The influence of deaf people’s dual category status on sign language planning: the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act (2015)

ABSTRACT

Through the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act, British Sign Language (BSL) was given legal status in Scotland. The main motives for the Act were a desire to put BSL on a similar footing with Gaelic and the fact that in Scotland, BSL signers are the only group whose first language is not English who must rely on disability discrimination legislation to secure access to services in their own language. I argue this is caused by deaf peoples’ dual category status, meaning they are seen within public policy as both a linguistic minority and a disability group. This article analyses how this status informed the Act’s parliamentary scrutiny and implementation measures. Data come from parliamentary debates, discussions on social media and interviews with key players involved in the process. The article demonstrates that despite the Parliament’s desire to treat BSL signers as any other language minority, the Act was subjected to a particular set of discourses which exposed it to a degree of scrutiny not experienced by discourses for spoken minority language legislation, and which points to the political and societal context in which sign languages and signers operate.

KEYWORDS:

• British Sign Language
• dual category status
• Scotland
• language legislation
• language planning and policy

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Steve Emery and Mike Gulliver for their feedback on earlier drafts of this article, and the two anonymous reviewers from Current Issues in Language Planning for their useful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Maartje De Meulder is a postdoctoral researcher at the research group on multilingualism at the University of Namur in Belgium. She is undertaking research on the vitality of sign languages. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, for which she focused on the recognition of sign languages and the aspirations of deaf communities in Finland and Scotland.

Notes

1 A number of researchers are moving away from the practice of using the term “Deaf” vs. “deaf” and only use “deaf” to talk about individuals, entities or theoretical concepts. They do so because the d/Deaf dichotomy is in fact an over-simplification of an increasingly complex set of identities and language practices (Kusters, De Meulder & O’Brien, in press).

2 https://www.facebook.com/groups/800527046656790/.

3 These are glosses from BSL, that is, using the nearest equivalent to the sign in printed text.

4 Meanwhile a language planning body, the National Advisory Group (NAG), has been established which will advise on the draft National Plan and on draft Authority Plans. Early on there was a consensus among MSPs that the membership of the NAG should consist of a majority of BSL signers. Ten BSL signers have been recruited to the NAG; nine places will be taken by public bodies who are subject to the BSL Act. It is too early yet to evaluate the impact of the NAG on policy formation and the power allocated to it.

5 Makaton is a language programme designed to provide a means of communication to individuals who cannot communicate efficiently by speaking.

6 http://deafsectorpartnership.net/dsp2/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/BSL-National-Plan-Long-term-aim-and-ambitions.pdf.

7 http://www.uclan.ac.uk/research/explore/projects/multilingual_behaviours_sign_language_users.php.