Standardization Beyond Form: Ideologies, Institutions, and the Semiotics of Nepali Sign Language by Erika Georgiana Hoffmann A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) in The University of Michigan 2008 Doctoral Committee: Professor Judith T. Irvine, Co-Chair Assistant Professor Barbra A. Meek, Co-Chair Professor Thomas E. Fricke Professor Susan A. Gelman Copyright Erika Georgiana Hoffmann 2008 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many individuals and institutions that contributed in vital ways to the production of this work. First, I thank the Fulbright Institution of International Education/Commission for Educational Exchange between the United States and Nepal and the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship Program for funding my dissertation research. I also thank my committee members, Judith Irvine, Barbra Meek, Tom Fricke, and Susan Gelman for their support and advice throughout this process. In particular, I thank Judith Irvine for her deeply thoughtful comments and continued attention during a particularly busy moment in her career and Barbra Meek for her unerring support as I have moved through the program. I must also thank my undergraduate advisor, Peter Bertocci, without whom I would not have entered graduate school in anthropology in the first place and Laurie Marx, without whom I could not have finished. There are many people in Nepal to whom I am deeply grateful, but must not name individually in order to protect their privacy. I thank all of the members of the Kathmandu Association of the Deaf, the National Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the Lumbini Association of the Deaf, and the Kirtipur Deaf Development Club for their friendship over many years, their willingness to allow me to participate in their social networks, their hospitality in inviting me to their homes, and their patience in answering my many questions. ii I also thank the faculty and staff of the Cornell Nepal Study Program in Kirtipur for allowing me to base my fieldwork from their program house. My Cornell connections began with the language training I received from Banu and Shambu Oja and led to the academic advice and friendly companionship of Kathryn March, David Holmburg, and Dambar Chemjong. I thank both Dambar Chemjong and Manisha Adhikhari for their assistance in creating English translations of Nepali documents produced by members of Kathmandu’s deaf associations and I thank Janak Rai for translating some of my research materials from English to Nepali. Finally, I thank the School for International Training in Nepal, as it was through this program that I first began the research project that has led to this dissertation. I have Judy Shepard-Kegl and James Kegl to thank for my introduction to both SignStream and Sutton SignWriting in the summer of 2003. Since then, Valerie Sutton and the other participants on the SignWriting listserve have been of great help to me in constructing the transcripts that have been vital to my analysis. This dissertation has benefited in many ways from the comments and suggestions of my colleagues. First, I thank the members of my dissertation writing group, Britt Halvorson, Karen Smid, Henrike Florusbosch, Vanessa Will, and Sonia Das for providing a forum in which to share drafts and to discuss the process of creating this work. I thank the members of the Semiotics reading group, particularly Josh Reno, Cecilia Tomori, and Britt Halvorson, for their comments. I am also grateful to them for organizing the workshop that brought Rick Parmentier to Michigan, and thank him for his comments. In addition, my research and writing have benefited from my participation in the University of Michigan’s Linguistic Anthropology Laboratory and the University of iii Michigan-University of Chicago’s yearly Michicagoan Graduate Student Conference in Linguistic Anthropology. Finally, I thank my husband Aaron for supporting my research and writing by living with me in Nepal and helping to take care of our son. I thank that son, Leo, for being such a good baby. I thank my mother-in-law Ann for providing vital childcare services during this time. Above all, I thank my mother Randi, for, providing financial, intellectual, and emotional support in all my projects and serving as this dissertation’s editor. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................ii LIST OF FIGURES.......................................................................................................vii LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................viii LIST OF TRANSCRIPTS ..............................................................................................ix LIST OF APPENDICES .................................................................................................x CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................1 Standardization and other language ideologies...........................................................1 Objectification, writing, and standardization..............................................................4 Institutions and deaf “recruitment” culture.................................................................5 Standardization beyond form .....................................................................................7 Historical background..............................................................................................11 Standard language and political recognition in Nepal...............................................15 Methodology ...........................................................................................................17 Field Methods....................................................................................................17 Participant observation.......................................................................................20 Collection and analysis of naturally occurring conversation ...............................24 Semi-structured interviews.................................................................................24 Collection and analysis of textual artifacts .........................................................25 Methods of analysis ...........................................................................................25 The Organization of this Dissertation.......................................................................27 CHAPTER 2: STANDARDIZATION AND “UN-WRITABLE” LANGUAGES..........34 Introduction.............................................................................................................34 Standardization without writing...............................................................................37 The sign language dictionary ...................................................................................38 Un-writable languages? ...........................................................................................41 Writing, objectification, and meta-linguistic awareness............................................51 Writing without standardization...............................................................................55 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................59 CHAPTER 3: DEAF OR DUMB? IDEOLOGICAL MULTIPLICITY IN NEPALI MODELS OF DEAFNESS............................................................................................60 Introduction.............................................................................................................60 Co-existing and competing models of deafness........................................................63 The religious model of deafness...............................................................................65 The medical model of deafness................................................................................70 The Linguistic model of deafness ............................................................................80 Deaf (inter)marriage ..........................................................................................83 Deafness, caste, and employment.......................................................................90 Conclusion ............................................................................................................100 v CHAPTER 4: FORMAL AND IDEOLOGICAL VARIATION ACROSS INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS ................................................................................. 102 Introduction...........................................................................................................102 Language socialization in deaf institutions.............................................................103 Variation in signing practice across institutional contexts ......................................105 Standard lexical items......................................................................................105 The school for the deaf ..........................................................................................109 Total communication and language contact......................................................109 Three modalities in the classroom – simultaneity and disjuncture.....................114 Nepali Sign Language and spatial grammar in deaf association classes..................128