Sociolingistic
variation in Auslan (Australian Sign Language: A research project in progress
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Johnston’s homepage]
An Auslan research project funded under the Linkage Scheme by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children (at its Renwick College site) began in January 2003. The aims of this project are to provide (1) a general overview of sociolinguistic variation in the phonology, vocabulary and grammar of Australian Sign Language (Auslan); (2) some cross-linguistic data for comparison with variation in American Sign Language (ASL); and (3) some normative data for a recently produced pilot version of an Auslan receptive skills test. The project is currently being conducted in the Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University (the University Partner) with Renwick College (Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children) continuing as the Industry Partner.
Background
Auslan
Like other signed languages around the world, Auslan is a visual-gestural language that has primarily evolved naturally within the deaf community. Although influenced by English, aspects of its vocabulary and grammatical organisation are independent of the spoken language of the surrounding community. Auslan appears to be a dialect of the same signed language as British Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language, and seems not to be directly related historically to ASL (Johnston, 2002; McKee & Kennedy, 2000; Woll, 1987). It developed from the varieties of signed language brought to Australia by deaf immigrants and hearing educators of deaf children from the early nineteenth century onwards (Carty, 2000; Johnston, 1989). Estimates of the number of deaf signers of Auslan vary, with some claiming that there are as many as 15,000 deaf Australians who use Auslan as their primary or preferred language (Hyde & Power, 1991), while recent research suggests this number may be closer to 5,000 (Johnston, 2004).
The Sociolinguistic Variation in
Auslan Project
The ‘Sociolinguistic Variation in Auslan’ project will provide a greater understanding of sociolinguistic variation in Auslan in particular, and will also make a substantial and new contribution towards knowledge about the nature of signed language use in deaf communities in general. As such, it will also provide us with further insight into what kinds of sociolinguistic variation are found in all human languages, whether spoken or signed. This is because signed languages exist in unique sociolinguistic situations. Possibly less than 5% of the deaf community acquires them as first languages from deaf parents (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004), with the majority of signers acquiring them from deaf peers in schools for deaf children or in social networks in early adulthood (Johnston, 1989). Moreover, such languages have been shown to exhibit a range of distinctive language contact phenomena (Lucas & Valli, 1992). As Lucas, Bayley and Valli (2001) have suggested, if our understanding of the grammar and use of this distinctive family of languages is to move forward (and this is necessary for an understanding of the human language capacity in general), then we must understand to what extent the variability in signed languages is similar to what is known about variation in spoken languages, and to what extent it is unique.
The proposed study will also meet a number of pressing needs for more research into Auslan. One of the most important results from the growth in the teaching of Auslan as a second language. In the last decade, interest in the learning of Auslan among hearing people has expanded considerably. Courses in signed language and Deaf Studies now range from 12-hour introductory courses offered by community colleges to 2-year full-time certificates in Auslan at state colleges of technical and further education. Moreover, the National Institute for Deaf Studies at La Trobe University and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Newcastle also teach Auslan courses.
Although course curricula and materials have become available for Auslan teaching and for the bilingual classroom (e.g., Branson, Bernal, Toms, Adam, & Miller, 1995), very little empirical research has been conducted into the language. A basic sketch of its phonology and grammar have been produced (Johnston, 1989, Schembri, 1996), and there has been some recognition in the literature that language use is highly variable in the Australian deaf community, especially at the lexical level (Johnston, 1998), but comparatively little is known about the structure and use of Auslan.
Significance of the project
This research project is thus of both national and international significance. In particular, there are three overall reasons for undertaking a project of this kind. First, preliminary research has shown that Auslan exhibits a great deal of sociolinguistic variation due to the nature of language use in the Australian deaf community (Johnston, 1989). Thus, in order to develop a greater understanding of the phonology, vocabulary, and grammar of Auslan, we need to understand how variation functions in this language at these three linguistic levels, as has been pointed out by Lucas, Bayley and Valli (2001) for ASL. In the Australian context, this study is especially important because it will provide an analysis of a corpus of sign language data collected from a large sample of deaf signers, balanced for gender, age, social class, language background and region. The resulting evidence that Auslan exhibits systematic sociolinguistic variation in the same way as other languages will reinforce the status of Auslan as a real language. The status of the language of the Australian deaf community is important because, as is also true of ASL, it has “a direct impact on the lives of deaf people in terms of educational and employment opportunities” (Lucas, Bayley & Valli, 2001: 194). Research on Auslan thus far has had the effect of legitimising it in the eyes of the wider community. It has, for example, been recognised as the primary or preferred language of the deaf community in a number of federal government publications (Lo Bianco, 1987). This has led to the improvement of services for deaf people such as increasing access to information by means of sign language interpreting. As has occurred elsewhere in the world, growing awareness of signed languages as real languages has opened up new career opportunities for deaf people as sign language instructors, relay interpreters, adult educators, and teachers in schools for deaf children. Lucas, Bayley and Valli (2001) pointed out that ongoing research in signed language linguistics will thus contribute to the empowerment of deaf people all over the world.
Second, this project will have specific implications for the design of sign language assessment and teaching materials. The research findings will feed into work at Renwick College on the development of assessment instruments for Auslan. In particular, vocabulary items from the Pilot Auslan Receptive Skills Test (PARST) will be used to collect valuable normative data. The PARST have been trialled as part of a project to develop an assessment instrument for Auslan with a group of signers from Sydney (Johnston, in press). This test is an adaptation of a BSL comprehension test for use with children 5-12 years of age (Herman, Holmes & Woll, 1999). In order for it to be effective, the test must test comprehension of standardised vocabulary items that are used by children in all regional varieties of Auslan, but the normative data required for this is currently lacking.
Third, this work has international significance. A comparison of variation of Auslan with variation in ASL (Lucas, Bayley, & Valli, 2001) and in spoken languages will leader to an improved understanding of variation in human languages in general. A comparison of variation in two unrelated signed languages (Auslan & ASL) with variation in spoken languages will enable us to identify what characteristics can be found in languages regardless of modality, and which features may be unique to language in the visual-gestural or auditory-oral modalities. This is important because rather than being just “a curiosity or an anomaly”, variation is “an integral part” of the human language capacity (Lucas, Bayley & Valli, 2001: 193). Thus, if we are to understand the true nature of language, we must investigate sociolinguistic variation in both signed and spoken languages.
Method
The study of sociolinguistic variation in any linguistic community requires that “we collect and analyse data from a representative sample of the community whose language we are studying” (Lucas, Bayley & Valli, 2001: 32). In the following sections, a specific description of the approach will be provided, focussing on participant selection, research design, data collection, selection of linguistic variables, data analysis, and the project timeline. As this approach is modelled on the framework developed by Ceil Lucas and her colleagues in their studies of sociolinguistic variation in ASL, more information about the rationale for this specific approach may be found in their published work (Lucas, Bayley & Valli, 2001, 2003).
Site selection: Variation due to
region
In order to examine sociolinguistic variation in Auslan, a videotaped corpus representative of the language as it is used across Australia is being created. To obtain a representative sample of regional variation, a minimum of five sites is necessary: Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. All of these sites have sizable signing deaf communities, state-based organisations providing services specifically for deaf people (known as ‘deaf societies’), and specialised schools and/or educational services for deaf children. The main reason for the selection of these sites was to represent the most important urbanised areas of the country and the major regional varieties of Auslan (Johnston, 1998). The majority of individuals selected from each site must have lived in the particular community for at least ten years.
Participant selection: Variation
due to age, gender and social class
For this project, we aim to recruit a mix of deaf native, near-native and early-learner Auslan signers in each of the five sites. Thus, the participants will be both deaf individuals from deaf families who learned Auslan as their first language in the home as well as deaf individuals who were exposed to signed language before age 7 by mixing with deaf peers in school or with signing deaf adults.
Age
Participants will be recruited in four different age groups: 15-30 years, 31-50 years of age, 51-70 years and 71 years and over. The grouping of participants into these four age categories is intended to reflect changes in language policy in deaf education during the twentieth century (Lucas, Bayley & Valli, 2001). Specifically, the 1970s saw an increasing shift from a period of aural-oral methods of instruction (where the use of residual hearing, speech training and lip-reading was the goal for many deaf children) to the philosophy of Total Communication (TC). The adoption of a TC approach resulted in the simultaneous use of speech and Australasian Signed English (or ASE, a signed representation of English that was standardised by a committee of educators of deaf children during the 1970s, and that has been used in both Australia and New Zealand) as the means of instruction in classrooms with deaf children. This period also saw the widespread acceptance of mainstreaming practices in deaf education. Children who previously might have been sent to residential or special schools for the deaf increasingly began to be mainstreamed into classrooms with hearing children, gaining access to the spoken language of the class either through the use of simultaneous signing and speech by the teacher, or through an interpreter using ASE.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Auslan has been implemented as the medium of instruction in several schools, including at centralised schools for deaf children in two of our sites (Sydney & Melbourne). This was the result of wider community recognition of Auslan as a real language, and occured at the same time as a growth in demand by deaf adults for the wider provision of Auslan/English interpretation.
Participants in the 15-30 age group, then, would most likely have been educated in a mainstreamed environment, to have been exposed to spoken English and ASE and (particularly for those under 20 years of age) possibly Auslan as the medium of instruction in a bilingual programme, and to increased awareness of the status of Auslan (the first dictionary of Auslan was published in 1989). Participants in the 31-50 age group would include those who have been exposed to some form of signed communication at school, but often spoken English would have been the preferred language of instruction. They would also have witnessed the move to the use of ASE, the widespread adoption of mainstreaming and the closure of residential schools, and the first changes in community attitudes towards the use of sign language in schools. Finally, participants in the 51+ age group would most likely have been educated in residential schools through signed communication and/or the oral method and (particularly for those aged 71+) also through the use of fingerspelling. In many cases, Auslan would have been used outside of the classroom, but not as the main language of instruction.
Gender
The selection of our participants will also take gender into account. Gender has been a major focus of research on sociolinguistic variation in spoken languages (Coates, 1998, Labov, 1990). According to Labov, the results of a large number of studies on this issue suggest that men use a higher frequency of non-standard forms than women, but also that women use a higher frequency of newer forms in processes of language change. We will recruit equal numbers of male and female participants in order to determine whether these generalisations also apply to the Australian deaf community.
Social class
Our sample will also include both working class and middle class participants. Working class participants will be those who have not continued their education beyond high school and who work in unskilled or skilled blue-collar jobs, or in semi-skilled clerical positions. Middle class participants will be those who have at least some university education, and/or who work in skilled, professional or white-collar positions, particularly managerial or teaching positions. Given the disproportionately low number of deaf people accessing higher education prior to the 1990s, however, it is unlikely that we will find equal numbers of middle class deaf people in all sites in all age groups.
Recruitment
The approach to the recruitment of participants will be guided by the work of Lucas, Bayley & Valli (2001) who in turn drew on the work of Labov (1972) and Milroy (1987). Participants will be recruited in groups. Each group will consist of at 2-5 individuals who will already know each other. The groups will be assembled in each of the five sites by a contact person, and will be filmed in a comfortable environment, such as a deaf school, deaf club or private home. The contact person will be a deaf individual living in the area with knowledge of the local deaf community, and will be responsible for identifying fluent Auslan users who have lived in the community for at least ten years. The contact people shall liaise with the researcher (Adam Schembri) who will visit each site and organise data collection.
Data collection
The data to be collected will be of five types: (1) a set of lexical data collected by means of direct elicitation, (2) two narratives, (3) approximately 45 minutes of free conversation, (4) an interview about the participants’ sign names, and (5) an interview about the signers’ background. Data of type (1), (3) and (5) will be collected from all five sites, although due to time and budgetary constraints, (1) and (5) will not be collected from all participants.
On arrival, all participants will also be asked to sign a consent form and fill in a short demographic questionnaire.
For all data collection tasks, we aim to use two digital video cameras on tripods. One camera will provide a view of the group with a focus on one half of the participants, while the other will provide a focus on the other half of the group. This is so that all participants are filmed from two angles to ensure that all aspects of the signed communication, in particular fingerspelling, is captured clearly on film.
Free conversation
The data in type (3) and (4) will be collected first. Data type (3) will consist of 45-55 minutes of free conversation among the members of a particular group (usually of 2-4 people) who live in the same region and are in the same age group. This is in an attempt to collect data that is as naturalistic as possible and to minimise the Observer’s Paradox first described by Labov (1972) who explained “our goal is to observe the way people use language when they are not being observed” (p. 61). We need to ensure that the deaf participants do not adjust their signing to match the preferences of the researcher (who is not deaf nor even, in sites outside of Sydney, a member of their local signing community) and to minimise influences from contact with spoken English (Lucas & Valli, 1992). In order to do this, the hearing researcher will not be present during the filming of the free conversation data. Moreover, the deaf contact person shall not participate in most of the conversation groups, especially when these involve deaf people in different age groups than the contact person (if the deaf contact person is in the 31-50 age group, he or she must also not be present during the free conversation data collection involving people aged 15-30, for example).
Interview
After this, data of type (5) will be collected. The deaf researcher will interview a subset of the participants about their background, social networks, and patterns of language use (usually just 2 people will be selected from the groups of 2-5 individuals). The questions used will be based on the demographic questionnaire used in the ASL project (Lucas, Bayley & Valli, 2001).
Lexical sign elicitation
Next, the data collection will focus on type (1) data. In this case, the deaf and hearing researchers will show the participants the same set of 80 pictures and flashcards to elicit their signs for concepts represented. Of the 80, 58 signs selected will be based on earlier work on lexical variation in Auslan (Johnston, 1998; Johnston, Adam & Schembri, 1997), and will focus on signs for colours, numbers, time signs and other semantic fields in which lexical variation is known to be high. In addition, a set of 22 signs used in the pilot version of the Auslan Receptive Skills Test will be included (Johnston, in press). This signs are believed to be widely used in all varieties of Auslan, but this requires confirmation if the test is to be used in assessing the signing skills of deaf children across the country.
Narrative elicitation
Finally, data of type (2) will be collected from some sites. In this session, we will ask one of the participants to watch a short silent ‘Mr Koumal’ cartoon (courtesy of Judy Kegl). Participant A will watch ‘Mr Koumal Flies like a Bird’ and retell the story in Auslan to participant B. Participant B then watches ‘Mr Koumal’s Conscience’ and recounts the story to participant A.
Creation of the database
After data collection is complete for the first site, a coding and cataloguing system will be developed to provide each data tape with an identifying code number. Codes will also be written on the tapes to identify the participants recorded on each of the tapes (the names of participants will not be used in order to minimise the chances of identification of those involved in the filming). This coding system will be linked to a computer database that will provide detailed information about the tapes. As in the ASL study (Lucas, Bayley & Valli, 2001), information entered into the database about each group interviewed will include details about the data and place the group was filmed; the names, age, educational background, occupation, pattern of language use and so forth for each participant in the group; and some information about the phonological, grammatical, and lexical variation captured on the videotapes.
Linguistic variables
One target phonological variable and one target syntactic variable will be the focus of analysis of the conversational, interview and narrative data. The target lexical variables shall be the responses by the participants to the 80 pictorial stimuli, including the 22 items from the Pilot Auslan Receptive Skills Test. The exact nature of target linguistic variables will be revealed once all data collection is complete (i.e., at the end of 2004), due to the researchers’ desire not to possibly influence the data produced by any potential participants who may be among visitors to this website.
In relation to the specific information entered into the database, we shall adopt the coding used by Lucas, Bayley and Valli (2001) for their research into sociolinguistic variation in ASL. Thus, the coding will identify the specific variable observed, a brief description of the nature of the variation, the code for the signer producing the example, details about the sociolinguistic factors involved (such as the gender, social class, language background, region etc of the signer) and the phonological or grammatical context in which the variable occurred.
Analysis
Because we wish to compare our results both with previous and ongoing studies of variation in ASL using the Lucas, Bayley and Valli database (Lucas, Bayley & Valli, 2001; Padden & Clark, 2003), as well as with research into spoken languages (see for example, Borowsky & Horvath, 1997, on phonological variation in Australian English), we will use VARBRUL software to conduct multivariate analysis of the data. This software has been used extensively in sociolinguistics because it was designed specifically for the analysis of the kind of data relevant to studies of variation. Moreover, VARBRUL programs provide heuristic tools that allow researchers to modify hypotheses in the light of new data or unexpected results, and re-code and re-analyse data easily. This software will enable “precise and replicable measures of the strength of a wide range of contextual influences on a speaker or signer’s choice among variable linguistic forms” (Lucas, Bayley & Valli, 2001: 48).
Results
As of April 14, 2004, we have filmed 48 participants in Sydney, 35 in Perth and 46 in Adelaide (129 in total). Coding of phonological variables in the free conversation and interview data, and of data from the demographic questionnaire and lexical sign elicitation task has begun, but the results are not yet available. We hope to make preliminary results available from late 2004 onwards.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We owe a particular debt to Ceil Lucas who is acting as our principal consultant on the project, and who has supported us in ways too numerous to mention here. Many thanks also to Julia Allen, Patti Levitzke-Gray, Kevin Cresdee, Della Goswell and Darlene Thornton for their assistance with data collection and coding. Thanks too to all the members of the Sydney, Perth and Adelaide deaf communities who have participated in the project thus far.
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Last updated: 27 May 2005