Medical Signbank as a model for sign language planning? A review of community engagement

Abstract

This paper reviews a sign language planning project conducted in Australia with deaf Auslan users. The Medical Signbank project utilised a cooperative language planning process to engage with the Deaf community and sign language interpreters to develop an online interactive resource of health-related signs, in order to address a gap in the health lexicon of Auslan. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the outcome of the bottom-up language planning model that was used in this context, and to make recommendations for similar future sign language planning projects.

Keywords:

• language planning
• sign language
• Auslan
• medical terminology
• community engagement

Notes on contributors

Jemina Napier is an interpreter researcher, educator, and practitioner, and is Professor and Chair of Intercultural Communication at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. She was previously Associate Professor and Head of Translation & Interpreting in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University, where she is now an Adjunct Professor. She is also an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of South African Sign Language at the University of Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Her research interests focus around three strands of intercultural communication: (1) language and communication in the context of interpreter-mediated communication; (2) how deaf adults actually use signed language to communicate in their lives and the challenges this poses for signed language interpreters; and (3) interpreting pedagogy.

George Major qualified as a New Zealand Sign Language interpreter in 2004 and is a lecturer in the New Zealand Sign Language/English interpreting programme at AUT University in New Zealand and was formerly a researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney. Her research interests lie mainly in the area of sociolinguistics, signed language, and interpreting, and she has experience collecting and analysing interaction data in a variety of workplace and institutional settings. Her recently completed PhD thesis is a discourse analysis study of relational work within Auslan/English interpreter-mediated healthcare interaction.

Lindsay Ferrara is a signed language linguist with interests in cognitive grammar, enactment, and the interaction between language and gesture. She has international experience in the field of signed language research, having completed her Masters degree in the USA focusing on the linguistics of American Sign Language, and then continuing on with her PhD in linguistics at Macquarie University looking at the distribution of depicting signs in Auslan (the signed language used in Australia). More recently, she has moved to Norway to join Sør-Trøndelag University College as an associate professor in the programme of Sign Language and Interpreter Training.

Trevor Johnston is a Professor of Sign Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney. He coined the term ‘Auslan’ and together with members of the Australian deaf community helped achieve the recognition of Auslan as a community language by the Australian government in the 1980s. He compiled the first dictionary of Auslan, which has been constantly expanded ever since and has appeared in several editions in book, CD-ROM, and internet-based formats. His research interests focus on the areas of sign language lexicography, sociolinguistic variation, the grammar signed languages and corpus sign linguistics.

Notes

1 Many readers will be familiar with the fact that in deaf/signed language linguistics and interpreting literature the ‘D/d’ convention is used to distinguish between members who use the signed language of a linguistic and cultural minority community (Deaf) and those who have a hearing loss but do not use a signed language or identify themselves with this linguistic minority (deaf) (e.g. Lane, Hoffmeister, & Bahan, 1996; Ladd, 2003). We have opted to use the uppercase ‘D’ when referring to the Deaf population or community as a whole, and the lowercase ‘d’ when mentioning deaf people, individuals, or patients, so as to not make any judgements about their linguistic or cultural status as signed language users.

2 There are some exceptions to this in mental health services, with deaf specific services employing deaf counsellors.

3 A critical friend can be defined as ‘a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be examined through another lens, and offers critiques of a person's work as a friend. A critical friend takes the time to fully understand the context of the work presented and the outcomes that the person or group is working toward. The friend is an advocate for the success of that work’ (Costa & Kallick, 199 3, p. 49)

4 The Medical Signbank was funded through an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant Scheme, which is designed specifically to foster research collaboration between industry/ community organisations and universities (#LP0882270, 2008–2010).