Rachel McKee

Phonological variation and change in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages: The location variable

ABSTRACT In this study, we consider variation in aclass of signs in Australian and New ZealandSignLanguagesthatincludesthesigns THINK , NAME ,and CLEVER .Intheircitationform,these signs are specified for a place of articulation at or near the signer’s forehead orabove, but are sometimes produced at lower locations. An analysis of 2667 tokenscollected from 205 deaf signers in five sites across Australia and of 2096 tokenscollected from 138 deaf signers from three regions in New Zealand indicates thatlocation variation in these signs reflects both linguistic and social factors, as alsoreported for American Sign Language (Lucas, Bayley, & Valli, 2001). Despitesimilarities, however, we find that some of the particular factors at work, and thekinds of influence they have, appear to differ in these three signed languages.Moreover, our results suggest that lexical frequency may also play a role. An earlier version of this article, reporting on a subset of the Australian Sign Language data, waspublished by Gallaudet University Press (Schembri, Johnston, & Goswell, 2006). The illustrations inthis article were produced by Shaun Fahey. This research was supported by Australian ResearchCouncil (Grant LP346973) under the Linkage Projects Scheme to the University of Newcastle andthe Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children, by a Marsden Grant from the Royal Society of NewZealand to the Deaf Studies Research Unit at Victoria University of Wellington, as well as by theEconomic and Social Research Council of Great Britain (Grant RES-620-28-6001), and theDeafness, Cognition, and Language Research Centre. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance andsupport of Ceil Lucas, Bob Bayley, and Barbara Horvath, and thank the four anonymous reviewersfor their feedback on this article. In Australia, Julia Allen, Kevin Cresdee, Patti Levitzke-Gray,Stephanie Linder, and Kim Pickering acted as our deaf community contact people. Robert Adam,Breda Carty, Donovan Cresdee, and Brent Phillips provided useful input, and Darlene Thorntonassisted with data coding. We are grateful to the staff at the Deaf Society of New South Wales, DeafEducation Network, Renwick Centre, the Thomas Pattison School, the Western Australian DeafSociety, the Deaf Can Do (South Australia), the Victorian Deaf Society, and the Deaf ServicesQueensland for assistance during data collection. In New Zealand, Sonia Pivac, Margaret Bailey,Linda Allen, Ripeka Morgan, Pam Witko, Annette Scott, Rachel McMillian, Darryl Alexander, JoyceFerguson, and Patty Still acted as deaf community contact people. George Major and Sarah Fraser-Clark assisted with data coding. We are especially grateful to the many deaf people across Australiaand New Zealand who participated in this study.

Variable “subject” presence in Australian Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language

This article reports the findings of parallel studies of variable subject presence in two closely related sign language varieties, Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). The studies expand upon research in American Sign Language (ASL) (Wulf, Dudis, Bayley, & Lucas, 2002) that found subject pronouns with noninflecting verbs to be more frequently unexpressed than expressed. The ASL study reported that null subject use correlates with both social and linguistic factors, the strongest of which is referential congruence with an antecedent in a preceding clause. Findings from the Auslan and NZSL studies also indicated that chains of reference play a stronger role in subject presence than either morphological factors (e.g., verb type), or social factors of age, gender, ethnicity, and language background. Overall results are consistent with the view that this feature of syntactic variation may be better accounted for in terms of information structure than sociolinguistic effects.

The Construction of Deaf Children as Marginal Bilinguals in the Mainstream

Abstract The political discourse of Deaf ethnolinguistic identity has empowered Deaf people in recent decades to deconstruct a pathological model of deafness and the deficit pedagogy that centres on acquisition of speech and social assimilation. The engagement of Deaf community members in consultation and employment in the New Zealand (NZ) education system has progressed the ideological recognition of Deaf claims for a bilingual identity and pedagogy in the education arena. However these priorities sit uneasily within the special education discourse which assumes an individual needs-based approach to accommodating diverse learners in regular school settings. The recognition of sign language and Deaf experience as valid cultural capital raises questions about the sociolinguistic status and educational needs of deaf children individually enrolled in mainstream schools, contexts which do not currently afford the interactional conditions for a sign bilingual education. Based on a larger study of deaf children in NZ mainstream primary schools, this paper analyses an illustrative case study of a 10-year-old deaf boy with a cochlear implant, to critically consider the extent to which mainstreamed deaf learners are constructed as potential bilinguals in the discourse that defines and addresses their needs. Analysis shows this learner to be positioned as a marginal bilingual or defective monolingual by the aggregation of beliefs, decisions, interactions and resources that construct his educational context. Finally, the paper reports the vision of Deaf informants working in the mainstream school system for changing learning outcomes, from a construct of deaf children as members of a collective with a heritage of cultural adaptations that should inform appropriate educational responses.

What's So Hard About Learning ASL?: Students' & Teachers' Perceptions

This descriptive study surveys 12 teachers and 72 students of ASL for their perceptions of difficulty in learning ASL as a foreign language. Students and teachers rate the difficulty of various linguistic structures in ASL. Results show that while they generally agree on which aspects are the most difficult to learn, teachers consistently rate the level of difficulty more highly than students. Students and teachers also talk about problematic sociolinguistic or affective aspects of learning ASL, such as overcoming cultural inhibitions, learning to interact with Deaf people, and the attitudes and motivations of ASL learners. The respective benefits and disadvantages of Deaf and hearing teachers are examined from the points of view of students and teachers.

Motives and outcomes of New Zealand sign language legislation: a comparative study between New Zealand and Finland

The medicalized interpretation of deafness has until recently seen the rights and protections of sign language users embedded in disability law. Yet the rights and protections crucial to sign language users centre predominantly on matters of language access, maintenance and identity. Legislators, motivated by pressure from sign language communities and in response to international human rights laws, have begun to enact statutes that include provisions pertaining to sign language. The New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006 (NZSL Act 2006 hereafter) made NZSL an official language but created minimal enforceable rights or obligations. This paper explores the significance of this legislation both in New Zealand, in comparison with the Māori Language Act 1987, and internationally, in comparison with the legislative situation in Finland. Finland is considered to be a leader in sign language user rights. Similarities between New Zealand and Finland such as geography, population size, type of government and economy provide for a comparative study. This paper considers whether the NZSL Act 2006 fulfilled the intention of Parliament and the desire of the Deaf community to make a material difference to accessing citizenship through NZSL, particularly in education, or whether there were possible non-community motives for the NZSL Act 2006 that prevented it from fulfilling its potential.

Numeral Variation in New Zealand Sign Language

Lexical variation abounds in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) and is commonly associated with the introduction of the Australasian Signed English lexicon into Deaf education in 1979, before NZSL was acknowledged as a language. Evidence from dictionaries of NZSL collated between 1986 and 1997 reveal many coexisting variants for the numbers from one to twenty in NZSL. This article reports on an empirical investigation of how the use of variants for numerals is associated with social factors of age, region, and gender. Results confirm that age group is the strongest factor in variation and that region also plays a role. The analysis of illustrative cases of number variation reveals so-ciolinguistic processes of social differentiation and changing lexical usage in the NZSL community. Findings provide comparative data on aspects of number variation reported in the closely related British Sign Language.