Deaf people's linguistic culture is being allowed to disintegrate

Smithtr

Smithtr

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When I was a kid, I used to play at being deaf by covering my ears. Obviously, this was not a very satisfactory approximation of the deaf experience, and I didn't really have an inkling of what it meant to be deaf until I shared a car with a hearing friend who works as a British Sign Language interpreter and three other BSL speakers.

Everyone made concessions to my limitations and we talked in a mixture of English and BSL. But as the conversation got more animated, whole digressions and throwaway jokes went on, and I could barely have known what I was missing out on. I was tongueless in that car, and I found it stressful and alienating. I realised as I'd never realised before that I'm not entirely sure who I am if I can't be heard (probably an especially acute complaint for columnists).

Now imagine that you have that same experience of tonguelessness, but instead of sitting in a car with people you know, you're seriously ill in a hospital bed – and nobody can explain to you what's happening. As reported in this newspaper, profoundly deaf Elaine Duncan spent 12 days in Ninewells hospital, Dundee. Despite her repeated requests, she was at no time provided with an interpreter: her appendix was removed without anyone discussing her treatment in her first language.

This is nightmarish stuff, and an everyday reality for many deaf people. The charity Signature says there is a national shortage of BSL interpreters, with only 800 registered interpreters serving a population of 25,000 BSL speakers.

Some less sympathetic commenters have suggested that the solution to this is pencil and paper. But BSL isn't just a hand-wavy rendering of the English that the commenters know: it's a language in its own right, with its own history and subtleties. If I had, say, a ruptured organ and a raging infection, I would not care to negotiate my treatment in a second language. More sign language interpreters are essential if deaf people are to have full use of the services and society that are rightfully theirs.

The Centre for Deaf Studies (CDS) at Bristol University is currently studying the health of deaf people as part of a national project. While the full results won't be available until later this year, the preliminary findings make it clear that restricted access to healthcare is leaving deaf people to suffer serious sickness and harm.

But the opportunity to train interpreters is being taken away. Since 1978, the CDS has advanced the study of deafhood – that is, the culture of deaf people, as described in the work of Dr Paddy Ladd, reader in deaf studies at the CDS. Its undergraduate course has provided a vocational foundation for those who wish to become BSL interpreters. In 2010, the university decided to close that course – because, it claimed at the time, of the "current economic climate". This academic year will be the last cohort to graduate from the CDS. The educational base for many of the UK's BSL interpreters has been closed off.

That cutback in teaching has been accompanied by an inevitable cutback in staff. Before the closure of the undergraduate programme, the CDS employed 13 deaf academics; now there are only four. In a statement, the university said: "We continue to explore other activities with staff within the centre." But a former employee of the CDS I spoke to said that the mood within the centre is not positive at all. Most staff have been given notice that their jobs will end by this summer; few expect the CDS to exist as a meaningful site of research and learning beyond this year.

The diminishment of the CDS is a tragedy. Over 35 years, the centre has helped to shift the perception of deaf people from one of lack and pathology, to one that affirms their language and culture. Its work has spread worldwide, as students have taken the knowledge they gained at the CDS to other countries where they have founded further centres for deaf studies. With its demise, there's a risk that a whole linguistic culture is being allowed to disintegrate, and it's an outrageous loss – in terms of deaf people being denied communication, and in terms of hearing people shutting ourselves off from the world of the deaf, as I experienced that day on my car journey.
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Deaf people's linguistic culture is being allowed to disintegrate | Sarah Ditum | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
 
As for only 25,000 "BSL speakers" in the U K
- I have no knowledge. That few suggests :"deafness"is rapidly decreasing.Or an alternate explanation-most Deaf using Cochlear Implants.

aside the previous discussion had the "deaf lady" in the hospital unable to "speak or write".

Seems to be a "bit of confusion" exactly what has/is happening.
 
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Lukin said:
Odd, this is somewhat hypocrite- why are there so many interpreters for foreigners in Anglan?

I guess engrez don't always keep their promises.
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my opinion on reason, yeah that is why personal opinion. it is pretty sign language! yeah It is difficult! my recogized viewpoint I understand..
 
Can it be surmised that "Deaf immigrants" to the U K would have to learn BSL?
How many make this cohort-unknown.

On the "facts above" 800 interpreters for 25,000 "deaf speakers" doesn't seem to be a "lot".
 
drphil said:
Can it be surmised that "Deaf immigrants" to the U K would have to learn BSL?
How many make this cohort-unknown.

On the "facts above" 800 interpreters for 25,000 "deaf speakers" doesn't seem to be a "lot".
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dont get too hung up on quantative statistics, it doesnt tell people's real feelings....while its useful in some places in others it arent since d/Deaf people especially when it intersects the cultural and audiological (and often misbegotten aspects of lingual or/and social quarants components of (a) theorticial make up)...so... i mean Deaf immagrants in this sense are also irrelevent
 
it over complicates and makes ligual demographics more confused,
 
drphil said:
Can it be surmised that "Deaf immigrants" to the U K would have to learn BSL?
How many make this cohort-unknown.

On the "facts above" 800 interpreters for 25,000 "deaf speakers" doesn't seem to be a "lot".
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I was referring to immigrants who rely on Hindi/Urdu/Pashto/Arabic/etc interpreters generally.
 
Notwithstanding I am bilateral DEAF- I am not "hung up" on statistics.
Whether "deaf" immigrants "need" interpreters that are "Hindu/Urdu/Pashto/Arabic etc would suggest that one is able to Sign in the listed languages as has learned BSL but unable to "understand spoken English". Whether "they understand the above listed languages-unstated.

More discussion in Culture-deaf.
 
drphil said:
Notwithstanding I am bilateral DEAF- I am not "hung up" on statistics.
Whether "deaf" immigrants "need" interpreters that are "Hindu/Urdu/Pashto/Arabic etc would suggest that one is able to Sign in the listed languages as has learned BSL but unable to "understand spoken English". Whether "they understand the above listed languages-unstated.

More discussion in Culture-deaf.
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Again, I need to clarify.

I was talking about hearing immigrants, not deaf immigrants.

I was just wondering why they cut BSL interpreters for deaf while interpreters for foreigners (hearing) are accommodated?
 
A slightly different question to which as a Canadian-I have no comment.
 
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