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The Phoenix Online - Around the Deaf World
This Friday, Feb. 29, and Saturday, March 1, Swarthmore will host a conference called “Around the Deaf World in Two Days (It’s a Small World): Sign Languages, Social Issues/Civil Rights and Creativity.” Don’t feel intimidated by the lengthy name; the two-day conference is an exploration of deafness from a linguistic, cultural and artistic perspective and as such, it promises to be fascinating.
According to Professor Donna Jo Napoli, head of the Linguistics Department and an expert on American Sign Language, this is a “mega-event” that “appeals on so many fronts.” The talks, panels and workshops that compose the conference deal with three different aspects of deafness: the linguistics of sign languages, civil rights problems faced by the deaf community and deaf poetry.
The conference kicks off on Friday at 8 p.m. with a talk by Carol Padden, one of the world’s foremost experts on the linguistics of sign language. This talk, along with talks scheduled for Saturday morning, will deal with linguistic phenomena in sign language.
“It deals with basic linguistic questions, some of which sign language allows us to approach whereas spoken language does not,” Professor Napoli said. Anyone with an interest in linguistics should check out the talks on language beginnings in sign language; one of these talks will cover the gestural systems used by hearing parents to communicate with their deaf children, while another will discuss the birth of creoles in newly formed deaf schools. The beginning of language is a topic that is difficult to explore with respect to spoken languages, many of which have been widely spoken for hundreds of years; an opportunity to glimpse the formation of a language is an exciting prospect for linguistics.
The second issue that will be explored during the conference is the issue of civil rights, an important one for the deaf community. As Napoli put it, “Just ask yourself what in your life would be difficult to access if you couldn’t understand others and they couldn’t understand you – you will be floored by the wide range of things that would fall apart on you.”
Finally, for the all the poets out there, a discussion of creativity in deaf poetry will be held Saturday night to close the conference. This discussion will be accompanied by a performance of poetry written in British Sign Language and preceded by a dramatic performance featuring students at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. The conference will feature talks by internationally recognized deaf scholars and will cover issues of deafness all over the world, including countries like Nicaragua, China, Japan, Germany and even a Bedouin tribe in Israel. For anyone interested in linguistics, social justice and creativity – and for anyone who is curious about the deaf community – the conference is an incredible opportunity.
This Friday, Feb. 29, and Saturday, March 1, Swarthmore will host a conference called “Around the Deaf World in Two Days (It’s a Small World): Sign Languages, Social Issues/Civil Rights and Creativity.” Don’t feel intimidated by the lengthy name; the two-day conference is an exploration of deafness from a linguistic, cultural and artistic perspective and as such, it promises to be fascinating.
According to Professor Donna Jo Napoli, head of the Linguistics Department and an expert on American Sign Language, this is a “mega-event” that “appeals on so many fronts.” The talks, panels and workshops that compose the conference deal with three different aspects of deafness: the linguistics of sign languages, civil rights problems faced by the deaf community and deaf poetry.
The conference kicks off on Friday at 8 p.m. with a talk by Carol Padden, one of the world’s foremost experts on the linguistics of sign language. This talk, along with talks scheduled for Saturday morning, will deal with linguistic phenomena in sign language.
“It deals with basic linguistic questions, some of which sign language allows us to approach whereas spoken language does not,” Professor Napoli said. Anyone with an interest in linguistics should check out the talks on language beginnings in sign language; one of these talks will cover the gestural systems used by hearing parents to communicate with their deaf children, while another will discuss the birth of creoles in newly formed deaf schools. The beginning of language is a topic that is difficult to explore with respect to spoken languages, many of which have been widely spoken for hundreds of years; an opportunity to glimpse the formation of a language is an exciting prospect for linguistics.
The second issue that will be explored during the conference is the issue of civil rights, an important one for the deaf community. As Napoli put it, “Just ask yourself what in your life would be difficult to access if you couldn’t understand others and they couldn’t understand you – you will be floored by the wide range of things that would fall apart on you.”
Finally, for the all the poets out there, a discussion of creativity in deaf poetry will be held Saturday night to close the conference. This discussion will be accompanied by a performance of poetry written in British Sign Language and preceded by a dramatic performance featuring students at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. The conference will feature talks by internationally recognized deaf scholars and will cover issues of deafness all over the world, including countries like Nicaragua, China, Japan, Germany and even a Bedouin tribe in Israel. For anyone interested in linguistics, social justice and creativity – and for anyone who is curious about the deaf community – the conference is an incredible opportunity.