This document summarizes research on small-scale sign multilingualism in three contexts:
1) Adamorobe, Ghana where Deaf and hearing people use two sign languages.
2) Frontrunners, a deaf education program in Denmark where students from different countries communicate using international sign.
3) DOOR, a program in Kenya where teams from African countries use Kenyan Sign Language as a lingua franca.
The summary explores themes of language use and ideologies around naming, mixing, and separating languages in these small multilingual signing communities. Structures of oppression like audism, ableism, and sexism are also noted to impact language practices.
4. Small scale sign multilingualism: three cases:
Case 1: A shared signing
community in Ghana
Deaf + hearing,
2 sign languages
Case 2 and 3: groups of signing deaf
students/practitioners
in Denmark and Kenya
Deaf people from different countries,
using multiple sign languages
5. Language separation foundational
to research & advocacy (deaf
education, sign language rights)
(De Meulder, Murray, McKee 2019)
Language mixing common in sign
language socialisation + use
(De Meulder et al 2019)
Themes of small-scale sign multilingualism uniting the
three ecologies
6. • Who participates in SSML?
• Whose languages/ing are privileged?
• Who works harder to communicate?
7. Naming sign
languages
• 1950s/60s onwards: Sign languages studied as languages AND named as languages
• Naming SLs after places (mostly countries, but also regions, cities, villages)
• Variation in country erased/emphasised (eg. Indonesia: 1 or 500 SLs?) (Palfreyman 2018)
• Often beneficial politically (SL rights) (De Meulder, Murray, McKee 2019)
• Separation from imported sign language, eg. ASL (eg. Ghanaian Sign Language)
• Names of SLs can overlap with names of spoken languages (eg. “German Sign Language”),
but SL are not visual representations of spoken languages
• Rare: given names eg. BISINDO, Libras, Auslan, Esharani
8. • Gesture-prone areas: distinction between “natural sign” / village SL often
blurry and dependent on researchers’ frameworks
• Gesture-prone areas typically have several (overlapping) shared sign
languages; often only one gets ”recognised” as language
Classification of forms of
signing, dominant in sign
linguistics
(Hou & Kusters 2020)
9. Research on village/shared sign languages
• Hearing researchers “discovering” and naming shared sign languages: “invention”
by delineation (cf Makoni and Pennycook 2005)
• Village/shared sign languages often better documented than national sign
language in same country (eg. Ghana, Indonesia, Mexico), because:
• Structures different from national SLs (eg. Meir et al 2010)
• Exotification (Braithwaite 2020)
• Concerns about linguistic vitality/endangerment
• Methodologies: Elicitation, monolingual/taxonomical vantage point, rather than
focus on larger ecologies or language contact
• BUT many shared signing communities are good example of SSML! (eg. Kisch
2008, 2012, Singer’s keynote)
10. • Field work in 2008,
2009, 2012, 2018
• Around 40 deaf
people, 3500 hearing
people
• AdaSL: incorporation of
gestures; mouthings &
constructions from Twi
(Nyst 2007, Edward 2015)
• (ASL/)GSL import since
1960s (church/school)
• AdaSL and GSL often
mixed (but: research
since 2000: villagers
asked not to “mix
signing” in elicitation /
interviews)
Case 1:
Adamorobe
11. Deaf elders (n: 22) Deaf young adults, schooled
after 2000 (n: 13)
• All are fluent in AdaSL
• Basic GSL (single signs)
• Value AdaSL-GSL bilingualism
• AdaSL = HARD (expressive, fierce), GSL
& Twi = SOFT (“hardness” refers to
behaviour, objects, health, AdaSL
• 2008: noted GSL accent of
schoolchildren, expected AdaSL would
“become HARD”
• 2018: noted youth’s AdaSL “became
HARD” (=> less accented, more
distinctive)
• Varying fluency in AdaSL
(deaf parents: more fluent)
• Varying fluency in GSL
(variety in # years of schooling)
• Fingerspelling
• Extensive codeswitching
• Talk a lot about feeling of doing
AdaSL: movements, facial
expressions and signing space:
AdaSL = DELIGHTFUL
Qualia: sensuous evaluations (Harkness 2015)
Qualia = marginalia in linguistics? (see Dingemanse 2017)
Adamorobe: qualia central in language discourses (Kusters 2019)
12. Delineation of AdaSL: different classifications:
• Researchers (since Frishberg, 1987): AdaSL ≠ gestures, AdaSL ≠ Twi, AdaSL ≠ GSL
• Hearing in Adamorobe: AdaSL ≈ Twi (“we speak the same language”)
• Deaf Adamorobeans: AdaSL ≠ Twi; AdaSL ≈ gestures; GSL ≈ ASL
“AdaSL” and “gesturing” = ”SIGNING[1]”–
Differences in gradation (eg. gesturing =
“signing a little”)
“GSL” and ”ASL” =“SIGNING[2]” –
No clear distinction GSL & ASL
13. Sign languages and deaf people in the
periphery?
• Deaf-hearing relationships in Adamorobe:
• Greeting rituals, everyday communication, sharing news
• Continuum of signing proficiency (gesture & AdaSL hard to
separate)
• Hearing conversational spaces: inaccessible (no switch to
AdaSL)
• Complex set of etiologies and attitudes re: deafness
• Deaf as curse, gift, punishment, contagion
• Deaf respected as hard workers & fighters,
but are also often treated as lesser citizens
• Village reputation, courtesy stigma, visibility:
• Marriage law to stop deaf proliferation
• Village level events often inaccessible
• Deaf people avoid funerals and other large gatherings
(“leaf insults”)
14. This project is funded by the European Research Council, Project ID 714615
Forced Migration Labour Migration Professional Mobility Tourist Mobility
Cases 2 and 3: based on
ERC-funded project “Deaf
mobilities across
international borders"
(mobiledeaf.org.uk)
2017-2023
15. Case 2:
Frontrunners 13
• 9-month deaf-led educational course
• Remote location in Denmark
• 13 deaf students (mostly Europe, also Asia, Africa, Middle-
East, South-America)
• 4 deaf teachers (Finland, Belgium, New-Zealand, Denmark)
• International Sign as lingua franca
16. (non-conventionalised) International Sign =
flexible use of repertoire of resources
“Not understanding”
as part of the process
(see Green 2014)
“Calibrating”
(see Moriarty and Kusters 2021)
17. Naming IS
• Option 1: not naming it as an entity: “signing”, ”connecting”,
“calibrating”, “mixing” , “translanguaging”
• Option 2: naming IS without calling it a language: eg.
“International Sign”
• “IS is like gesture, hence not a language”
• “IS is a varied mix of sign languages, hence not a language”
• Option 3: naming IS as language: eg. ”International Sign
Language” (eg. Rathmann & Quadros’ presentation)
• “IS is full communication so it is a language”
• “IS is conventionalized so it is a language”
• Naming IS in general versus naming specific IS mixes
18. Reflections of group re: how
their signing has changed:
“Frontrunners 13 signs”
(= “small scale IS”?)
(Kusters 2020)
19. Frontrunners from Global South (Jordan, Togo,
Brazil, Korea)
• Have to work/adapt more (re: English and prior IS & ASL
knowledge + European/western cultural learning)
• Are seen as people to whom others have to adapt more
• Language humor, language shaming & racism hard to
separate
20. Case 3: DOOR, Kenya
• Teams from mostly African
countries, campus life
• KSL as lingua franca
• Consultants & translators have to
learn other sign language(s)
• KSL mixed with other resources,
and kept separate from it (when
translating)
• Name ”KSL” covers some of this
variation
Recurring statements:
“I learn their sign language”
“KSL is easy to learn”,
“ASL is useful”
“Mixing is typical”
“Not understanding is normal”
“IS is not present here”
21. DOOR: deaf women
less likely to access
this SSML space:
sexism
Administrator: “In the past,
[we] would choose many
women to come here. They
came here and worked slowly.
(…) The aim for men from
overseas was to come there and
to find a woman, marry her, etc.
I see that as being a challenge,
and they also work slowly, so
the decision was made that
women wouldn’t be taken
anymore. “
22. Language mixing
Small-scale multilingualism contexts: more freedom to create “own”
versions, own mixes
• “Frontrunners 13 signs”, KSL-mix in DOOR
• Adamorobe: GSL and AdaSL mixed since 1960s
• Language mixing essential in lives of deaf signing people in these contexts
eg. by facilitating learning, work, and mobility (monolingual/bilingual
language models come short)
23. Becoming a proficient sign multilingual: more or less emphasis on
becoming proficient in separate languages
• Adamorobe: AdaSL signing becoming “HARD”
• DOOR: proficiency in KSL and other SL
• Frontrunners: separating IS from ASL
Language separation
24. Languageness affirmed: “language” in the sign language name (eg. AdaSL vs
International Sign)
Conceptualisations of SSML: “languageness” and naming of
1. signing that contains intensified uses of gestures (IS, gesturing with
non-AdaSL signers)
2. mixed forms (eg. “IS as not a language”, naming “Frontrunners signs”)
Languageness and language naming
25. Structures of oppression in families, neighbourhoods, institutions impact
languaging in SSML ecologies/
Overt privileges that impact on languaging + mobility:
• ASL privilege (+ privilege of being able to separate ASL!) (each setting)
• Hearing privilege (Adamorobe)
• White + global North privilege (Frontrunners)
• Male privilege (DOOR)
Structural oppression
26. • Diagram is based on themes salient in local and academic ideologies in/on
SSML ecologies
• Local sign language ideologies impacted by academic language ideologies, and
less the other way around
27. References
Braithwaite, B. (2020). Ideologies of linguistic research on small sign languages in the global South: A Caribbean perspective. Language
& Communication, 74, 182-194.
De Meulder, M., et al. (2019). Describe, don’t prescribe. The practice and politics of translanguaging in the context of deaf signers.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
De Meulder, M, Murray, J., McKee, R. (2019) The legal recognition of sign languages: Advocacy and outcomes around the world.
Multilingual Matters.
Edward, M., 2015. We speak with our hands and voices: Iconicity in Adamorobe Sign Language and Akuapem Twi (ideophones). Bergen:
Upublished MPhil thesis, University of Bergen, Norway.
Frishberg, N., 1987. Ghanaian sign language. Gallaudet encyclopedia of deaf people and deafness, Volume 3, pp. 778-79.
Green, E. M. (2014). Building the tower of Babel: International Sign, linguistic commensuration, and moral orientation. Language in
Society, 43, 1-21.
Harkness, N. (2015). The Pragmatics of Qualia in Practice. Annual Review of Anthropology, 44(1), 573-589.
Hou, L. Y.-S., & Kusters, A. (2020). Sign Languages. In K. Tusting (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Ethnography.
Kisch, S. (2008). “Deaf Discourse”: The Social Construction of Deafness in a Bedouin Community. Medical Anthropology, 27(3), 283-313.
Kusters, A. (2015). Deaf Space in Adamorobe: An Ethnographic Study in a Village in Ghana. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press.
Kusters, A. (2019). One Village, Two Sign Languages: Qualia, Intergenerational Relationships and the Language Ideological Assemblage in
Adamorobe, Ghana. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.
Kusters, A. (2020). The tipping point: On the use of signs from American Sign Language in International Sign. Language &
Communication, 75, 51-68.
Makoni, S., & Pennycook, A. (2005). Disinventing and (Re)Constituting Languages. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 2(3), 137-156.
Meir, I., Sandler, W., Padden, C., & Aronoff, M. (2010). Emerging Sign Languages. In Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and
Education, Volume 2 (Vol. Emerging Sign Languages).
Moriarty, E., & Kusters, A. (2021). Deaf cosmopolitanism: calibrating as a moral process. International Journal of Multilingualism, 18(2),
285-302.
Nyst, V. (2007). A Descriptive Analysis of Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana). Doctoral Thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Palfreyman, N. (2018) Variation in Indonesian Sign language. De Gruyter Mouton & Ishara Press
Zeshan, U & Webster, J. (Eds) (2020) Sign Multilingualism. Mouton De Gruyter & Ishara Press
28. Naming practices of IS
• Example 1: academia: IS vs cross-signing
• Example 2: deaf IS signers: naming specific
uses of IS
• “sports signs”, “chess signs”,
“Scandinavian signs”, “WFD meeting
signs”, “Frontrunners signs”
• Example 3 (deaf IS signers): Names for
types of IS with more or less ASL influence
• In relation to ASL, IS is treated as a
boundaried language under threat
(Kusters 2020)
“ASL-IS”
“IS with ASL
flavour”
“bad ASL”
“slow ASL”
“European ASL”
“ASLish”
“contact ASL”
29. Perspectives on deafness & deaf people in Adamorobe:
audism, ableism, exceptionalism,
acceptance, celebration, separation (Kusters 2015)
Editor's Notes
TO DO
Reference lupke over naming practices
And insert article titles and references everywhere in slides
Zie Gal p 4 (regimenting ideologies- over languageness
Mss de sven-gecreerde figuren of zelfs foto’s van de drie cases gebruiken als achtergrond
The emergent field of Small-Scale Multilingualism (SSML) studies defines SSML as a type of rural language ecology widely attested throughout human history (Evans 2018). Small localities were and remain characterised by extensive internal heterogeneity and linguistic diversity motivated by a broad range of sociopolitical factors. Differently to superdiverse contexts (Blommaert & Rampton 2011) proliferating in the context of recent migration and globalisation, small-scale multilingual situations rely on the presence of highly multilingual individuals who speak, sign, or understand a high number of locally confined languages with low numbers of speakers and on the habitus of maintaining and sharing intricate multilingual repertoires. Such settings have become overshadowed by multilingualism in the more recent ethnolinguistic nation states of the Global North and by their monolingual language ideologies that expanded in the wake of colonisation. As a consequence, multilingualism is most commonly studied from a monolingual vantage point.
The second ever SSML conference aims to re-centre the notion of multilingualism as a natural and typical state of human societies, and to shift multilingualism to the fore of the academic field of linguistics. The theme of the conference is “Language is multilingual”. We think expansively about what constitutes SSML, and focus on the term “small-scale”: as paying attention to detail, zooming in on individuals and localised communities, and foregrounding concepts and ontologies that emerge from their language ideas and language use. Multilingualism is simultaneously a description of an environment and of individuals who create the tapestries of multi-modal interaction, including spoken and signed languages. It is in this spirit of inclusion and attention to individuals that we seek abstracts of contributions for the SSML 2 Conference.
Providing a foundation for the field, the first SSML conference in Lyon was based on SSML as referring to pre-colonial and/or rural societies. SSML 2 seeks a conceptual expansion, moving away from prevalent monolingual perspectives of linguistic description and documentation towards a multilingual turn grounded in epistemologies drawn from multilingual settings. We do this with the recognition that SSML settings are bound together by their highly complex and internally diverse patterns of multilingualisms, both in terms of settings and individuals’ repertoires in locally confined situations and in terms of site-specific sociopolitical motivations to upheld local multilingualism (Lüpke 2016, Singer & Harris 2016, Dobrushina & Moroz 2021, Vaughan & Singer 2018, Di Carlo, Good, & Ojong 2020, Stenzel & Epps 2013, Dobrushina, Khanina & Pakendorf 2021, Stenzel et al forthcoming)
Our conference will have three themes which pilot this broad and innovative approach to SSML:
New data from rural small-scale multilingualism. Contributions on small-scale, rural settings of the Global South (including minoritised settings in the Global North, for instance in Finland, Russia, or Australia) which provide insight into their historical development and evolution, into language ideas and ideologies, patterns of language acquisition and use, as well as issues of language rights and inclusive multilingual education stemming from them.
Recentering sign languages as part of multilingualism. Contributions which explore multilingual communication in SSML settings from a multimodal perspective, focusing on how sign and spoken languages co-evolve, co-exist and are shared.
Minoritised SSML in urban and national contexts. Concerning transformations of SSML settings and speakers through their participation in larger-scale processes that situate them at the periphery (Pietikäinen, Jaffe, Kelly-Holmes & Coupland 2016), from strategic essentialism (Spivak 1988) to the restructuring of repertoires and the emergence of new localised multilingual practices.
SCALES: country, region, village, families
CONTEXTS: national politics, imperialism, colonialism, education (important role of deaf schools in sign language emergence/spread)
Examples – add refs
Finnish-swedish
LSM and ASL
Russian migrants in Israel
Student gropu from burundi in India
First Nations and Aboriginals
Phoebe Thay
Adam and bev buchanan
Reed and Rumsey
Lizzy ellis, jenny green
Ruth singer
Note: many named sign languages (SL1, SL2, …) have emerged in situations of sign language contact
SCALES: country, region, village, families
CONTEXTS: national politics, imperialism, colonialism, education (important role of deaf schools in sign language emergence/spread)
Examples – add refs
Finnish-swedish
LSM and ASL
Russian migrants in Israel
Student gropu from burundi in India
First Nations and Aboriginals
Phoebe Thay
Adam and bev buchanan
Reed and Rumsey
Lizzy ellis, jenny green
Ruth singer
Note: many named sign languages (SL1, SL2, …) have emerged in situations of sign language contact
The diagram is about naming languages or ways of languaging. It explains there are two factors driving naming practices: language separation and/or language mixing. Both of these contribute to complicated ideologies of languageness.
Language separation is often used to prove or maintain languageness, whereas language mixing is used to doubt or disprove languageness.
This has real impacts on deaf people and communities, and hence that's why this topic is important for SSML researchers.
No time to explain this:
Important problem with language separation in sign multilingual contexts: signs overlap eg. because of iconicity and overlaps in grammars of sign languages (zeshan and panda)
Tendency to count percentages of sign language X and language Y in mixed forms (eg counting percentags of ASL)
Tendency to use outdated methods like Swadesh list to calculate overlap (cf. pafreyman) (Swadesh)
Previously (and still!): “signing”, “sign language”, “deaf language”, … (and SL often not seen as “languages” by deaf people themselves)
Shared signing communities: villages or groups with a high number of deaf people (often hereditary deafness) Dense social and kin structure, common activities, social interaction between deaf and hearing people, in a local sign language ( National/urban sign languages which emerged in mostly deaf settings)
Underlying language ideologies (Kusters and Sahasrabudhe 2018):
“Language and not-language can be neatly separated”
“Forms of signing can be classified”
Eg: Jepson (1991), : “Rural Indian Sign Language” (RISL) vs Zeshan YEAR: “homesign” / Natural sign as “grey zone”: Green forthcoming
such communities being identified all the time suggests that their existence is much more common than initially suggested
Language contact in shared signing communities: Eg. Kisch on language profiles in age cohorts among Al-Sayyid Bedoin (ABSL and ISL, Arab and Hebrew )
Fascination of researchers because of emergence not in deaf school context, or “out of nothing” (language contact eg. w spoken language + other SLs downplayed!)
Typically: researcher “finds” village with “signing people”, decides (or thinks) they use a distinct sign language, names the sign language, becomes associated with it (academic ownership)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/19/how-did-a-self-taught-linguist-come-to-own-an-indigenous-language
https://meanjin.com.au/essays/what-happens-when-you-tell-somebody-elses-story/
Linguistics erserachers since 2000: deaf+hearing white European women and deaf+hearing Ghanaian women+men
GSL and AdaSL kept separate in contexts of
hearing signers (incl. own children)
gossip
linguistic elicitation (since 2000) (eg. Nyst, Edwards)
Insert ref to qualia article
link to e.g. Mark Dingemanse's work on ideophones here? Especially since ideophones are another marginalised but ubiquitous feature of languages that emerge in highly multilingual contexts.
Check Twi term for AdaSL
Check frishberg
Frontrunners: 9-month deaf-led educational course (focusing on media and organisations)
Remote location in Denmark
Official languages: IS, English
Frontrunners 13: 17 deaf internationals
Two data collection sessions: September 2017 and May 2018
At the beginning of the course, students do not always have extensive knowledge of conventionalized IS
Over time, their use of IS while participating in Frontrunners can be expected to converge
IS learned, incl. signs + style from previous Frontrunners groups
More able to sign visually + learnt ideology + experienced of importance of visual signing, but signing has speeded up: less visual
Facial expressions, mouthings & signing space averaged out
Drop NatSL signs and mouthings, but introduce other NatSL signs that “stay” and become group signs (es. In houses)
Learned some DTS (minimal use, mostly diglossia)
More anti-ASL (learned ideology): dropped ASL signs; but ASL recognising and learning (ASL in IS), so some ASL signs widely understood and thus used
THUS: receptive multilingualism grew, shared pool of signs used grew (sevearl signs for same concept) so variation can be kept, less need to duplicate
AND: more able to calibrate to different interlocutors and uadiences and settings and registers (classroom, presenting in Frontrunners, presenting outside of Frontrunners, adapting to Frontrunners w different backgrounds, online videos, international events at Castberggaard, guest teachers, study trips, houses): expanded the backpack/toolbox and oiled the calibration dial
Full quote:
“ Hyemi was signing beautifully, using metaphors. In one year she decreased the amount of metaphors. Visual signing in pictures has decreased as well. Europeans are not trying to sign in metaphors and visually. They use mouthing, fingerspelling, narrow signing space. It is a pity to see that a trend is for the visual signing to disappear. Hyemi adjusted her signing to the Europeans, at the same time it is not good for cross-cultural exchange. That is not cross-cultural learning, it is her adjusting to others. I can see that in Frontrunners we have this idea of hierarchy. Who is on the top and who is on the bottom, and who is relaxed and who works hard. #00:03:26.59
People said they did not know IS even though I used IS with them
Re: ”not understanding”: Is this a collective experience that people see in hearing-only SSML contexts, for example? That is a good question for non-signing linguists to walk away and think about. And of course the positive: what are the upsides to deaf people being sensitive to this factor? Does this affect contexts of SSML?
Taking language (or multilingualism in the body):
Adamorobe: becoming eye strong, hard
taking IS in the body (LP)
Calibrating as dial on the body
these are three characteristics that one might want to use to analyse and talk about small scale multilingual sign ecologies, which are developed from participant-led discourses.
