Session 2

How do we know if we have varieties of one language or if we have two different languages? Is it easy to say what is BSL and what is not?

A very rough definition is that if two people can't understand each other, then they are talking two different languages. So, someone using French sign language can't understand someone using Thai sign language. This way we can say that if British deaf people can understand the signing of another British deaf person, then it must be BSL.

So some linguists have looked for rules and have produced mathematical formulae.

If 80% or more of the words or signs are similar, then the variants are dialects of the same.

If 80% to 36% of the words or signs are similar, then the two languages belong to the same family.

If the similarity is 12% to 36%, then the languages belong to families of the same stock.

Woodward’s study of the sign languages used in Costa Rica works like this. However, it has problems. Some of the Swadesh list is inappropriate for modern sign languages in the developed world. It contains words (like “louse”) which are not core words in many cultures. It also contains items that we will expect to be similar in sign languages because of visual motivation, such as “eye” and “nose”. Woodward had to make his own changes because of this.

David McKee and Graeme Kennedy have recently reported research on this concerning lexical comparisons of ASL, Auslan, NZSL and BSL. Using a modified version of the “Swadesh” list of vocabulary items, they compared the four languages. If the signs were the same or different by only one parameter (i.e. movement, handshape, location, orientation, or two-handed or one-handed) they were classed as the same.

They found that Auslan, NZSL and BSL had a similarity of about 80%, when using the Swadesh list. However, this fell to about 64% when they used a semi-random selection of signs. Certainly, however, they found that Auslan and NZSL were more similar to each other than they were to BSL. They also found that many Auslan signs that were “different” from BSL were actually similar to old BSL signs that are no longer commonly in use in Britain. The Swadesh list and these mathematical models do not account for these examples of language variation.

So, using this rule of 80% is not so simple for the identification of separate languages. The linguistic similarities are sometimes much less important than the social and political or religious ones. Auslan is very similar to BSL, but is given a different name to show its different national identity.

This is also true for some varieties of South African sign language. We can also see examples in spoken languages. For example, in India there are two languages that sound very similar but one is spoken by Muslims and one by Hindus, and each is written using a different type of script, so they are called two different languages, Urdu and Hindi. Moldovian and Romanian are two languages that are almost identical when spoken, but Moldovian is written in the Russian Cyrillic script and Romanian is written in our "Latin" script.

Sometimes it is very important to say that two varieties are just two different ways of speaking the same language, rather than two languages, for political reasons. There are many examples of this in spoken languages. The English have treated “Broad” Scots as just another form of English, even though it is very different. (Have a look at some of Robert Burns’ poems some time and see how they differ from “Standard” English). In the past, politicians tried to persuade people living in Yugoslavia that they spoke one language “Serbo-Croat”, even though the Serbs and Croats really speak very different languages. This was an attempt to unite the two groups of people (sadly, we can see that this didn’t work). In another example, the language called Catalan (used around Barcelona and the Balearic Islands) is now recognised as a language, but 50 years ago was just called a dialect of Spanish, because the government wanted the Catalans to think of themselves as Spaniards.

Deaf Peruvians who live in the mountains sign differently from Deaf Peruvians who live on the coast (especially in their capital city, Lima), and yet both are “LSP” (Peruvian Sign Language). There are many examples of countries where the sign language used in different areas seem very different, but are called by one name, to give the language a national identity. There are some people in Britain who might have problems understanding the signing of another British deaf person (or at least are aware that it is very different) but still feel it is BSL, when they are thinking in terms of national identity.

Perhaps this idea of group identity explains why people might want to say that someone is using Signed English rather than BSL (i.e. they are using “English” really). Perhaps using the term "Signed English" makes them feel they are part of mainstream society. Perhaps a teacher will accept a deaf child using "Signed English" because at least the teacher can feel it is a type of English. This is completely a matter of attitude, because, of course, in Signed English 100% of the vocabulary is different from English!

The question "When is a sign language one sign language and not another sign language?" was investigated recently in America. There was a study in ASL, which showed how important attitude is in all this. The researchers showed two groups of deaf people a video of a deaf person signing. They told one group the person had deaf parents, and told the other group the person had hearing parents. Then they asked both groups "Is that person using ASL"? The group who thought the signer had deaf parents said yes, and the others said no. This means that the people here defined the language socially, not linguistically.

Sometimes people suggest that you can only go by what the speakers believe. So if someone says they speak English or signs BSL, you have to accept that they do, because they identify with it.

It's very difficult to justify saying that BSL is one language, based on anything except agreement by the users. Signers from St. Vincent's in Glasgow, Manchester, Wrexham, Belfast and Exeter might well find that they can't easily understand each other, (or can only understand the variants because they know both variants) but everyone would still say it's BSL.

In some cases, the language differences between groups of signers are enormous (eg in Ireland, and in Belgium and Canada). In Ireland but the differences do seem to be getting less as groups have more contact with each other, but not in Belgium, where nationalism makes it worse, but we'll talk about that later.

Most linguists speak a majority language which is nationally (usually internationally) known, so there is less problem of what is the language and what isn't, because there are dictionaries etc, but many languages are not so simple to define. A repeated problem in BSL sociolinguistics, then, is going to be whether something we observe is BSL or not. If we decide that it is not BSL, then we are going to have to ask what it is.

Traditionally, linguistics has a term "pronunciation" that includes accent and intonation. A word or sign is pronounced differently, either because of some regular phonological change, or because the sign is just made a little bit differently.

In an accent, a speaker or signer uses some sort of regularly different way of speaking or signing. For example the different way people say the vowel in cup and grass, or the letters "th" like in thing or thought. In the Irish and Jamaican dialects of English, people often say "th" as a sort of "t" with a lot of breath behind it, while in other forms of English, it is pronounced as the “th” with the tongue between the teeth.

The important thing to remember is that accents have to be regularly different, at the phonological level. If a person has a certain vowel sound in cup, then they will also have it in but, butter, supper, fuss and enough.

We know that signs in BSL are pronounced using a handshape, at a location with a movement. Changing any of these, in a regular way, might be seen as an accent. An accent in BSL might be to sign all signs that normally have the fist with the thumb out (eg GOOD, PROUD, CRAFTY, THOUSAND) as a fist with a bent thumb. This does not seem to be the case in BSL. Some people have claimed that Spanish signers have an accent if they sign certain signs with little finger and ring finger extended or closed. The linguist Rob Hoopes, working on ASL, has found that the extension of the little finger (called “pinky extension” in the USA) is a regular phonological variation in some ASL signers. There is no research on this in BSL, but some British signers do also extend their little fingers. It is not clear if this phonological variant is related in any way to the signer’s social identity, though.

Some dialects may favour a specific location or handshape more than others when they use their signs, but that is not like having the same basic signs as other people with only the handshape or location different.

So, BSL does not seem to have accents exactly like in spoken English. It is possible that the intonation of some groups of signers might be defined by dialects, e.g. using a larger or smaller signing space than usual, or signing in a loose way or a tense way, or holding the hands in a certain way. This means we might say that we see intonation differences, if people from Liverpool have a tendency to produce signs that are very large and loose, or if older people often sign with a small signing space.

Perhaps we might say that if a group of signers uses English mouth patterns, that is a different accent from a group that does not. In all these cases, it is important to remember that this pattern is spread regularly throughout the signer's language, and that everyone in the same language community uses this same form.

Another possibility is the use of the 'R' handshape in some Northern Irish signs because of the Irish manual alphabet. This handshape is almost unused in British BSL (apart from in HOPE), so we might say that's part of their accent because they have a handshape that the rest of BSL doesn't usually use.

Of course, BSL signers might show traces of English accents in their mouth patterns but that is less of a BSL accent than influence from a specific English accent.

It doesn't seem to be very easy to distinguish clearly between accent and intonation but there is no doubt that we can say that BSL pronunciation does vary within the language.

? What do you understand by the idea of "pronunciation"?

Give some examples of BSL pronunciation that varies with different signers.

2) Word differences - A speaker or signer uses different words or signs to mean the same thing, even though they all use the same language.

This is the most common, noticeable difference because the words or signs are different. For example, different signs for colours are used by different people around the country. Some signs are mostly used by men and some by women. Some only used by Catholics, and some only by Jewish people, and so on.

There are also multi-channel signs that are special to certain groups of people, eg the sign for “existence” that is used in Scotland but much less in England.

In BSL, the idea of lexical difference might include the use of fingerspelling. For example, some groups of people might sign words that other groups of people would not.

A sub-division of this type of variance is that "idioms" can be different in varieties of the same language. Certain phrases or idioms may be special to certain group of signers or speakers.

You might also want to think about using signs that are obviously a translation of English words. For example, maybe using signs that have a specific English meaning in a phrase, such as “key issues”, but using the sign KEY (for a lock) or “Side effects” using SIDE and EFFECT.. Some signers may use this in their BSL, but others would not.

? Give some signs that you know are used by different signers to mean the same thing.

3) Grammatical differences. In BSL the grammar of different varieties is very similar, even when the vocabulary varies, on one level because spatial grammar is very similar.

However, there are some differences, particularly in the amount of influence of English.

a) some people might use more English sign order, eg I SAW RED CAR vs CAR RED (there) I SAW (I)

b) or they might use English adverbs instead of BSL adverbs, eg LOOK-LONG-TIME vs LOOK LONG TIME, or WORK-HARD vs WORK HARD.

c) or they might use manual signs instead of using non-manual grammar such as in placement or roleshift, eg WOMAN SAY WANT ICE-CREAM? vs (Role-shift into woman's character by body-posture and facial expression) WANT ICE-CREAM?

? Give some examples of ways that BSL can vary grammatically.

So, when we talk about ways that language vary, we might want to think about any of these.

? Pause now and recap, to make sure that you are clear about pronunciation differences, word differences and grammatical differences within BSL.

READING: Make sure that you read the article on the influence of nationalism on the definition of sign languages. You should also read Chapter 2 in Wardhaugh, especially pages 22 to 40.

Session 2: Variables in Languages

What defines a particular language?