What happens to Indigenous African Sign Languages? Celebrating International Mother Language Day

This is not kung fu: Understanding the linguistics of sign language (Part 1)

I was not a fan of kung fu movies before 2016. I only remember watching passionately The Journey to the West as a child. If you did not watch Shifu 😂 then your childhood wasn't fun. Now I have to add kung fu movies to my movie list because academic hubby prefers it over other movies, and Bruce Lee is one of his favourite actors. One of the unique features of kung fu is the punches and the hand movement. In all the kung fu movies I have seen, the actors are very skilled with their body movement and hand movement. A missed punch can be fatal you know. 

                                                Journey to the West 

"Bruce Lee" was one of the names I gained in my former Department because of my association with sign language linguistics and interpretation. Bruce Lee does kung fu and I am a sign linguist. We don't perform the same task. I sign but he throws punches. While kung fu is for self defence, sign language is a full-fledged human language with all the features of a natural human language. Sign language users do not throw punches in the air. They communicate with their hands and body and this communication is received by watching not listening. 

                                                The sign COVID-19 (Signer- Marco Nyarko)

In recent years, some people have found it interesting to represent sign language and sign language interpreters with funny memes and interesting descriptions (1). Just like I was referred to as Bruce Lee, many interpreters face social media trolls as if their signing is to entertain but not to communicate. In other places, interpreters have been praised for their magical ways of signing without crediting the beauty of sign languages (2). On the other hand, many deaf people in different places in Africa have had to learn to "talk" because most hearing people cannot learn sign language to communicate with the Deaf. The lack of interest to document and research on sign languages in Africa has led to the extinction of most indigenous African sign languages (3).

Deaf  people and sign language users are not thrilled about their languages being used for comic relief. However, to most people, all signs are just like kung fu, throwing hands in the air and making weird faces. This belief is a misnomer and a big fallacy. Although the history of sign language research is recent compared with research on spoken languages, sign linguists in recent years have demonstrated with evidence the different linguistic features of sign languages. The general features of human languages are applicable to sign languages (e.g. Productivity/creativity, visual-manual/ vocal auditory, arbitrary/iconic, displacement, learnability, discreteness, cultural transmission etc..... These features will be discussed in subsequent blog posts in relation to their manifestations in sign languages).

Further, different sign languages exist in different countries, geographical locations and some sign languages have dialects (Oh yes!). It is therefore wrong to think or even believe that all sign languages are the same. We have different sign languages with different linguistics backgrounds. Sign languages have rules and users rely on these rules in communication. There are general rules and language specific rules. For example, whereas the hands, the face and the body are general to all sign languages, their representations tend to be different depending on what is permitted in a particular sign language. 

For now, remember that sign languages are full-fledged human languages and they can be described linguistically. 

Don't confuse sign languages with kung fu. Don't make fun of sign language interpreters as though they are entertainers and not communicators. Finally, I am a sign linguist and not a kung fu practitioner. 

If you want to know more about African sign languages, please I suggest the conference below to you. It is free to participants and it will be on zoom. 

https://old.linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-2688.html

Remember to post your comments and questions. 

                Picture with Adamorobe signers (including hearing signer, James in red shirt and black trouser) and the late Francis Boison, former President of Ghana National Association of the Deaf (GNAD) and a former tutor of sign language at the University of Ghana (in red shirt and Khaki shorts)

References

1. Hou, L., & Octavian, R. (2020). (2020). Sign Languages as Disaster Entertainment.website, June 19, 2020. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1444. Anthropology News.

2. Brown, R. L. (2020, August 30). How 2 Sign Language Interpreters Became Unlikely Pandemic Stars. National Public Radio (NPR).

3. Asonye, E., Edward., M & Asonye, E.E. (2020). Linguistic genocide against development of signed languages in Africa. In African Languages in Time and Space: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Akinbiyi Akinlabi @ 60! (pp. 337-359)