A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Peruvian
Deaf Community
A sociolinguistic survey of the sign language used by the deaf communities of
Peru was conducted in November and December of 2007. For eight weeks, our survey
team visited six deaf communities in the cities of Lima, Arequipa, Cusco,
Trujillo, Chiclayo, and Iquitos. Using sociolinguistic questionnaires and
recorded text testing (RTT) tools, we explored the general social situation of
these communities, as well as sociolinguistic topics such as ethnolinguistic
identity, language vitality and stability, and the attitudes of deaf people
toward their local sign variety. We also probed sign language standardization
and variation in Peru. During background research, we had heard reports that
Peruvian Sign Language (LSP) was similar to American Sign Language (ASL), but
the responses of the questionnaire participants and comprehension testing of an
ASL text in various deaf communities in Peru indicate that ASL is quite
different from LSP.
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Anthropomorphism in Sign Languages: A
Look at Poetry and Storytelling with a Focus on British Sign Language
The work presented here considers some linguistic methods used in sign
anthropomorphism. We find a cline of signed anthropomorphism that depends on a
number of factors, including the skills and intention of the signer, the animacy
of the entities represented, the form of their bodies, and the form of
vocabulary signs referring to those entities. We consider four main factors that
allow signers to anthropomorphize the whole range of entities (from animate to
inanimate): the linguistic base that allows such play, the ability of the
nonmanuals to anthropomorphize even when the manual articulators are signing in
an ordinary way, the range of possibilities for both manual and nonmanual
articulators when the signer engages in (almost) complete embodiment of the
nonhuman character, and how nonhumans are portrayed as communicating via sign
language.
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Schoolization: An Account of the Origins
of Regional Variation in British Sign Language
British Sign Language has a number of regional variations. This article examines
the role of residential schools in the development of sign variants. Citing data
collected during interviews with members of the Lancaster and Morecambe Deaf
community (who of necessity attended schools elsewhere), it explores the
peer-to-peer transmission of sign forms in schools and the influence of these
forms in the communities to which the pupils returned on leaving school (coining
the term schoolization for this phenomenon). It discusses the effect the closure
of such residential schools will have on the acquisition and transmission of
BSL.
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