Accent or not? Language attitudes towards regional variation in British Sign Language

British Sign Language (BSL) has been shown to have a high degree of regional variation especially at the lexical level. This study explores awareness and attitudes of the British deaf community towards this regional variation. We studied interview data from the BSL Corpus (http://bslcorpusproject.org/data) from 121 deaf, BSL signers from six regions across the UK including Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, London and Manchester, focusing on responses to five questions in relation to regional variation in BSL. Responses were analysed using thematic analysis, following (Braun, V. & V. Clark. 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(2). 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa). Findings reveal that BSL signers exhibited overall high levels of meta-linguistic awareness, as many of their attitudes and beliefs were in line with what has been reported in relation to linguistic behaviour with BSL such as mouthing, fingerspelling and accommodation. In addition, BSL signers seem to place enormous value on regional variation in BSL, believing that such variation contributes to the richness of BSL as a language and puts it on equal footing with the surrounding majority language, i.e. English. We explore the implications of these attitudes towards a broader understanding of language ideologies, including the concept of accent.

The Deaf Heritage Collective: Collaboration with Critical Intent

The paper reflects upon the Deaf Heritage Collective, a collaborative project led by Edinburgh Napier University’s Design for Heritage team and Heriot Watt’s Centre for Translation And Interpreting Studies. The project aimed to advance discussion around the British Sign Language Act (Scottish Government 2015) and bring into being a network of Deaf communities and cultural heritage organisations committed to promoting BSL in public life. The aim of this paper is to contextualise the project and its creative approach within the distinctly Scottish context, and the ideals of critical heritage, critical design and the museum activist movement. This paper presents the context and creative processes by which we engaged participants in debate and the struggles we encountered. We describe these processes and the primacy of collaborative making as a mode of inquiry. We argue that by curating a workshop space where different types of knowledge were valorised and where participants were encouraged to “think with” materials (Rockwell and Mactavish 2004) we were able to challenge the balance of power between heritage professionals and members of the Deaf community. By harnessing the explanatory power of collaborative making we debated the assemblages of epistemic inequality, and the imagined futures of Deaf heritage in Scotland.

The social construction of 101 non-emergency video relay services for deaf signers

How the police prepare for and engage with a citizen who is deaf and uses British Sign Language (BSL) is a national problem. From the perspective of deaf sign language users, the police remain largely inaccessible and unprepared in how to accommodate their linguistic needs. Four regional forces have responded to this issue by introducing a local solution, a bespoke 101 non-emergency video relay service (101VRS). Independent VRS companies function as the auxiliary service, mediating video calls to a 101 helpline. This service was identified as a simple solution that relied on minimal resourcing and input from the police. In using Pinch and Bijker’s social construction of technology (SCOT) framework, we look at competing interpretations of the 101VRS concept and how this has led to a range of intended and unintended solutions and problems (Pinch TJ and Bijker WE (1984) The social construction of facts and artefacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Social Studies of Science 14(3): 399–441). To maintain the investment in improving access to the police, we recommend harmonization of 101VRS nationally, and ongoing consultation with how front-line services can become better prepared at assisting deaf citizens.