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Sign Language Communities

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The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities

Abstract

The twenty-first century has brought a unique dynamic for Sign Language Communities (SLCs) as they respond to threats and opportunities resulting from changes in both their external and internal environments. This chapter discusses those changes, as well as policy and planning aimed at sign languages, and explains how linguistic rights of deaf signers heavily depend on interpreting services and why this is problematic. The current ideological climate means that linguistic human rights, educational linguistic rights, self-determination, and the right to physical integrity are paramount on SLCs’ agenda. While some aspects that affect SLCs are similar to other linguistic minorities, some are quite different and result from the fact that SLCs are also seen as people with disabilities. Particularly SLCs’ long history of dealing with attempts at medical normalisation and the current genetic discourse (and in some countries also practice) that questions their right to exist raise concerns about their long-term vitality.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Woll and Ladd (2003) use variables such as the societal attitudes towards deaf people and sign language, the size of deaf communities, and the availability of life choices to them in the majority society. This approach produces three general identification groups: oppositional (majority society’s negative attitude towards signlanguage reducing the availability of life choices), integrated (majority society supportive and life choices mostly available), and single (where everyone can sign or understand signing and life choices are the same for anyone).

  2. 2.

    www.ethnologue.com/ethnoblog/ted-bergman/why-are-sign-languages-included-ethnologue

  3. 3.

    https://wfdeaf.org/whoarewe

  4. 4.

    http://helgastevens.eu/userfiles/files/20160921%20Programme%20FULL%20Print.pdf

  5. 5.

    For a critique on the concept of Deaf Gain, see Kusters et al. (2015).

  6. 6.

    For an analysis and discussion of the CRPD’s impact on deaf people, see Batterbury (2012), De Meulder (2014), and Kusters et al. (2015).

  7. 7.

    See www.univie.ac.at/map-designbilingual/?l=en

  8. 8.

    www.uclan.ac.uk/research/explore/projects/sign_languages_in_unesco_atlas_of_world_languages_in_danger.php

  9. 9.

    See also Novic (2016).

  10. 10.

    www.slwmanual.info

  11. 11.

    www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+MOTION+B8-2016-1241+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN

  12. 12.

    https://wfdeaf.org/about-us/history/

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Namur, Namur, Belgium

    Maartje De Meulder

  2. Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Verena Krausneker

  3. Department of Languages & Intercultural Studies, School of Social Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

    Graham Turner

  4. Centre for Deaf Studies, School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

    John Bosco Conama

Authors
  1. Maartje De Meulder
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  2. Verena Krausneker
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  3. Graham Turner
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  4. John Bosco Conama
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maartje De Meulder .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Gabrielle Hogan-Brun

  2. Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Bernadette O’Rourke

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De Meulder, M., Krausneker, V., Turner, G., Conama, J.B. (2019). Sign Language Communities. In: Hogan-Brun, G., O’Rourke, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54066-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54066-9_8

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