Since forming contacts with international Deaf associations promoting an ethnolinguistic model of Deafness, members of Nepal's Deaf associations define Deafness by competence in Nepali Sign Language rather than audiological status. By analyzing the ideological and interactional processes through which homesigners are incorporated into Nepali Deaf social life, this article explores the effects of local beliefs about the nature of language, personhood, and competence on this model of Deafness. Due to former linguistic isolation, many homesigners are constrained in their ability to acquire Nepali Sign Language and, in social contexts where ideological conceptions of language use highlight individual competencies, would not be included in a Deaf social category. However, Nepali conceptions of socially distributed personhood contribute to a focus on the dialogically emergent dimensions of semiosis. As a result, recognition as a competent signer in this context can depend less on individual cognitive ability than on social collaboration. (d/Deaf, sign language, competence, language ideologies)*

Both the linguistic forms attended to and the ways in which they are linked to the social vary within and across language standardization projects. In addition, it cannot be assumed that people will notice the same indexical connections between linguistic forms and social structures or rationalize them in the same ways. An analysis of the project to standardize Nepali Sign Language highlights the fact that it is therefore necessary to account for the processes by which standardization projects attempt to reduce variation not only in the formal properties of language but also in the wider semiotic interpretations of those forms.[Nepal, d/Deaf, standardization, language ideologies, semiotic indeterminacy]

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract