Learning Sign Language As A Second Language

I decided to choose sign language learning as my topic, because I have been interested in how it differs from learning any other language. I was able to find relevant articles to my topic, concerning infant, deaf and adult sign language learning. The first article also gives a background to sign language teaching at schools, and how it was not supported in the past.

Rosen, R. (2008). American Sign Language as a Foreign Language in U.S. High Schools. The

Modern Language Journal, 92(1), 12-15. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25172990

          The article discusses the procedure of American Sign Language accepted as a foreign language in American secondary schools. At early stages, it was believed that the placement of deaf students in classrooms with hearing students would provide an opportunity for the deaf students, so they could learn the hearing and speaking communication skills they need to interact with hearing students. This movement – of course - created a barrier between the signing students and the hearing students. Public education schools found it difficult to ignore sign language because the interest toward ASL by hearing students and by teachers was growing. The demand of ASL has led to state recognition of ASL as a foreign language (38 states in 2004).

          The article was helpful, because it showed us the background of sign language and how it made its way to education. It also showed us how sign language was treated in the past, and that nowadays it is considered as an important language.

Mayberry, R. (2006). Learning Sign Language As A Second Language. San Diego: Elsevier

Ltd. Retrieved from http://grammar.ucsd.edu/mayberrylab/papers/Mayberry_2ndLangLrng_06.pdf

          Sign languages are natural languages, so they are often learned as L2. Babies whose parents use sign language with them, often learn two languages simultaneously. They can acquire both a spoken language and a sign language. Sign languages as L2 are popular amongst adults and teenagers, as well. The first stage of adult L2 learning is dominated by the iconic features of the signs. It helps the learners to remember the vocabulary items. All sign languages have phonological structure that consists of meaningless articulatory units. L2 learners of sign languages need to master morphology and syntax as well.

          With the help of the article above, one can learn about babies and the way they learn sign language. The article also compares infant sign language learners with adult sign language learners. It is useful for my research project because I get to learn the differences between two groups of sign language learners.

Schowe, B. (1958). Some Observations On Sign Language. Educational research Bulletin,

37(5), 120-124. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1475030

          The article presents studies concerning deaf people, mostly deaf children. The interest in sign languages at educational level is high. Deaf children who learn to use sign language at early stages will learn to speak more easily than the ones who did not use the sign language at infancy. Signing is a dominant force in language development.

          The article is relevant to my topic, because it concerns deaf children and their way of learning sign languages. I get to know a different point of view on learning sign language. The experience of deaf learners is different from the experience of adult and young learners.

Is True Translation Possible? – An Annotated Bibliography

As someone who is translating on a daily basis, I am curious whether true translation is possible. By true translation I mean that every aspect of the original work is conveyed in the translated work. The translation must reproduce the exact same meaning, it must evoke the same feelings, and envision the same pictures. It is by no means a verbatim translation, because the structure of most languages do not allow that. There certainly are bad translations, good and even better ones. This skill can be improved, but I would like to research whether it can or cannot be perfected. If true translation exists, it would imply that machine translation is possible because it would no longer be a subjective problem, but an objective task.

Benjamin, W. (1997). The translator’s task. TTR: traduction, terminologie, redaction, 10(2), 151-165.

Walter Benjamin was a philosopher, and he approached the topic from a theoretical viewpoint. He considers written texts as forms of art, and pieces of art are not created for the receiver, but for the sake of beauty. Therefore, the task of the translator is “to set free the language imprisoned in the work”, and “to contribute to the service of pure language”. Translators should work as accurately as possible. However, it does not mean that fidelity overrides freedom of form. The form or structure should be graceful, matching the language and culture, but it should not be so free that it is not accurate anymore.

In practice it is problematic to find the golden mean between fidelity and freedom. In some cases it might be more important to stay as close as possible to the grammatical form, but sometimes it would be a severe mistake. Therefore, it is basically up to the translator to decide what kind of translation he will produce. There certainly are bad translations, there may be good and better ones; however, to say that someone has achieved the best translation possible would be arrogant in my opinion.

Bassnett, S., & Lefevere, A. (1990). Introduction: Proust’s grandmother and the thousand and one nights. The culture turn in translation studies. In S. Bassnett and A. Lefevere (Eds.), Translation, History and Culture (1-13). London: Pinter.

This introduction takes into consideration that languages change, which is an influential factor of translation. New expressions and words are invented over time; in different eras language is used in different ways because the culture always changes. Therefore, the meaning of both original texts and translations also changes. Sometimes works need to be interpreted even from our mother tongues. The authors emphasize that languages exist in a cultural background. Without the culture, the language would not exist. Consequently, the translator’s task is to convey the same meaning from the original language to the receiving culture.

Knowing both cultures is essential if we want to produce a good translation. However, it is debatable if one can know every aspect of a culture. And that is not enough; a translator should know at least two cultures perfectly well if he wants to create a true translation. Hypothetically, this person knows two cultures entirely, but the problem of temporality still remains. Often the meanings of words change, and even if someone produced a true translation at one moment in history, it will not remain so.

Gerschenkron, E., & Gerschenkron, A. (1966). Illogical Hamlet: A note on translatability. Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 8(3), 301-336.

In this article, the authors compare a lot of different translation of four lines from Hamlet, analysing each word and their meanings and annotations.  Although they have inspected a hundred translations in sixteen languages, they found a problem with each of them. Shakespeare’s original words were in Act II Scene 2:

“Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love.”

According to the article, most translators had problems with the third line. For example, in 1949, Gide translated it to French as (retranslated into English) “[Doubt] whether truth lies, but, my soul,” thus it seems like Hamlet is speaking to himself and not to Ophelia. Or in some cases, translators leave the ‘liar’ out, as Bulhao Poto did in his 1879 translation: “Doubt even that truth be truth.” Most of the translations tried to preserve rhyme and rhythm, but Kanshin (1902) did not, and made the same mistake as Poto. Arthur Masriera’s Catalan translation is also interesting: “Doubt what is certain, believe what is dubious”. There were several kinds of mistakes with different characteristics, but somehow they were all wrong, all 100 translations.

Literary works, such as poems, are so compact and brief that the reader has to pay attention to every little detail, every feeling, inkling and whisper. The closer the reader looks, the harder the translator’s task is. Therefore, it is only wise to look at translations of poems because careful readers examine every word very closely, so the translation must be good if it wants to evoke the same feelings. Since languages are not identical in their vocabulary, it is difficult to imagine that one is able to find the suitable words in a poem, even if he disregards rhymes and rhythm. Consequently, in my opinion, it is impossible to provide a translation of a poem that is objectively the best possible translation.

An Annotated Bibliography on Identification, Social Status and Language

In this annotated bibliography I intend to focus on whether it is possible to identify ourselves and others as belonging to certain groups based on the existence of patterned variation in language. As William Labov is one of the most significant figures who dealt with the social stratification of certain linguistic phenomena I began my research with finding out about his contemporaries and students. That is how I got acquainted with Peter Trudgill’s name and discovered his three books - Sociolinguistics – An Introduction, On Dialects - Social and Geographical Perspectives and Accents and Dialects - An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of British English in the British Isles – of which I write the annotations below. 

1. Trudgill, P. (1974). Sociolinguistics: An introduction. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

In the first chapter – “Language and Society” – Trudgill discusses that whenever we talk, we give details away of our origins and also detect those from how the other speaks. He writes about the significance of Standard English and its variants and how the fact that a person speaks Standard English can determine his social status. British English Accent or Received Pronunciation (RP) is an accent that appears together with Standard English only. It is a highly prestigious accent and Standard English also represents much more status and prestige than any other English dialect. Although “all dialects are equally good” (p. 20), their association with speakers of low social status leads to them being considered inferior.

Trudgill reviews the examinations of postvocalic /r/ application in New York City, and the similar observations about the pronunciation changes on the island of Martha’s Vineyard concluding that “linguistic change does not always take place in the direction of the prestige norm” (p. 24). He also debates the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ according to which “a language can affect a society by influencing and even controlling the world-view of its speakers” (p. 25) and studies the question of taboo words. The type of word which is tabooed in a particular language will be a good reflection of at least part of the system of values and beliefs of the society in question. A sort of ‘double-think’ is associated with words of this type that they appear in the speech of certain sections of community.

In the second chapter – “Language and Social Class” – he states that “the internal differentiation of human societies is reflected in their languages” (p. 34). He defines social stratification and writes about how caste dialects of India can be examined in an easier way than social-class dialects. As status change in the social hierarchy of English-speaking class societies is possible, these are heterogeneous societies and so is their language. William Labov is a pioneer of that linguistic field with his work The social stratification of English in New York City.

Regarding my research I found Trudgill’s statements on the social attitude towards RP and Standard English, and taboo words very useful as he does reflect on how the use of these appear in the hierarchy of society. On the other hand, I welcomed him pointing out that in certain situations changes might take place in different directions than that of the prestige norm which is represented nicely in the Martha’s Vineyard experience.

2. Trudgill, P. (1983). On dialects: Social and geographical perspective. Oxford: Blackwell.

In the 11^th chapter – “Standard and Non-Standard Dialects of English in the United Kingdom – Attitudes and Policies” - of this book Trudgill writes that the greatest degree of regional differentiation can be observed among speakers of the lower working class and among speakers of the upper middle class. Standard English speakers who apply British English accent (Received Pronunciation) are usually highly educated people of large public schools or have obtained the accent via conscious effort or training. Received Pronunciation speakers constitute a very small fraction of the British population. It is written that “the further one goes ‘down’ the social scale, the larger become the grammatical and lexical differences from Standard English, and the phonetic and phonological differences from RP” (p. 187) In the English society, grammatical and lexical variation is not as noticeable as social accent differentiation is.

Southern English speakers may move back and forth in the social dialect continuum, while, for instance, Lowland Scots rather switch dialects, which is rather a jump than a smooth move. Such clear differences can be observed in school where children in Southern England do not adjust their speech greatly between home, play and school. On the other hand, many Scottish children consciously apply a different dialect in school.

The problems in education brought about by social, regional dialect and accent variation in the United Kingdom are described, taking into particular consideration the comprehension difficulties observed among children of West Indian origin. The question of whether Standard English has to be taught in schools is investigated. It is stated that non-standard dialects (and low-prestige accents) may imply poor judgment of their speakers which may result in them being discriminated against, for instance, in employment. Received Pronunciation speakers are generally thought to be more intelligent and trustworthy than regionally accented speakers, however, they can also be considered less cordial and gregarious. While, accents intolerance is about to seemingly decrease, non-standard dialects are still associated with lower social status because attitudes and prejudices are held by many people towards their speakers. Trudgill concludes in the end of the chapter that modifying attitudes is still easier than altering the linguistic basis of most of the population.

I appreciate the way Trudgill points out what the actual significance of the spoken dialect and accent is when it comes to social hierarchy. It is stated that it can definitely affect the academic career of a person from the very first days of school, hence, it is confirmed that language greatly contributes to social status.

3. Hughes, A., & Trudgill, P. English accents and dialects: An introduction to social and regional varieties of British English in the British Isles. London, Baltimore, Md., U.S.A.: E. Arnold.

The first chapter of this work – “Variation in English” – sums up what has already been discussed in the previously cited writings. It is implied that pronunciation varies because people speak differently depending on the situation they are in.  It is written that “casual style of pronunciation” (p. 5) is “not a matter of correctness but of appropriateness” (p. 5). Then regional variation is weighed up. It is confirmed again that Received Pronunciation speakers – who make up only very small percentage of the population - are usually at the top of the social scale on the bottom of which the “broadest” (p. 7) regional accents take place. The higher the social status is, the less regionally marked the accent will be and it will be more similar to Received Pronunciation. The correlation between accent and social scale is presented by figures for “aitch dropping” (p. 8) in the Bradford area of Yorkshire. Those moving up the social scale adapt their accents to RP, hence, maintaining “the relationship between class and accent” (p. 8).

Grammatical and lexical variation is also studied in this chapter. The reader is finally led to the conclusion that “the higher a person’s position on the social scale, the less their speech is regionally marked” (p.12). The issue of those speaking two dialects reappears as such a feature implies that such speakers are members of more than one social group. Regional forms are less likely to apply with people who are high on the social scale. Standard English is the most prominent British dialect, while Received Pronunciation is the most prominent accent; however, it is spoken only by a very small portion of the British society located usually at the top of the social scale.

In this writing the correlation between accent and social scale is presented with actual figures based on observations concerning “aitch dropping”. As adaption of their accents towards RP makes it possible for people to proceed on the social scale, it is clearly stated that there is connection between the social class and the spoken accent which practically gives an overall answer to the question on which the research is focused.