Lines of Transmission and Access to Social Networks: Documentation of Lengua de Se ñ as Mexicana (LSM) Claire Ramsey University of California San Diego.

Lines of Transmission and Access to Social Networks:

Documentationof Lengua de Señas Mexicana

(LSM) Claire Ramsey

University of California San Diego

Sign Language Corpora: Linguistic Issues

July 24 2009

London England

Planning a Documentation of LSM

• During fieldwork in Mexico, I realized that almost nothing had been done to document or analyze LSM.

• A documentation plan was a reasonable goal.• But the situation has intricacies that pose

challenges to design and justification of a documentation project.

This talk

• Briefly lay out LSM’s situation• In light of this situation, consider transmission

questions– key to a full description of LSM’s situation

– possibly key to descriptions of other sign languages

• Propose recruitment plan for documentation.

Deaf Mexicans and LSM

• Very few “native signers”• Adult signers have limited access to deaf

children• Almost no transmission outside deaf families• Limited mobility and travel (5/10 largest cities

in/around DF)• Older Deaf claim no national deaf community

Deaf Education in Mexico and Transmission

• School has no role (since 1960s).

• Strong oral, sign-intolerant tradition.

• Strong pressure toward integration

• Many current LSM transmitters are hearing late learners.

• School attainment in general does not meet national goal of grade 9

Deaf Adult Concerns

• Padrino relationships not possible

• Contamination of LSM

• Weak language skills in young (ability to communicate)

• Poor education of young (knowledge about world and Spanish words)

• Isolation of young

Community, Policy, and Research Issues

• Deaf signers notice lack of transmission, meaning that the process of transmission is marked

• Education structure and ideology are implicated

• Research must identify processes of continuity/recreolization w/in sign language communities

My Questions

• If “community” is not recognized– what is the in-group name of the social unit or

geographic unit of interest? – What are characteristics of the unit(s)?

• If school does not buttress LSM, what institutions do?

• Regarding transmission:– Who?– How?– Where?– When?

The Punch Lines

• I will suggest that LSM has to be studied – within social networks – with attention to access and entry into

social networks.

• I will suggest that LSM documentation should include deaf and hearing signers and meticulous meta-level description.

The Design Challenge

• Himmelmann’s definition:– “multipurpose, lasting record of a

language” (2002, p.2)

• How do you draw lines around a language?

• Practical approach is to “cast a wide net” and carefully describe what you’ve caught.

The Wide Net

• “Wide net” raises research design issues:

• Include speakers according to nature of the problem under examination

• Capture a broad range of communicative events, that include a range of types of speakers.

LSM’s Transmission and Continuity Issues

• Outside Deaf families LSM transmission, especially to deaf infants and children, is uneven and constrained (Ramsey & Ruiz Bedolla, 2004). – Literature suggests unfavorable transmission

circumstances for sign languages are partially ameliorated through schooling where deaf children meet deaf classmates and teachers (e.g. Padden & Rayman, 2002)

But . . .

• Schooling for deaf children cannot contribute to maintenance of LSM:– Oral aspirations dominate public opinion.– Escuela Nacional para Sordomudos (ENS) closed in

the mid-1960s• “Rehabilitate first, then educate.”

– Secretaria de la Educación Publica policy• integration of deaf students in regular classes children or in

special centers for non-signing students with disabilities

– No tradition of preparing teachers for deaf students. • Preparation as speech and hearing specialists is more typical.

School Attainment

– On average Mexicans complete about seven of the obligatory nine years of public education (Arellano & Fullerton, 2005).

– No records of school attainment for deaf students exist.– There is no reason to think that deaf students attain

more years than the general population.

IN SUM, SCHOOLS FOR DEAF STUDENTS CANNOT FULFILL THE TASK OF MAINTAINING LSM ACROSS GENERATIONS.

LSM Documentation Challenges

• disrupted transmission across generations• uneven distribution of LSM among Deaf people• Socio-political and economic conditions restrict

children’s access to signing• Variation in available schooling

• Attend clinical oral schools• Integration w/o support in SEP (public) schools• Placement in Centros de la Atención Multiple, special schools

for students w/disabilities• LSM medium private or grass-roots schools• No or limited schooling

“Natives” and Research Design

• Key to language documentation– But there are different kinds of native

speakers

• “Native Signer” has proven to be a difficult category

Native speakers(Grinevald, 2003)

• In documentation of endangered languages– Native fluent speakers - elderly monolingual speakers

are the reference group– Semi-speakers - bilingual but ethnic language is not

dominant, range from fluent to limited, may not use the heritage language regularly

– Terminal speakers - skills limited to phrases or words, still insiders to the community

– Rememberers - previously had partial command of language but lost it

Sociolinguistic information for typing speakers:

• Language learning history• Past and present language use• Levels of active and passive knowledge• Patterns of social interactions• Language attitudes• Adult language attrition• Language re-learning

Native Signers

• Native signers are uncommon, and in some communities of Deaf signers, extremely rare. (e.g. Costello, et al., 2008)

• Depending on research question, a range of language acquisition histories counts as native or native-like.

For example

• ASL Lucas & Valli (1990) language acquired from either parents or from residential-school peers at an early age (p. 290).

• ASL Mayberry & Eichen (1991). Native: exposure at birth in home, childhood learners: exposure at school at ages 5 – 8, Adolescent learners: exposure at school, ages 9 – 13

• ASL Neidle et al. (2000) grew up with Deaf signing parents and identify with the Deaf community

Other examples

• ASL, BSL, LSM Quinto-Pozos, Cormier & Ramsey (2009). natives acquire the language from birth from parents.

• AUSLAN Johnston & Schembri (2005) deaf of deaf or acquired <6 years

• BSL Schembri BSL (2009) deaf native and near-native signers have exposure by 7 years of age

• Mathur and Rathmann (2006) exposure by the age of three; ability to judge grammaticality; daily contact w/in the Deaf community > 10 years.

In sum,

• DEPENDING ONLY ON NATIVE SIGNERS WILL NOT FULLY ANSWER MY QUESTIONS ABOUT TRANSMISSION.

If the research question is about transmission,

I want to ask:Who is transmitting LSM?• What are transmitters’ language learning

histories?– Especially who transmitted LSM to them, where,

when, how

• What are transmitters’ patterns of social interaction?– Especially who the transmitter interacts with,

where, when and how

“Wide Net” Questions about Transmission are Empirical

• And– Do not rest on specific characteristics of

transmitters– Do not rest only on specific language histories that

describe ideal or idealized transmitter

• Rather they require– Meticulous description of the characteristics of

each transmitter and each network of signers– Careful and well-documented reduction,

categorization and analysis of data• E.g. separation of data from deaf and hearing signers

Lines of Transmission• Documentation of languages facing obstacles

to transmission requires description of lines of transmission– How might social groups influence transmission?– How do signers get access to social groups?

• Studies of variation in fluency benefit from description of social networks– E.g. Smith 2002

• LSM signers recognize lines of transmission– E.g.named padrinos

Social Network Analysis

• Allows analysis of:– Relations among people– Structure of social groups built on relations– Density and history of networks

• Allows possibility of examining:– Associations between acquisition of

communicative competence and social structures that facilitate it

– Strategies for gaining access to social networks

Work to Date (1999-2009) “ENS signers”

• ENS signers (60 - 95) do not report hearing transmitters.

• They report access to LSM:– at ENS from deaf peers and few deaf adults

– at church from peers and older deaf signers

– at clubs, including sports teams, from older deaf signers

– in general, not from deaf family members

Work to Date (1999-2009) Post-ENS Signers

• Post-ENS signers (15 - 60) report access to LSM : • in neighborhoods or streets from deaf signers• at church from hearing or deaf signers• at school from hearing signers • in classes from hearing signers • at informal gatherings in restaurants from deaf • on the subway or in subway stations from other

deaf • at clubs from other deaf

Hearing signers and LSM transmission

• Evidence suggests that hearing signers currently play a role in LSM transmission.

Who are hearing signers?

• Hearing children of Deaf parents (Hoffmeister, 2008)

• Missionaries and church members• Teachers• Interpreters• Hearing students of sign languages

– Nearly 80,000 university students of ASL in 2006 (Furman et al, 2007)

Do obstacles to transmission create circumstances where

hearing signers have an atypically strong impact on a

sign language?

Returning to the Wide Net

• To shed light on this question, the wide net has to capture:– a range of language data

– individual characteristics of Deaf and hearing signers

– their avenues of access to social networks

– the composition of social networks

– roles, rights, obligations of members of social networks