Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T07:14:58.935Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language ideologies in the shared signing community of Adamorobe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2014

Annelies Kusters
Annelies Kusters*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Department of Socio-Cultural Diversity, Hermann-Föge-Weg 11, 37073 Göttingen, Germanyannelieskusters@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article analyzes language ideologies with regard to sign language in Adamorobe, a “shared signing community” in southern Ghana. Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL) is a “shared sign language,” used by all deaf people and a large number of hearing Akan-speaking people. Deaf schoolchildren from Adamorobe attend a school where Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL) is taught. Hearing interviewees have experiential knowledge that everything can be said in AdaSL, emphasise the shared roots of AdaSL and Akan, and called AdaSL “natural.” Deaf interlocutors describe Akan, AdaSL, and GSL as three distinct but equivalent languages. AdaSL is said to be a “hard” language, more pleasant to use, and more expressive than GSL, but sign bilingualism is highly valued. These findings are compared and contrasted with accounts on language ideologies with regard to other shared sign languages and larger urban/national sign languages. (Language ideologies, language practices, Ghana, Ghanaian Sign Language, Adamorobe Sign Language, Akan, shared sign languages, shared signing communities, village sign languages)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 139 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bahan, Ben, & Nash, Joan (1995). The formation of signing communities. In Mann, Jackie (ed.), Deaf Studies IV Conference Proceedings, 1–26. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University College of Continuing Education.Google Scholar
Baynton, Douglas C. (1996). Forbidden signs: American culture and the campaign against sign language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burns, Sarah; Matthews, Patrick A.; & Nolan-Conroy, Evelyn (2001). Language attitudes. In Lucas, Ceil (ed.), The sociolinguistics of sign languages, 181–216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Diouf, Kenneth Yali (2007). Missionary biographical sketch of Andrew Jackson Foster (1925–1987). Online: http://www.freewebs.com/kennethdiouf/foster.htm.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, Susan (2003). The resilience of language: What gesture creation in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Groce, Nora Ellen (1985). Everyone here spoke sign language: Hereditary deafness on Martha's Vineyard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Joseph C. (2012). Language attitudes in the American deaf community. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Joseph C. (2013). Language ideologies, policies, and attitudes toward signed languages. In Bayley, Robert, Cameron, Richard, & Lucas, Ceil (eds.), The Oxford handbook of sociolinguistics, 680–700. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kisch, Shifra (2008). Deaf discourse: The social construction of deafness in a Bedouin community in the Negev. Medical Anthropology 27(3):283–313.Google Scholar
Kisch, Shifra (2012). Demarcating generations of signers in the dynamic sociolinguistic landscape of a shared sign-language: The case of the Al-Sayyid Bedouin. In Zeshan & de Vos, 87–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroskrity, Paul (2004). Language ideologies. In Duranti, Alessandro (ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kusters, Annelies (2012). Being a deaf white anthropologist in Adamorobe: Some ethical and methodological issues. In Zeshan & de Vos, 27–52.Google Scholar
Lanesman, Sara, & Meir, Irit (2012). The survival of Algerian Jewish Sign Language alongside Israeli Sign Language in Israel. In Zeshan & de Vos, 153–79.Google Scholar
Meir, Irit; Sandler, Wendy; Padden, Carol; & Aronoff, Mark (2010). Emerging sign languages. In Marschark, Marc & Spencer, Patricia (eds.), Oxford handbook of deaf studies, language, and education, vol. 2, 267–80. Oxford: Oxford University Pess.Google Scholar
Meyer, Christina G.; Muntau, Birgit; Timmann, Christian; Horstmann, Rolf D.; & Ruge, Gerd (2001). Skin changes associated with GJB2-R143 W mutations in Ghana: Evidence for balancing selection of hearing impairment. In Bernard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine: Scientific Report 2000–2001, 78.Google Scholar
Nonaka, Angela M. (2007). Emergence of an indigenous sign language and a speech/sign community in Ban Khor, Thailand. Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles dissertation.Google Scholar
Nonaka, Angela M. (2012). Language ecological change in Ban Khor, Thailand: An ethnographic case study of village sign language endangerment. In Zeshan & de Vos, 277–312.Google Scholar
Nyst, Victoria (2007). A descriptive analysis of Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana). Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Nyst, Victoria (2010). Sign languages in West Africa. In Brentari, Diane (ed.), Sign languages: A Cambridge language survey, 405–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyst, Victoria (2012). Shared sign languages. In Pfau, Roland, Steinbach, Markus, & Woll, Bencie (eds.), Sign language: An international handbook. (Handbooks on language and communication science 37), 552–74. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Nyst, Victoria; Sylla, Kara; & Magassouba, Moustapha (2012). Deaf signers in Douentza, a rural area in Mali. In Zeshan & de Vos, 251–76.Google Scholar
Reagan, Timothy G. (2011). Ideological barriers to American Sign Language: Unpacking linguistic resistance. Sign Language Studies 11(4):606–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmaling, Constance (2003). A for apple: The impact of Western education and ASL on the deaf community in Kano State, Northern Nigeria. In Monaghan, Leila, Schmaling, Constance, Nakamura, Karen, & Turner, Graham H. (eds.), Many ways to be deaf: International variation in deaf communities. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar
Senghas, Richard, & Monaghan, Leila (2002). Signs of their times: Deaf communities and the culture of language. Annual Review of Anthropology 31:69–97.Google Scholar
Spolsky, Bernard (2004). Language policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zeshan, Ulrike, & de Vos, Connie (2012). Sign languages in village communities: Anthropological and linguistic insights. (Sign language typology 4.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter & Ishara Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar