BSL in its Social Context
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BSL in its Social Context
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Session 7: Sexuality, Ethnic and Spoken Language Identity, and
Religion
Signs linked to
sexuality The gay communities in
many language communities have their own dialect words, and often their own pronunciation. In Britain, this is especially true for gay men,
but rather less so for lesbians.
Some members of the
British gay community use language to create a feeling of identity, and to show that they
belong to the community. In English, the use
of a gay dialect called "polari" (or "Palare” or various other
spellings) was used extensively by gay men, especially in London, before the legalisation
of homosexuality in the late 1960s. The gay
men were seen by society as “criminals”, and they needed to feel that they had
their own cultural identity. After
homosexuality was legalised, polari became used less.
Maybe this was because more gay people could relax and feel that they were
more a part of mainstream identity. Although
the dialect is dying out now, there are many older men who know it well. Polari was an important dialect for creating
social identify and served to make the members of the language community feel like
insiders, and to ensure that non-speakers remained outsiders. There are still some words from polari used
regularly in the English used by gay men, and there are many words that would only really
be used by gay men because they refer to particular issues in the gay community. (If you are interested to know more, you can go to
www.nz.com/NZ/Queer/Polari/polari.html
and there are several useful websites that you can find by doing a search using “polari”. The only research on the
English of lesbians that I have been able to track down has been remarkable because the
researchers were unable to find any features that could mark a clear "lesbian
dialect" of English. There were a few
words particular to the lesbian community but not enough to justify calling it a “dialect”. The pronunciation of some
forms of gay men's English can easily be identified as "camp", and we might want
to say that this could be part of the gay dialect, too. A similar
"camp" pronunciation of BSL can be used by some gay men in the signing deaf gay
community. We must remember, of course, that
not all gay men are camp, or sign in a camp way. Although
research has not revealed a BSL equivalent of polari, research reported by Frances Elton
at Durham has identified a dialect that is called GSV (Gay Sign Variant). This contains many signs that are specific to the
gay signing community. Interestingly, some of
these signs seem to be the "opposite" of mainstream BSL signs. For example, reversing the direction of the palm
in BORING, or using the little finger instead of the index finger for signs, such as
HEARING. This might be a parallel to the
"backslang" that we see in polari. Other
signs contain a noticable feature of extending the little finger when signing, although
probably not enough for us to call it a regular feature of pronunciation. On this note, we should
be aware of the dangers of researching too closely or irresponsibly into gay signing. Many members of the gay community feel that it is
wrong for straight people to use their dialect. One
gay man has told me that some gay men are natural show-offs (!) and like other people to
admire their Gay Sign Variant, but do not want them to use the GSV. There are two signs LESBIAN, but one should be
used by straight people, or with straight people, and one sign should only be used by
lesbians, because they feel that this is part of their cultural identity. We need to ask why we are doing our research, if
we start making public a form of language that people want to keep for themselves. Signs Linked To
Ethnic Group
In America, there are
some dialects of ASL that are easily identifiable as "Black ASL" and others that
are clearly "White ASL". In
America, until the 1960s, Black and White children were all educated separately. This meant that the sign language used in the
schools for Black and White children were different.
The deaf clubs also have a tradition of being separate, although they are no
longer segregated by law. This history of
segregation has led to language variations based on racial group. The Black signers often know both the White and
Black varieties of sign, while the White signers often only know the White signs. Black deaf children in the USA were educated in
sign long after oralism was used in white schools. The dialects in BSL used
by Black and White signers appear to be less marked, or at least less public. There were relatively few Black people in Britain
until the 1950s, and the deaf children all went to "mixed" deaf schools, where
they were often in the minority, so they quickly learned the general "White"
dialect of BSL. This is not to say that
British Black and White signers sign exactly the same.
Some Black deaf adults have adopted a style of signing that marks their
identity as Black. Until recently there has
not been a strong Black deaf identity in Britain. People
either saw themselves as part of the Black community or the deaf community, but not both. Perhaps as a strong Black deaf identity grows, a
more noticeable Black dialect of BSL will emerge. The genes for deafness
present in the white British deaf community, are not noticeably in the British
Afro-Caribbean community. Consequently there
are fewer Black deaf children born to Black deaf parents than there are White deaf
children born to White deaf parents. We have
already seen that the passing of BSL down through generations is important. Perhaps if there were more Black "Deaf"
families, we would see a stronger difference between Black and White BSL. There are genes for
deafness present in the British Asian community. Consequently,
there is a relatively high proportion of deafness among British Asians. The British Asian community is still relatively
small and recent. However, perhaps in time,
we will come to see an emerging "Asian" variety of BSL. This will only happen though, if Asian deaf people
see themselves as a single, separate social group. It
is important to realise that “Asian” may be a label that other sectors of
British society impose on people from the Asian subcontinent but it may not be a useful
label. Asian people in Britain come from many
different countries, have many different home languages and belong to several different
religious and cultural groups. The same is
true of Britain’s “Black” population.
Sociolinguistics must be very careful of making divisions or communities
where they do not exist. We must be careful of
expecting Deaf people to have signs for things belonging to their ethnic culture. Ranjit Singh, a Deaf researcher from Leeds
University recently explained that there are plenty of signs that we might expect but
simply don’t exist. He said people
often expect him to have signs for different sorts of Asian food and clothing but that
there are none. Research is in progress
into the lives of Black and Asian deaf people in London.
Perhaps when they report their findings, linguists will have more of an idea
of these BSL dialects. This whole area has
enormous practical implications. Singh and
his research team (including Lesley Jones) found that many interpreters were unable to
cope with words that are common in Afro-Caribbean English like “hot comb”. Not only did they not have the signs, but they
also did not have the English concepts. In South Africa, the
signer's ethnic identity can have a big effect on the dialect of the signer. People classified as "Black" and
"Coloured" (that is, of mixed race) sign with a dialect that is influenced by
ISL (because Irish Dominican nuns founded schools there), as do some White Afrikaners. Other White people use a sign language related to
BSL, because many English speaking Protestant families sent their children to England for
education in the past (for example David Wright, the poet). Black and Coloured deaf children are also more
likely to be allowed to sign in school than the White children for whom the education is
"better" (that is, the schools are much better funded) and who are mostly taught
orally. Religious groups There are a few
recognisably different dialects in BSL based on religious identity. Again, there are good reasons for this, especially
the education that people had as children or the link that their religious beliefs have
with other social groups. One strong difference in
BSL is in Catholic and Protestant signing. The
signing of deaf British Catholics is strongly influenced by Irish Sign Language because
Irish monks and nuns provide education for deaf children that is suitable for Catholic
beliefs, and Irish-trained priests serve the Catholic communities in Britain. The Catholic signing uses many initialised signs
that are based on the Irish manual alphabet. Jewish signing has an
interesting history. There used to be a
school for Jewish deaf children in London. Because
the Jewish community keeps closely together, Jewish deaf people continued to use this
signing after they left school, and did not mix much with gentile deaf people. After the deaf school closed (in the early 1960s)
the Jewish School for the Deaf dialect began to decline and very few people know it now. The British Jewish school
for the Deaf was strongly oral. However, just
before the 2nd World War, several German Jewish deaf children were brought to safety in
Britain. These children were also educated
orally, but spoke German. There was a serious
communication problem in the school, and so some signing was permitted in the school. This signing, though, was used together with
spoken language so there are many signs that are either very iconic, or can only be
distinguished by the mouth. For example, the
days of the week all have the same sign but the mouth pattern shows which day of the week
it is. Today, younger Jewish
deaf people sign very differently from older Jewish deaf people. Their signing is often the same as “mainstream”
BSL used by other people of their age. Sara Lanesman has done
some research on this area and has a paper in preparation on it.
Muslim signing in BSL has
never been formally researched.
Certainly Britain's deaf
Muslims have their own signs for specifically religious items. Different religious groups do have special signs
that other people from other religions would not normally need. For example, Jewish deaf people have signs for
religious festivals like Channukah, and the Rabbi, and Hindu deaf people have their signs
for their different Gods and religious festivals. Different Spoken
Language Identities In BSL this is not a
major feature, as there is only one important national spoken language in Britain,
although it is worth remembering that some British deaf people's home language may not be
English or BSL but another language (such as Greek or Urdu). We do not know if this has any effect on the BSL
of these signers because there has been no research.
One recent development
has been the plans of some people in Wales to try to develop special features of signing
that can be used as a part of signed Welsh, rather than signed English. Most significantly, they are trying to develop
letters for the manual alphabet that represent the special clusters of letters we get in
Welsh words e.g. "ll", "ff", “dd” and "ch". I'm not sure that this is going to be a successful
development, but it does show that some people are aware of the effects of different
spoken languages, even in BSL In many other sign
languages, however, this is important. For
example there are dialects of ASL that are different depending if the deaf person's family
uses English or Spanish. In Canada, English
speaking deaf people use an identifiable version of ASL; French speaking deaf people use a
completely different dialect LSQ (Langue de Signes Quebequois). The two dialects are so different that they could
easily be called separate languages. In
Belgium, the sign languages used by the French-speaking community and the Flemish-speaking
community are also said to be very different. In
Nigeria, the sign languages are said to vary depending on the main tribal spoken language,
as they do in South Africa. Again, we can see
that a social identity is affecting the variety of signing that the people are using: this
time the social identity is which spoken language group they come from.
However, we must also be aware of people making mistakes when they say this sort of
thing. Remember, that sign linguists must
always be on guard against accepting things just because they sound sensible, rather than
checking them for themselves. Remember the
"Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax"? A
South African linguist called Debra Aarons is now investigating whether the sign languages
really do vary according to tribal language. Her
evidence so far suggests that the theory is false, and other factors, such as ethnic
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