This paper presents a critical examination of key concepts in the study of (signed and spoken) language and multimodality. It shows how shifts in conceptual understandings of language use, moving from (individual and societal) bilingualism to multilingualism and (trans)languaging, have resulted in the revitalization of the concept of language repertoires. We discuss key assumptions and analytical developments that have shaped the sociolinguistic study of signed and spoken language multilingualism as separate from different strands of multimodality studies. In most multimodality studies, researchers focus on participants using one named spoken language within broader embodied human action. Thus while attending to multimodal communication, they do not attend to multilingual communication. In translanguaging studies the opposite has happened: scholars have attended to multilingual communication without really paying attention to multimodality and simultaneity, and hierarchies within the simultaneous combination of resources. The (socio)linguistics of sign language has paid attention to multimodality but only very recently have started to focus on multilingual contexts where multiple sign and/or multiple spoken languages are used in overlap with one another. There is currently little transaction between these areas of research. We argue that the lens of semiotic repertoires enables synergies to be identified and provides a holistic focus (addressing ideologies, histories, potentialities, constraints) on action that is both multilingual and multimodal.
In this article we discuss the practice and politics of translanguaging in the context of deaf signers. Applying the translanguaging concept to deaf signers brings a different perspective by focusing on sensorial accessibility. While the sensory orientations of deaf people are at the heart of their translanguaging practices, sensory asymmetries are often not acknowledged in translanguaging theory and research. This has led to a bias in the use of translanguaging in deaf educational settings overlooking existing power disparities conditioning individual languaging choices. We ask whether translanguaging and attending to deaf signers' fluid language practices is compatible with ongoing and necessary efforts to maintain and promote sign languages as named languages. The concept of translanguaging challenges the six decade long project of sign linguistics and by extension Deaf Studies to legitimize the status of sign languages as minority languages. We argue that the minority language paradigm is still useful in finding tools to understand deaf people's languaging practices and close with a call for closer attention to the level of sensory conditions, and the corresponding sensory politics, in shaping languaging practices. The emancipatory potential of acknowledging deaf people's translanguaging skills must acknowledge the historical and contemporary contexts constantly conditioning individual languaging choices.
The authors argue that Deafhood (a term coined by Dr. Paddy Ladd) is an open-ended concept with an essentialist core. They describe how deaf people who have attended their Deafhood lectures and workshops have perceived different aspects of the Deafhood concept, and compare the basic tenets of Deafhood and criticisms on Deafhood to theories and criticisms on feminist essentialisms. The authors find that the vagueness and wideness of the Deafhood concept is one of its strengths, though they also find that it is in some respects problematic to combine and unite ontology and liberation theory in one concept. They further suggest that the ontological aspects of Deafhood need to be foregrounded. The question of essentialism inherent in the Deafhood concept is also briefly discussed with regard to hearing people, the use of spoken language, and the use of amplification technology and cochlear implants.
Martha's Vineyard-an island off the East Coast of the United States-is known as a community where "everyone signed" for several hundred years, a utopia in the eyes of many Deaf people. Currently, there exist around the world a number of small similar "shared signing communities," for example, in Mexico, Bali, Israel, and Ghana. A few studies about these have emerged, which give some information about the social and cultural patterns in such communities. Deaf studies researchers have begun the process of "synthesizing" and theorizing this information, and have developed typologies based on "traditional" Western urban Deaf communities. This article critically reviews the existing literature and raises new questions regarding the study and theorizing of such communities.
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