New Thinking: British Sign Language
New Thinking: British Sign Language
Transcript
Introduction:
Naomi Paxton
Hello, this is the arts and Ideas podcast. I'm Naomi Paxton
and welcome to this episode of New Thinking. Part of our series looking at new
research in UK universities. Today we're exploring British Sign language and
asking questions about language learning and cognition. How do we acquire
languages and when? How important is sound when learning to read and write? How
do we use our bodies to communicate meaning? My guest today are Doctor Kate
Rowley, deputy director of the Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre
at UCL, and Doctor Gerardo Ortega, a lecturer in the Department of English
Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham. Also ed in the
studio by BSL interpreters Kal Newby and Susan Booth. There'll be a
transcription of our discussion available on the episode page. Kate, welcome,
and thank you for ing us.
Can we begin with the basics of BSL? When was signed
language first recorded and how did it develop and formalise?
Dr Kate Rowley, Susan Booth and Kal Newby
Languages generally begin when people congregate, so people
come together, and they begin to communicate with each other and BSL. It’s no
different when deaf people in Britain began to come together and forming
communities, that's where BSL began to emerge.
NP: And it was officially recognised as a language in the
UK by the government in 2003, is that right?
KR/SB & KN
That's correct. The government agreed that BSL is an
official language in 2003, but the BSL Act was only ed in 2022 last year,
so that gives us legal recognition of BSL.
NP: Are there books or illustrations in archives that can
be used to recreate or discover how deaf people communicated in, say, the 18th
century or the 19th century?
Yes, there are some records of BSL going back to the 15th
century, but I would say the modern BSL that's in use today began in the 1700s.
The first deaf school was established in Scotland in 1760. This was a private school,
and the first public school was set up in 1762. And there are some drawings and
illustrations that record some signs from that time, and some of those signs
are still in use today. Obviously, as does English sign languages change over
time, but there are still some of those old signs that we retain.
NP: And is there a written notation system for BSL as
it's sort of signed today. I'm thinking perhaps a bit like dance notation.
KR/SB & KN
It's important to that there are many spoken
languages around the world that don't have a written form, and BSL is the same
as those. It doesn't have one. However, there have been some notation systems
developed for purposes of linguistic research. Because it in days gone by, it
has been problematic to represent signed language in book form. However, with
the emergence of new technologies, we can show videos and photographs which we
weren't able to do in the past, and so these days we're much more likely to use
that than of the notation systems.
NP: Thank you. Tell us a bit about the research centre
you’re part of at UCL.
KR/SB & KN
Yeah, I work at the deafness cognition and Language research
centre. I'm now deputy director of DECAL. At DECAL, we conduct research into
psychology, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics. So we look at deaf people and
sign languages. We look at the way that languages are processed in the deaf
brain. The way that deaf people read and write, and we make comparisons between
deaf people and hearing people and what they do.
NP: And you've done a study on the impact of COVID on the
deaf community. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Presumably the visual
medium was great for communication in that way, but maybe less good for
community.
KR/SB & KN
I think COVID was really challenging for everybody, but one
big barrier that arose during COVID was the wearing of masks, which had a
really powerful impact on deaf people and the way we communicate in the wider
world because whether we speak or use sign language, we rely on the face to
gather most of our information. And so in the project we ran, there was a
survey asking people about their experiences. Deaf people generally said that
communication became extremely challenging throughout COVID because of the
wearing of masks. And what was worse was people who weren't able to consider
alternative ways to communicate. Some people were able to socially distance,
pull their mask down and carry on speaking, but others would continue to speak
behind the mask, which was very stressful for deaf people. Some people were
slightly more creative and were able to write things down or use gesture.
However, many deaf people reported feeling far more isolated during COVID.
NP: Your current research looks at language and literacy
development in deaf children, especially around the written word, and learning
to read. Can you tell us more about that research?
KR/SB & KN
We're currently undertaking a very large project looking at
language comprehension in deaf children and I'm working alongside Doctor
Patrick Rosenberg, who's a deaf teacher of the deaf who has an educational
doctorate. So, the two of us together are trying to recruit 300 deaf children
from the ages of four to 18, and we'll be looking at deaf children's
comprehension skill. In BSL and how that relates to their reading skill?
Because historically a lot of research has focused on spoken languages and
looking at deaf children's ability to acquire spoken languages and relating
that to their reading skill. However, there's a high numbers of deaf children
who use sign language, so it's important to relate that to reading skill too. I
can't report any results yet because we're still in the process of data collection
which is quite exciting because it takes us to many deaf schools and other
institutions where deaf children are.
Patrick is from the US originally and over there it was found that there
is a correlation between American Sign Language skill and literacy skill in
deaf children. And what's important is the acquisition of a sign language from
an early age, which in turn will the acquisition of literacy skill.
NP: And what's different about the way that deaf children
learn to read or are taught to read as opposed to their hearing counterparts?
KR/SB & KN
That's not easy to answer because deaf children are quite
diverse. If a child speaks, they will have a different pathway from a child who
uses sign language. But generally, research shows that it's important for deaf
children to have access to a language. Because you need prior knowledge in
order to learn to read. When we read, we extract meaning from the printed word.
And so we draw on our prior knowledge when we're reading text and if we don't
have language, if we don't have a first language, then it's very difficult to
learn to read because we have nothing to tie it to.
NP: Would it be correct to describe deaf people in the UK
as bilingual or perhaps multilingual in some cases with signed? And written
language as two distinct areas of expression and cognition.
KR/SB & KN
Yes, I would say the vast majority of deaf people are either
bilingual or multilingual. Living here in the UK, of course, it's important for
us to acquire English. We really need to do that in order to get through
education and communicate generally in life. However, deaf people also use sign
language and so many of us use both languages every day, and in fact there are
more. Bilingual hearing people around the world than monolinguals and so deaf
people just form a subset of that group.
NP: I wanted to ask about regional differences within BSL
in the UK as in spoken language. So you grew up in Cornwall. Does the deaf
community there have a Cornish accent when g, for example, or specific
signs unique to them?
KR/SB & KN
Accents in g is a little bit different to that found
in spoken languages. Accents in spoken languages has phonological variations,
so the same word is pronounced differently in different regions. For example,
Scottish people pronounced potato different from those living in the South of
England. For example. So phonological variation in sign is quite different. What
we see in sign is more lexical variation, so different regions will have
different signs for different colours, for example. So, in Cornwall we have the
colour purple, which I'm demonstrating like this, and that colour purple is
signed differently in other regions. So here I'm giving a few examples of the colour
purple, so we see different variations and there are other lexical variations
such as. If you think of the concept of bread roll. You have Barm, Cob and Bap
in spoken languages, so there are sometimes lexical variations found, but in
sign languages we more frequently will find the lexical variation than the
phonological variation.
NP: And are those taught as part of BSL for learners or
is that something you just learn when you can visit those communities?
KR/SB & KN
Both really. I'll take myself as an example. I grew up in
the deaf community and yes, part of that was in Cornwall. But generally, deaf
people do travel quite a lot. We have to venture further to find our community.
And so as a young child, my parents were also deaf, and they used to take me to
national rallies and regional rallies and through meeting deaf people from
other communities. I would acquire those signs from other regions.
I'd like to talk a little bit about the work I did in my
PhD, because I think that's quite important. I was looking at how deaf adults
recognise and read words and comparing them to hearing adults. In particular, I
wanted to look at the way that deaf people process phonological information
because hearing children are taught phonics in school, which means they're
taught the relationship between letters and sounds. So the S sounds like, SSS
etc And all of that helps children to
recognise words. So I wanted to see whether deaf people use the similar information
to recognise words, and generally it was found that deaf people can, and they
do, but they do it less compared to hearing people. But that doesn't impact
their reading. My groups of deaf and hearing people were matched for reading
level. Also what I found was deaf people were in fact more efficient readers.
They were faster and more accurate across a number of different reading tasks.
And that isn't just my study that's found that this has been found in other
studies, too. So that tells us that if deaf people have early access to
language and good access to education. Then they actually become very strong,
efficient readers, and in fact can be more efficient than hearing people. Well,
if you think about it, that's not surprising because reading is a visual task
and as deaf people, we read every day we access television through subtitles.
We communicate with the wider world through the written form of language, and
so there's no reason why we shouldn't be more efficient at it. And this is
important. Because literacy levels generally across the deaf population are
lower compared to hearing people, and people have attributed that to our
deafness in the past. But it's not deafness per se. It is lack of access to
language and lack of access to good education. And so if you put both of those
things in place. Then there's no reason for deaf people not to be really good
readers.
NP: Well, that sounds fascinating. I'm I was going to ask you about education
actually. Are there still plans for a GCSE in BSL on the horizon? I would have
loved that at school. I have to say, personally, I would have loved to do
that.
KR/SB & KN
Well, yes, plans are afoot currently to create the
curriculum for a BSL GCSE. So that will at some point be available to be taught
in school, and that's really positive. The deaf community would like more
hearing people to be fluent in BSL. However, we don't currently have enough BSL
teachers so there are some concerns about who's going to undertake the teaching
of the BSL GCSE and there's a risk that hearing people will end up being the
ones to teach. DSL at GCSE level. Now if you're fluent in that language, that
may be fine, but often you find hearing people acquiring BSL to level one or
two, which is very basic, and we've seen it happen in BSL in the past, where
hearing people with low levels of the language fluency try to teach it. And
then students learn the incorrect form or a disfluent form, and deaf people
lose control of the way that their language is transmitted to the wider
community.
NP:
Thank you so much. Kate, Kal and Susan, I'm going to
bring in Gerardo Ortega now, who works at the University of Birmingham but is
ing us today via zoom from Mexico. Hello, Gerardo
Gerardo Ortega
Hi. Hello. How are you doing? Thank you. Very much for the
invitation.
NP:
No, it's lovely to have you here. Thank you for ing us.
And you did your PhD at the at DCAL at
UCL. But what first sparked your research interest in BS?
GO:
And well, it was a very interesting journey. I was doing a master’s
in applied linguistics. I was thinking that I would become a translator of
novels. But then, when I was taking a module on First language acquisition, so
that is like how is the children learn their language. One of the professor who
was teaching showed us videos of babies learning how to sign when they were
exposed to American Sign Language, and for me there was absolutely fascinating
and an absolute milestone in my career. This for me, it was just fascinating to
see how children could start moving their bodies for communicative purposes,
producing signs and slowly articulating specific categorical handshapes. And
then I just ditch the whole idea of becoming a translator of fiction, and I just
want to focus on sign languages, and I've been doing that over 20 years now.
NP:
Was that your first experience of sign language or did you
already have experience of working with deaf people before?
GO:
No, that was my first experience I . A teacher was
showing us videos of a parent, a deaf parent and telling the story some Peter
Pan story to their infant and the father was g in. ASL and the baby was
replying back in some form of slow baby g. And I just thought it was absolutely
mesmerising. So, for me, this was a really important moment because it showed
that humans have the capacity for language with either speech or also with their bodies through
linguistic expressions in sign languages.
NP:
And your research has included, I think, Mexican, Turkish
and Dutch Sign language as well as BSL. And you've looked extensively at
gestures and signs used by hearing people with no knowledge of formal sign
language. Can you tell us a bit more about that work?
GO:
Well, first of all, I think that one of the most important
things that we have to learn or this is something that we have learned over
studying language over the last few decades is that language is multimodal. We
have this idea, that false knowledge of language, that language equals speech.
It's actually quite wrong. Language is multimodal, meaning that we use our
bodies also to communicate, so we as speakers, we also produce gestures, and
those gestures could be the foundations I think
to learn a sign language, for instance.
So we have been looking at gestures and sign languages and
because they have some similarities, we know that sign languages are real
linguistic conventions with grammatical rules, and that emerge from as Kate was
saying, through the interaction of deaf communities. But speakers will also
produce gestures and we have been looking at gestures and just to try to
understand a little bit, how is it that languages can emerge or how is it that
people can learn a sign language in one line of research. We are interested in
looking at whether the gestures that hearing people produce can be used for
them to start learning a sign language.
Just to give you an example, if I am learning, let's say my
native language is Spanish and if I'm going to learn English there are going to
be some words that are going to be easy for me to learn so things like nation
or international because my Spanish, my first language has similar words nation
for example. So those are those words are called cognates. They are words that
look the same in the first language and in the second language. So when I learn
a second language, I can understand nation because it has a very similar
equivalent in my first language, Nacion
The thing that we've been doing in this project is how
hearing people learn a sign language as a second language. It's asking whether
the gestures that we use in our everyday life could be used as some form of
cognates to learn a sign language as a second language.
NP:
So can you give us a physical example? Yes, I want to try
one of these perhaps.
GO:
Absolutely. So I'm going to ask you, if you were to gesture
the concept of drinking. What would you do?
NP:
So, I suppose my instinct would be to imagine that I'm sort
of miming holding a cup, and then I would, move it up to my mouth as if I'm
sort of miming pouring liquid down my throat, I think.
GO:
Exactly. And what about a butterfly?
NP:
Oh, I think I might put my thumbs together and then sort of
waggle my fingers as if the thumbs were a body and then the fingers were wings.
I think that's what I'd do.
GO:
Very good. Exactly. So, very good. Well, that is your
gesture, right? Like, it is clear this
is your gesture, right?
Like this is the gesture that you spontaneously produce
because it's a multimodal communicator in your speech, but you can also use
gesture, and these gestures can represent the meaning that you're trying to
convey. In this case the meaning - the drinking or a butterfly. It turns out
that in many sign languages some of these gestures look very similar to the
Conventionalized linguistic sign. So for example in BSL designed for drinking.
And the sign for butterfly is something like this. Yeah. So this is the idea
that we're trying to investigate that we have carried out several studies and
we have found that actually the gestures that people use in their everyday life
can be helpful, can be like an important stepping stone. So that they can learn
the sign language. We have seen that these signs, for example drink and
butterfly are easier to learn and easier to understand, and their meaning is
more accessible to hearing people. Because they are very similar to the
gestures that they produce and we have carried out experiments looking at the
electrical electrophysiological signature of the brain. Meaning how the brain
responds when it observes signs that look like their gestures, and we can see
that the brain can recognise them. This is not the case for instance, in cases
that there's a difference. So for example, we have found that for the gesture,
if hearing people want to produce a gesture for typing, sorry for laptop, they
would do something like this, representing the action of typing, but the sign.
I mean, for example, in sign language of the Netherlands, where we carried out
this study, is something like this. So you can see that there's difference. So
in this case the brain doesn't recognise the brain is like what's going on.
This is not exactly what I have in mind. This is not exactly how I would
represent laptop, but I will accept it and I will. Learn it so. When we say
we're calling this manual cognates these gestures. But look very similar to the
sign and we think that they facilitate sign language acquisition at least for a
subset of science.
NP:
And tell us about iconicity. What do you mean by that term
and how can you unpack that for us?
GO:
Yes. So this iconicity in very basic is we refer to
the resemblance between the any kind of form and the meaning it represents. So
in this case in these examples that I have given you, the sign drink is iconic.
Because it reflects how I hold the cup. The signed butterfly represents the
wings of the butterfly. And this has been a very, very important domain of
study over the last decade, I would say, because we think that this is a really
important aspect in language in all modalities and it could be useful for
language learning. And we think that it's important also for the emergence of
language. So how is it that the first humans started producing language? We
really think that iconicity was a really, really important factor that allow
people to start communicating. So the idea of iconicity is that if we imagine
that human beings without any linguistic system, without any language, how do
you communicate with another person? How do you express meaning? We think that
I could just do with it too. So for example, if I want to communicate to my
interlocutor. The meaning of butterfly or maybe deer. So how do I do it? Well,
I'm going to start representing deer. I'm going to put like my hands on my head
to represent the antlers and I'm probably going to point so. This is if my
interlocutor, if my communicative partner knows what a deal looks like, and I start
imitating recreating that form with iconicity, my interlocutor is going to
understand. So there is a very big body of work that starts looking at how
iconicity may have played a role in language emergence and it seems that it's a
really, really important tool, as Kate was saying, we do not have any written form of sign
languages and humans have been using language for thousands and thousands of
years. So these are just speculations and we run experiments in the lab asking
people to spontaneously produce gestures to as a proxy of how early humans
could, could have started language emergence.
NP:
Just a glimpse back into those previous centuries. I was
fascinated to see your breakdown of how the bodies used in gesture. So you
said, or I think in one of your talks you described them as through acting,
representing tracing and personification, and that the acting strategy was so
dominant. Why do you think that is? Is that the most immediately?
GO:
Yes, this is something that we, my collaborators and I have
been observing in many sign languages. We have seen it in Turkish Sign
language. We have seen in sign language in the. Netherlands we're currently.
Running a project comparing British and German Sign language and we can see
that the acting strategy is the most prominent, and by this acting strategy
remain when the body represents the body performing any kind of action so the
action of drinking, the action of running, the action, of throwing. We can see
that this is a very useful strategy because it can extend its meaning.
So for example, the sign to eat in British Sign language represents
iconically somebody bringing food to the mouth. But interestingly enough, this
has this form allows to create semantically related meanings. For example, this
could also mean snack. It could also mean breakfast. It could also mean buffet.
So this is a very useful tool because languages don't really like to create.
Many words they tend to. Use one label and then extend their meanings. So for
example like in English we can talk about anchor. I can talk about the physical
anchor, right? Like something that holds a boat. But I can also talk about it
in a metaphorical sense. And my church is my anchor kind of thing. Or my
partner is my anchor. So I'm not talking that my partner is like a physical
metal thing that holds me down, I am using it in a more metaphorical sense. So
we can say that sign languages also tend to use iconicity. And rather than creating
new linguistic , they are economical and efficient, and they use the same
form to create additional meanings and the acting strategy. When the body
represents, the body seems to be a very important strategy to do it. We, as I
was telling you at the beginning of this section, we're multimodal and we exploit
our bodies so it makes sense that the linguistic system employs the body as well
to create language.
NP:
And have there been any misconceptions around BSL learning
that you've been able to or you'd like to challenge with this?
GO:
Yes, well, many. my main focus of work is how hearing people
learn a sign language as a second language. As Kate was saying, is this a
really, really important thing? It has a lot of societal importance because
hearing people who learn a sign language are the communicative. Rich written
deaf and hearing communities. So this is really, really important and some of
the misconceptions that are out there is that sign languages, that there is one
sign language for example. And that is terrible. Being wrong, there are many, many
sign languages. Different regions have
different sign languages. American Sign Language is different from British Sign
language. Mexican Sign Language is different from Spanish Sign language.
Australian Sign Language is very similar to British Sign Language, so there is
a common misconception that there is a sign language. But humans have the
capacity of communicating socially, and that's the community that is going to
develop their sign language. Another misconception is that sign languages are
very difficult to learn. And yeah, like, why would that be the case? No, it is
like what I tell in my in my lectures with them to my students is that there
are certain things that are difficult in every language. Gen my partner is
learning Spanish at the moment and he has a really difficult time learning the
gender system, but some other things are very easy. Right. And the same in
English and British Sign language is exactly the same. Some things are very
simple, but some others are really complicated, executing like very specific
handshapes to me sometimes is really challenging, like this is the sign for A9.
And it took me a long time to learn how to flex. My pinkie finger. So there are
difficulties, but as any other language, linguistics systems are efficient
communicative system that can be learned.
NP:
So where can people find out more about your research? I
think. Or am I right thinking your research videos from the Dutch project are
open access?
GO:
Yes, exactly. So we collected a database of gestures and I
am very proud of this project because you know, if you want to learn French,
you can go to a French dictionary or if you want to learn English, you can go
to the, you know, any grammar system or in the some of the words that DECAL has
produced. If you want to know the sign for some words you can go to the BSL
sign bank that DECAL has produced so there are some resources out there. But
what is the gesture for butterfly? There is no dictionary for gestures, so and
these databases that we collect, we basically asked 20 hearing people from the
Netherlands with no knowledge of any sign language to spontaneously produce
gestures, and we filmed them and we were record them and we analysed them and
now we have what we think is probably the first gesture Dictionary of the Dutch
community. So yes, that that can be found in in my websites and the website of
my collaborators in the Netherlands. And yeah, they can be used for many purposes
NP:
Thank you so much, Kate. I'd like to bring you back in.
If, if that's all right, given how many different collaborators you are working
with and how much new research is emerging in this area, particularly from deaf
academics who have been underrepresented in the Academy, what opportunities are
there really to increase the visibility and the learning around BSL? Through
centres like DECAL and the national and international projects, they're part of.
KR/SB & KN
I think over the years we've learned a lot more about deaf
people, sign language. We've also learnt so much about human cognition. How the
brain processes language, and I think that's really striking about DECAL. One
of the earlier studies was neuroscience, looking at where the brain processes
sign language and spoken language, and we found that the same regions of the
brain process both sign and spoken languages. So it's important to look at deaf
people if we want to understand more about human cognition, then we should look
at deaf people.
With regards to language learning or atypical language, so
people who've had stroke or dementia looking at deaf people to see the impact
on their language use that kind of work has a greater and wider impact on the
whole community. And you're right that deaf people historically have not been
well represented in academia and sign language research in the UK only began in
the 1970s. Over in the early years, deaf people were not very involved and
certainly not leading. Some of the pioneers of sign language research, such as Bensey
Wall? and Jim Kyle, did work in close collaboration with deaf people like
Gloria Pullen, Lorna Alsop. And so they developed some really interesting
research with deaf people involved and without those deaf people there hearing
researchers would not have understand as much as they do about sign languages
because we use the languages every day so it's important for us to be involved in
the research. Now that deaf people have much greater access to higher education
because of the prevalence of sign language interpreters and greater levels of
funding to pay for interpreters means that deaf people are out there with PhDs
and they do lead their own projects. I think sometimes it's interesting that
deaf people choose slightly different topics to explore than hearing people. So
in days gone by hearing people seemed fascinated about sign language processing. Oh, they would be really intrigued by the way
deaf people process language. Whereas deaf people really want to see change,
they want their research to have a tangible impact on the communities. T hey're
not just kind of investigating deaf people as subjects. They're looking at
finding ways that we can tangibly improve the situation of deaf people in the
community.
NP:
There's recently been some very prominent examples of
deaf people in mainstream popular culture. Of course, the actress Rose Aileen
Ellis and her success on Strictly Come Dancing, but also adult learners like
the comedian John Bishop, who headlined a night of deaf Stand up comedy on TV.
There's been learning BSL to help his son, who's experiencing ongoing hearing
loss, or even recent Love Island contestant Tasha Gori. Does this visibility
help promote the learning of BSL or does it sometimes reinforce some
misconceptions or stereotypes as well?
KR/SB & KN
I think it's all good. I think it's really important for
people to see different representations of deaf people on television and in the
media from what we've seen with Tasha, Rose, John Bishop. I think from those 3
examples you can see that deaf people are diverse. As Gerardo said, it's a
multilingual community. Language is a multilingual multi sorry multi modal and
so when we see Rose on Strictly speaking and g sometimes and sometimes
just g, sometimes speaking. I think it's important to show people like
Rose are out there, but it's important that we also realise not everybody does
the same thing. That, as deaf people, we have different reasons to choose how
we communicate.
NP:
And for you, what are the big questions in BSL today?
KR/SB & KN
I think there are two main things. One is growing numbers of
people wanting to learn BSL and I mentioned earlier my concern about who is
going to go on to teach BSL and what the quality of that teaching will be like.
Because often if non fluent signers are teaching a language, then that language
is not going to look the same as when it's used by native s. So we need to
get deaf people teaching in schools and universities. The other thing is deaf
education and this has been an ongoing challenge for many, many years. And it's
a huge problem because we're still seeing deaf children leaving school with low
level GCSEs compared to their hearing peers, the National Deaf Children's
Society in 2019 or 20 made a survey showing that deaf children are leaving
school with fewer. GCSEs. But deafness is not a learning disability, and
research has shown that deaf people can become very good at written languages.
But there are other barriers when it comes to education. And unfortunately,
deaf people historically have not been leaders in educational policy. But deaf
people have lived experience of being deaf and they know how it works. But they
haven't been included in the development of policy and I would really love to
see that completely turned on its head. And be led by deaf people.
NP:
Gerardo, can I ask that same question to you from your
perspective? Are those similar large questions that you're concerned about in
of education and also access to learning and to correctly structured
learning.
GO:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I have exactly the same
concerns Kate and I have two additional ones. One is very, very applied. My
concern is like how is it that we can ensure the creating good educational
tools to become a good teacher. So sign language to understanding how is it
that the human mind can learn a sign language as a as a second language as
effectively and as efficiently as possible? So that then we can speed up all
these communities, hearing communities to learn sign language. This is really,
really important. I recently had the experience, We had a deaf intern working in our projects and one
day she expressed to us that she just could not find BSL interpreters for her
lectures. She's doing a programme in the University of Birmingham but there are
just not enough interpreters and she showed us all her lectures, all her schedule and her
timetable. And there were so many gaps. And she was just absolutely
heartbroken, and she was sad. And she was so stressed and our colleagues who
work on sign languages in our linguistics department - we had to kind of roll
our sleeves and try to make things happen in ing different people. But the shortage of sign language qualified
with good level of BSL. Interpreters is really, really striking. So encouraging
people, hearing people to learn some language and understanding the mechanisms
on how to efficiently learn the sign language as a second language is as primordial
for me.
NP:
Kate, I wanted to ask you, how can hearing researchers
best their deaf colleagues in a university environment?
KR/SB & KN
I think it's important that deaf and hearing people work
together. Hearing people can be really important allies of deaf people. Access
to the government's access to policy makers can be conducted by hearing
researchers because they historically have much stronger networks. Deaf people
now are beginning to break into that. But we break into it through having hearing
allies. And we need to be careful that hearing people actually bring deaf
people to the fore and get us to relay our own messages in those fora. I think
that's vitally important, too.
NP:
Well, sadly, we have to draw this discussion to a close
for now, but I wanted to ask both Kate and Gerardo. What's your favourite sign
in BSL and why Kate? I'll come to you first
KR/SB & KN
I have two actually.
NP:
Right.
KR/SB & KN
Am I allowed two?
NP:
You are allowed two.
KR/SB & KN
The first one is a sign for metaphor, because it's quite a
complex sign. Some people struggle to use that sign, but I just think it's
wonderful. It's visually beautiful, and the other sign is one that I think is
funny is this, which looks like eyes popping out of your head and it means that
you're shocked or greatly surprised. And I always laugh when people express
that sign because it's just quite comical. So they're my 2 favourites.
NP:
Oh, that's amazing. Kal, would you mind or Susan, would
you mind describing the metaphor sign for us?
SB & KN
You start with two hands, one in front of the other.
Open with the thumbs down and then they close and as they close as the fingers
close onto the thumb, the hands swap places one in front of the other.
NP:
OK, I will practise. Everybody, let's continue. Gerardo, what's
your favourite? Now you are allowed too, but if you must have two, you are
allowed to. The precedent has been set.
GO:
Well, thank you very much.
I have to say that I also love metaphor, especially because.
It really represents his meaning it's
replacing, say, one thing for the other. So it's quite iconic and because
iconicity is my topic, I have two also signs, but they're also very related.
And I think it's really telling about like iconicity and so on. It's communication.
I like it because it has a lot of
beautiful elements. It's see it kind of shows communication, it's iconic in the
sense that it represents the back and forth between two people. And the second
one is communication breakdown. So that's why I like it. Because it actually
really represents what happens when there is no engagement in communication. So
you have communication but it just doesn't reach your interlocutor. So I think
that this is a really interesting sign because it captures the communication.
It's a two way street. It happened between
two people, so it's fluid and it's efficient. Then it goes back and forth. But
if it doesn't. It breaks down -communication breakdown, I think. This just is
not represented in English, but in in BSL it's shown like beautifully
iconically. So there you go.
NP:
That's a very brilliant way to bring this to a close. Thanks
to my guests, Kate Rowley and Gerardo Ortega, and also to our interpreters, Kal
Newby and Susan Booth, my producer Belinda Naylor and studio manager Bob
Nettles. You can find links to all their work on the podcast show notes. This
episode is one of a series of conversations focusing on new research in UK
universities. Produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research
Council, part of UKRI. There's more on the website of the AHRC and on the
website for the Free thinking programme on BBC Radio 3, where there's a play
list called new Research, including a recent episode all about language loss
and revival. If you're interested or more perspectives on deafness, cheque out
BBC Radio 3's The essay series entitled My Deaf World. If you don't want to
miss an. Episode of this programme. Sign up for the BBC Arts and Ideas Podcast
and we'll bring you new thinking about history, literature, language and the
ideas which shape the world we live in. Thank you and goodbye for now.
