BSL in its Social Context |
Session 2: Variables in
Languages
What
defines a particular language?
How do we know if we have
varieties of one language or if we have two different languages? Is it easy to say what is
BSL and what is not? A very rough definition
is that if two people can't understand each other, then they are talking two different
languages. So, someone using French sign
language can't understand someone using Thai sign language.
This way we can say that if British deaf people can understand the signing
of another British deaf person, then it must be BSL. So some linguists have
looked for rules and have produced mathematical formulae. If 80% or more of the
words or signs are similar, then the variants are dialects of the same. If 80% to 36% of the
words or signs are similar, then the two languages belong to the same family. If the similarity is 12%
to 36%, then the languages belong to families of the same stock. If it is under 12% then
they are unrelated. Woodwards study of
the sign languages used in Costa Rica works like this.
However, it has problems. Some
of the Swadesh list is inappropriate for modern sign languages in the developed world. It contains words (like louse) which
are not core words in many cultures. It also
contains items that we will expect to be similar in sign languages because of visual
motivation, such as eye and nose.
Woodward had to make his own changes because of this. David McKee and Graeme
Kennedy have recently reported research on this concerning lexical comparisons of ASL,
Auslan, NZSL and BSL. Using a modified
version of the Swadesh list of vocabulary items, they compared the four
languages. If the signs were the same or
different by only one parameter (i.e. movement, handshape, location, orientation, or
two-handed or one-handed) they were classed as the same. They found that Auslan,
NZSL and BSL had a similarity of about 80%, when using the Swadesh list. However, this fell to about 64% when they used a
semi-random selection of signs. Certainly,
however, they found that Auslan and NZSL were more similar to each other than they were to
BSL. They also found that many Auslan signs
that were different from BSL were actually similar to old BSL signs that are
no longer commonly in use in Britain. The
Swadesh list and these mathematical models do not account for these examples of language
variation. So, using this rule of
80% is not so simple for the identification of separate languages. The linguistic similarities are sometimes much
less important than the social and political or religious ones. Auslan is very similar to BSL, but is given a
different name to show its different national identity.
This is also true for
some varieties of South African sign language. We
can also see examples in spoken languages. For
example, in India there are two languages that sound very similar but one is spoken by
Muslims and one by Hindus, and each is written using a different type of script, so they
are called two different languages, Urdu and Hindi. Moldovian
and Romanian are two languages that are almost identical when spoken, but Moldovian is
written in the Russian Cyrillic script and Romanian is written in our "Latin"
script. Sometimes it is very
important to say that two varieties are just two different ways of speaking the same
language, rather than two languages, for political reasons.
There are many examples of this in spoken languages. The English have
treated Broad Scots as just another form of English, even though it is very
different. (Have a look at some of Robert Burns poems some time and see how they
differ from Standard English). In
the past, politicians tried to persuade people living in Yugoslavia that they spoke one
language Serbo-Croat, even though the Serbs and Croats really speak very
different languages. This was an attempt to
unite the two groups of people (sadly, we can see that this didnt work). In another example, the language called Catalan
(used around Barcelona and the Balearic Islands) is now recognised as a language, but 50
years ago was just called a dialect of Spanish, because the government wanted the Catalans
to think of themselves as Spaniards. Deaf Peruvians who live
in the mountains sign differently from Deaf Peruvians who live on the coast (especially in
their capital city, Lima), and yet both are LSP (Peruvian Sign Language). There are many examples of countries where the
sign language used in different areas seem very different, but are called by one name, to
give the language a national identity. There
are some people in Britain who might have problems understanding the signing of another
British deaf person (or at least are aware that it is very different) but still feel it is
BSL, when they are thinking in terms of national identity. Perhaps this idea of
group identity explains why people might want to say that someone is using Signed English
rather than BSL (i.e. they are using English really). Perhaps using the term "Signed English"
makes them feel they are part of mainstream society.
Perhaps a teacher will accept a deaf child using "Signed English"
because at least the teacher can feel it is a type of English. This is completely a matter of attitude, because,
of course, in Signed English 100% of the
vocabulary is different from English! The question "When
is a sign language one sign language and not another sign language?" was investigated
recently in America. There was a study in
ASL, which showed how important attitude is in all this.
The researchers showed two groups of deaf people a video of a deaf person
signing. They told one group the person had
deaf parents, and told the other group the person had hearing parents. Then they asked both groups "Is that person
using ASL"? The group who thought the
signer had deaf parents said yes, and the others said no.
This means that the people here defined the language socially, not
linguistically. Sometimes people suggest
that you can only go by what the speakers believe. So
if someone says they speak English or signs BSL, you have to accept that they do, because
they identify with it. It's very difficult to
justify saying that BSL is one language, based on anything except agreement by the users. Signers from St. Vincent's in Glasgow, Manchester,
Wrexham, Belfast and Exeter might well find that they can't easily understand each other,
(or can only understand the variants because they know both variants) but everyone would
still say it's BSL. In some cases, the
language differences between groups of signers are enormous (eg in Ireland, and in Belgium
and Canada). In Ireland but the differences
do seem to be getting less as groups have more contact with each other, but not in
Belgium, where nationalism makes it worse, but we'll talk about that later. Most linguists speak a
majority language which is nationally (usually internationally) known, so there is less
problem of what is the language and what isn't, because there are dictionaries etc, but
many languages are not so simple to define. A
repeated problem in BSL sociolinguistics, then, is going to be whether something we
observe is BSL or not. If we decide that it
is not BSL, then we are going to have to ask what it is. Variation in language. The problem, as we have
said, is that languages vary. How do they vary? 1) Phonologically
- "Pronunciation" Traditionally,
linguistics has a term "pronunciation" that includes accent and intonation. A word or sign is pronounced differently, either
because of some regular phonological change, or because the sign is just made a little bit
differently. In an accent, a speaker or signer uses some sort of
regularly different way of speaking or signing. For
example the different way people say the vowel in cup
and grass, or the letters "th" like
in thing or thought. In
the Irish and Jamaican dialects of English, people often say "th" as a sort of
"t" with a lot of breath behind it, while in other forms of English, it is
pronounced as the th with the tongue between the teeth. The important thing to
remember is that accents have to be regularly different, at the phonological level. If a person has a certain vowel sound in cup, then they will also have it in but, butter, supper, fuss and enough. We know that signs in BSL
are pronounced using a handshape, at a location with a movement. Changing any of these, in a regular way, might be
seen as an accent. An accent in BSL might be
to sign all signs that normally have the fist with the thumb out (eg GOOD, PROUD, CRAFTY,
THOUSAND) as a fist with a bent thumb. This
does not seem to be the case in BSL. Some
people have claimed that Spanish signers have an accent if they sign certain signs with
little finger and ring finger extended or closed. The
linguist Rob Hoopes, working on ASL, has found that the extension of the little finger
(called pinky extension in the USA) is a regular phonological variation in
some ASL signers. There is no research on
this in BSL, but some British signers do also extend their little fingers. It is not clear if this phonological variant is
related in any way to the signers social identity, though. Some dialects may favour
a specific location or handshape more than others when they use their signs, but that is
not like having the same basic signs as other people with only the handshape or location
different. So, BSL does not seem to
have accents exactly like in spoken English. It
is possible that the intonation of some groups of signers might be defined by dialects,
e.g. using a larger or smaller signing space than usual, or signing in a loose way or a
tense way, or holding the hands in a certain way. This
means we might say that we see intonation differences, if people from Liverpool have a
tendency to produce signs that are very large and loose, or if older people often sign
with a small signing space. Perhaps we might say that
if a group of signers uses English mouth patterns, that is a different accent from a group
that does not. In all these cases, it is
important to remember that this pattern is spread regularly throughout the signer's
language, and that everyone in the same language community uses this same form. Another possibility is the use of the 'R' handshape
in some Northern Irish signs because of the Irish manual alphabet. This handshape is almost unused in British BSL
(apart from in HOPE), so we might say that's part of their accent because they have a
handshape that the rest of BSL doesn't usually use. Of course, BSL signers
might show traces of English accents in their mouth patterns but that is less of a BSL
accent than influence from a specific English accent. It doesn't seem to be
very easy to distinguish clearly between accent and intonation but there is no doubt that
we can say that BSL pronunciation does vary within the language. ? What
do you understand by the idea of "pronunciation"?
Give some examples of BSL
pronunciation that varies with different signers. 2) Word differences
- A speaker or signer uses different words or signs to mean the same thing, even though
they all use the same language. This is the most common,
noticeable difference because the words or signs are different. For example, different signs for colours are used
by different people around the country. Some
signs are mostly used by men and some by women. Some
only used by Catholics, and some only by Jewish people, and so on. There are also
multi-channel signs that are special to certain groups of people, eg the sign for existence
that is used in Scotland but much less in England. In BSL, the idea of
lexical difference might include the use of fingerspelling.
For example, some groups of people might sign words that other groups of
people would not. A sub-division of this
type of variance is that "idioms" can be different in varieties of the same
language. Certain phrases or idioms may be
special to certain group of signers or speakers. You might also want to
think about using signs that are obviously a translation of English words. For example, maybe using signs that have a
specific English meaning in a phrase, such as key issues, but using the sign
KEY (for a lock) or Side effects using SIDE and EFFECT.. Some signers may use this in their BSL, but others
would not. ? Give
some signs that you know are used by different signers to mean the same thing. 3) Grammatical
differences. In BSL the grammar of
different varieties is very similar, even when the vocabulary varies, on one level because
spatial grammar is very similar. However, there are some
differences, particularly in the amount of influence of English. a) some people might use
more English sign order, eg I SAW RED CAR vs CAR RED (there) I SAW (I) b) or they might use
English adverbs instead of BSL adverbs, eg LOOK-LONG-TIME vs LOOK LONG TIME, or WORK-HARD
vs WORK HARD. c) or they might use
manual signs instead of using non-manual grammar such as in placement or roleshift, eg
WOMAN SAY WANT ICE-CREAM? vs (Role-shift into woman's character by body-posture and facial
expression) WANT ICE-CREAM? ? Give
some examples of ways that BSL can vary grammatically. So, when we talk about
ways that language vary, we might want to think about any of these. ? Pause
now and recap, to make sure that you are clear about pronunciation differences, word
differences and grammatical differences within BSL. READING: Make sure that you read the article on the
influence of nationalism on the definition of sign languages. You should also read Chapter 2 in Wardhaugh,
especially pages 22 to 40.
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