Language attitudes in the British deaf community: Evidence from the British Sign Language Corpus

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The aim of this project is to conduct secondary data analysis of the BSL Corpus, an existing large video dataset of British Sign Language (or 'BSL', the language of the British deaf community), to study language awareness and language attitudes in BSL. The BSL Corpus consists of video data collected from 249 native and near-native deaf signers of BSL from 8 sites across the United Kingdom. The data are representative of the language community, including a mix of men and women, deaf adults with deaf parents and those with hearing parents, signers who are young and old, and individuals from working and middle class backgrounds as well as different ethnic groups. The primary aim of the project is to investigate language attitudes of the British deaf community using the BSL Corpus interview data which consists of responses from all 249 signers to a range of questions about BSL, what it is and what it isn't, how it is used and how it should be used, how it varies and how it's changing (and whether it should or shouldn't vary/change). We will be able to see if there are similarities or differences in the language attitudes of different social groups within the deaf community (e.g. if there are differences in how BSL is viewed by younger and older signers), and how attitudes relate to signers' own behaviours (e.g. whether signers are aware that there are actually differences between younger and older signers, as found in recent research, and what those differences are). This study also gives us the opportunity to explore the deaf community's attitude towards language contact between BSL and English - e.g. via attitudes about BSL versus English-based sign systems such as Sign-Supported English (SSE). This information will be beneficial for future research on BSL but also in language planning and policy, including the legal status of BSL in the UK. Additionally, translations of the interview data will be completed and made publicly available online. Translating the interview data means people will be able to see video clips of deaf people from different areas of the UK, different age groups and gender signing in BSL along with English translations. This will dramatically increase the searchability and browsability of the interview data, making it accessible and thus a much more valuable resource for teachers, learners and researchers.