser’s lack of knowledge about the Deaf community was directly linked to and symbolized by her lack of knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL). The reality of her linguistic repertoire and the language choices at her disposal made clear and inevitable statements about who she was, what her group loyalty was, and how she perceived her relationship to her interlocutors. And those statements simply could not be reconciled with the qualifications that the Deaf community required of the next president. With her observation that signing is important symbolically within the Deaf community and her recommendation that board members “learn a little sign”, Dr. Zinser focused on the symbolic role of signing while ignoring the fact that signing is, first of all, a communication system. The high symbolic value of sign language derives in part from the fact that signing allows people to communicate unhindered, with a focus not on the medium but on the message. To suggest patronizingly that board members “learn a little sign ...some warm sentences” was to patently misunderstand the sociolinguistic reality of Deaf communities and to misperceive the particular form of interplay between communicating information and defining the social situation in Deaf communities. The protest was fundamentally a sociolinguistic event because of the central role of that interplay: How information is communicated – with ASL, with some manual code for English, with spoken English – inevitably defines the social situation and one’s place in it. The place that Dr. Zinser was proposing to define for herself was simply unacceptable. Related to the issue of sign language being first of all a communication system that allows unhindered communication is another event in recent history having sociolinguistic import. This is the publication in February 1989 of a paper entitled Unlocking the Curriculum written by Bob Johnson, Scott Liddell and Carol Erting. The paper takes a critical look at Deaf education in the USA. The authors state that the failure of Deaf education is due to “deaf children’s fundamental lack of access to curricular context at grade level and from the general acceptance of the notion that below grade-level performance is to be expected of deaf children” (p. 3), and that the problem of access is largely a language-related issue. It is fair to say that the paper has been a catalyst for a vigorous and ongoing debate among teachers, administrators and parents of deaf children all over the world. It has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Thai, Japanese and Italian and has provided part of the inspiration and theoretical support in many locations for the implementation of programs that use the natural sign language of the community as the medium of instruction (e.g.