Lexical Variation and Change in British Sign Language

Stamp, Rose; Schembri, Adam; Fenlon, J; Rentelis, R; Woll, Bencie; Cormier, K

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0094053

Cited by 112 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…In addition to multiple national signed languages, there are also significant regional differences in sign language within national contexts. In the UK, for example, there are many dialectical differences in BSL use in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, the North of England, the Midlands, and the South of England (Stamp et al, 2014), where for instance there are 17 different signs for the colour purple 1 .…”

Section: Deaf Communities and Sign Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using video technology to engage deaf sign language users in survey research: An example from the Insign project

Napier¹,

Lloyd²,

Skinner³

et al. 2018

Trans-Int

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For many deaf signers, a signed language is their first or preferred language; spoken or written languages are often second languages and literacy levels among deaf signers vary. Historically, surveys carried out with deaf signers have been in written form, which means that findings of such studies may be problematic in terms of whether participants are a representative sample (as only those with higher levels of literacy may respond) and in terms of the integrity of the responses (if respondents did not fully understand questions). This paper therefore discusses issues faced in conducting survey research with deaf signers, given that they may face challenges in accessing questionnaires in written form. The paper also discusses how to conduct a multi-country study with deaf signers when they do not have a common sign language by designing a questionnaire using International Sign. We present a case study of the Insign project, which employed an online survey methodology that allowed 84 deaf respondents from 22 different countries to view questions in International Sign about their experiences with existing communication technologies and their expectations of service provision to access European Institutions. We explore the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach in relation to the use of International Sign, challenges in recruiting enough respondents, the time needed to create a signed questionnaire instrument, and how to enable deaf participants to respond in sign language. We conclude with recommendations for social science researchers to consider when administering surveys with deaf signing communities.

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Section: Deaf Communities and Sign Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using video technology to engage deaf sign language users in survey research: An example from the Insign project

Napier¹,

Lloyd²,

Skinner³

et al. 2018

Trans-Int

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It appears that this may be the reason deaf people now report much less trouble communicating with those from distant regions of the country (Woll 1994). This greater contact between regional varieties appears to be leading to dialect leveling (Woll 1987;Stamp et al, 2014Stamp et al, , 2015. There is in fact much controversy amongst sign language teachers surrounding the issue of dialect levelling and standardisation, with conflict arising between preserving traditional diversity within BSL and the notion of standardising signs for teaching purposes (e.g., Elton 2006).…”

Section: Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variation and Change in Varieties of British Sign Language in England

Schembri

Stamp

Fenlon³

et al. 2018

Sociolinguistics in England

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British Sign Language (BSL) is the language used by the deaf community in the United Kingdom. In this chapter, we describe sociolinguistic variation and change in BSL varieties in England. This will show how factors that drive sociolinguistic variation and change in both spoken and signed language communities are broadly similar. Social factors include, for example, a signer's age group, region of origin, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (e.g., Lucas, Valli & Bayley 2001). Linguistic factors include assimilation and co-articulation effects (e.g., Schembri et al. 2009; Fenlon et al. 2013). It should be noted, however, some factors involved in sociolinguistic variation in sign languages are distinctive. For example, phonological variation includes features,

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“…signs that are highly conventionalised in both form and meaning across the sign language community). Of these, roughly 1,700 sign types occur in (a) 50,000 sign tokens from the BSL Corpus conversation data, annotated as part of a lexical frequency study (Fenlon et al 2014b) and a project on directional verbs (Cormier et al 2014) and (b) 295 sign types for colours, numbers and countries from the BSL Corpus lexical elicitation data annotated as part of a study on lexical variation (Stamp 2013;Stamp et al 2014). Additionally, (c) roughly 700 sign types in BSL SignBank are from Brien (1992) which did not occur in the corpus.…”

Section: Bsl Signbankmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building BSL SignBank: The Lemma Dilemma Revisited

Fenlon

Cormier

Schembri

2015

International Journal of Lexicography

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One key criterion when creating a representation of the lexicon of any language within a dictionary or lexical database is that it must be decided which groups of idiosyncratic and systematically modified variants together form a lexeme. Few researchers have, however, attempted to outline such principles as they might apply to sign languages. As a consequence, some sign language dictionaries and lexical databases appear to be mixed collections of phonetic, phonological, morphological, and lexical variants of lexical signs (e.g. Brien 1992) which have not addressed what may be termed as the lemma dilemma. In this paper, we outline the lemmatisation practices used in the creation of BSL SignBank (Fenlon et al. 2014a), a lexical database and dictionary of British Sign Language based on signs identified within the British Sign Language Corpus (http://www.bslcorpusproject.org). We argue that the principles outlined here should be considered in the creation of any sign language lexical database and ultimately any sign language dictionary and reference grammar.

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Lexical Variation and Change in British Sign Language

Cited by 112 publications

References 33 publications

Using video technology to engage deaf sign language users in survey research: An example from the Insign project

Using video technology to engage deaf sign language users in survey research: An example from the Insign project

Variation and Change in Varieties of British Sign Language in England

Building BSL SignBank: The Lemma Dilemma Revisited

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