Max vs Min

When you carried out the exercise to find out which languages you knew the words, you were touching on a minimal bilingualism. This is a very low level of bilingualism. It could be at the level of a tourist. Some hearing people say that they can get by in sign. This often means that they can use some individual signs but do not know the grammar or the variation in sign. They will be reduced to signing some key ideas and mouthing (using English) for the remaining ones. This can be seen in many circumstances.

Maximal would only really apply to hearing children from deaf families and to a few deaf people. This would mean that they had skills which were at the same level as the native user of both languages.

Another term which is important is Balanced Bilingual. This means that the person is almost equally fluent in two languages, but in only certain situations. This balanced bilingual is quite rare. Most people who are bilingual use one language in one situation and the other in another situation. This is also true in sign. We will look at this in the exercise at the end of this session.

A term which can be mentioned here in passing is a very important one for the deafness field - semi-lingualism We will discuss it further later. It occurs when a person acquires only parts of the language and has incorrect grammar and reduced vocabulary. This can occur for many deaf people who are refused access to sign in school and who are unable later to make up for the loss. The greatest danger is in becoming semi-lingual in two languages. It is a factor in deaf children which we have seen emerge in research (eg Sue Gregory’s work on young deaf people, 1995).

Baker also highlights aspects of language ability where he separates the conversational fluency which someone can achieve quite quickly (over 2 years) and academic language competence. The issue of academic language competence seems not yet such a great issue for hearing people studying sign as the language is still developing and deaf people are only now beginning to progress in their career while using sign; as a result, the language is only now being challenged at a high enough academic level. This acts in a limiting way to interpreters[1] since the academic input which occurs in English in lectures may not be easily translated into sign. Up to now, deaf people at the highest levels of functioning have had to use English (this is not unusual in minority language situations). This has happened even when the interpreters were used, since the interpreters just used English.

In discussing an individual’s language competence, it has become evident that language cannot be divorced from context. Language is not produced in a vacuum; it is enacted in changing dramas. As props and scenery, co-actors and actresses, the play and the part played change, so does language. A pure linguistic or psychological approach to two language competencies is not sufficient. Communication includes not only the structure of language ... but also who is saying what to whom, in which circumstances. One person may have limited linguistic skills but in certain situations, be successful in communication, Another person may have relative linguistic mastery, but through undeveloped social interaction skills be relatively unsuccessful in communication. The social environment where the two languages function is crucial to understanding bilingual usage. Baker, p13.

It is worth considering this quote in detail and making sure that you understand it fully. This issue of use of language and the contexts in which it should be used, will be discussed much further in the next part of the session where we look at measuring language competence.

One of the key terms which this brings up is functional bilingualism. This means that the individual can use the language in particular settings. Fishman says it is about when, where and with whom. However, for us in the situation of learning sign (or teaching sign) it is about bilingualism in the same domain of functioning. This means that a functional bilingual can produce the same meaning in two languages in the same domain. This seems more exact and is a better way of specifying bilingualism. But it has many problems. It is not easy to set out exactly what makes a person bilingual. It is the application of the language ability which is important. Baker says that 5 actions have to be studied:

Whenever the one of these factors changes, the language which is used, changes. However, sign poses specific problems in that many of the situations are less open to sign use. Because deaf people do not live together and often do not work together, there are fewer opportunities to use sign in a social setting. The environment in Bristol is a little different since there is a greater concentration of signers in a single location. However, even here the amount of signing may be different from the amount of speech available to speakers.

Stop for a moment and write down an account of yesterday: (this need not be accurate to the nearest minute but try to give it as close as possible to the nearest half hour).

how much time was spent on you having a conversation with a single person?
.... with a number of people?
How much time was spent on your own without any communication with others
How much time spent on watching video of sign or listening to speech on the radio.

Now share your findings with another person, to allow you to compare sign and speech. What you will find is that hearing people have many more opportunities for conversation and for listening to their own language than deaf people have for sign. Why should this be the case? and how it could be altered?

It occurs firstly because (obviously) there are fewer deaf people than hearing people - the deaf minority. It happens because of the power of the spoken language and the power of the majority to determine the development of forms of distant communication - radio, telephones. Some deaf students in coming to Bristol, found it very different and initially a strain, to have signing all day. BSL is not used throughout the community and individual deaf people use their language less than do hearing people when they use English or another spoken language.

Because of this it becomes very important to understand the conditions which will be necessary in order for hearing people to learn to sign. It is necessary to understand how deaf children from hearing homes will learn to sign. These are factors which we will return to later in the course.

[1] It should be pointed out that this is not uncommon for languages and is not a problem for the language’s expression. It is simply a reflection of the extent of use to date. Sign languages can still express the same meanings.