Sign Languages and Linguistic Citizenship

A Critical Ethnographic Study of the Yangon Deaf Community

Ellen Foote

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367273217
• eBook ISBN: 9781000298758
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This critical ethnographic account of the Yangon deaf community in Myanmar offers unique insights into the dynamics of a vibrant linguistic and cultural minority community in the region and also sheds further light on broader questions around language policy.

The book examines language policies on different scales, demonstrating how unofficial policies in the local deaf school and wider Yangon deaf community impact responses to higher level interventions, namely the 2007 government policy aimed at unifying the country's two sign languages. Foote highlights the need for a critical and interdisciplinary approach to the study of language policy, unpacking the interplay between language ideologies, power relations, political and moral interests and community conceptualisations of citizenship. The study's findings are situated within wider theoretical debates within linguistic anthropology, questioning existing paradigms on the notion of linguistic authenticity and contributing to ongoing debates on the relationship between language policy and social justice.

Offering an important new contribution to critical work on language policy, the book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and language education.

1Introduction

At the Mary Chapman School for the Deaf in Yangon the hallways are suddenly full of pupils. All dressed in Myanmar’s standard white and green school uniform, they crowd the stair wells and the entrance hall and spill out into the yard for lunch. This jostling procession is animated by a buoyant display of moving hands and facial expressions, as students chatter between themselves in Yangon Sign Language. Across the yard and in the shade of the school’s large Frangipani tree is the handicraft room, where groups of deaf alumni undertake training in a variety of trades and crafts. On this particular afternoon, six deaf adults of different ages are gathered here, sharing rice and curry. Three of the group work and train here, while the others are simply catching up with old friends. All six attended the school in their youth, yet their signing styles and lexical choices vary considerably, depending on their age. This diversity chronicles the ongoing evolution of signing at the Mary Chapman School since the founding cohort of students in 1920 began to develop what would become Yangon Sign Language.

During the ten months I spent with the Yangon deaf community I learned that this linguistic variation was a highly prized feature of Yangon Sign Language (YSL); it was common for participants to emphasise its fluid and evolving nature, at times contrasting this with the perceived rigidity of other languages. Yet, I also learned that while linguistic variance and fluidity were valued, unofficial language policies operated within the community that aimed to regulate language use. This book explores the social significance of YSL and offers insight into the role of language in the formation, maintenance and management of the community. In doing so, it examines the social, cultural and ideological underpinnings of unofficial community language policies, and the socio-political purposes that they serve. It also presents a deaf-centred account of community-level responses to a top-down sign language standardisation project, initiated by the Myanmar government in 2007 with the aim of merging YSL with a second sign language used some 600 kilometres to the north in Mandalay.

Located in Lower Myanmar, Yangon is the country’s economic hub and most populous city with over 5 million residents (see Figure 1.1). It is a patchwork of diverse and rapidly changing neighbourhoods: moving outwards from the historic and crumbling colonial centre, the cityscape gives way to a sprawl of late twentieth-century townships, followed by an increasing concentration of informal settlements. Construction sites punctuate almost every neighbourhood, and new high-rise buildings tower over congested streets (see Figure 1.2). Meanwhile, the tropical climate ensures that vegetation proliferates, taking root in every available space and sprouting from mouldering brickwork. Within this metropolis, deaf signers form a small but vibrant community distinguished by their shared sign language and unique cultural identity. The community is comprised predominantly of alumni from the Mary Chapman School for the Deaf, although a small minority enter having previously attended mainstream schools.

Figure 1.1 Map of Myanmar

Source: CartoGIS Services, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.

Established in 1920 by a British missionary, the Mary Chapman School is the oldest and largest deaf school in the country. At the time of opening, just three students were enrolled. By 2014, when fieldwork for this study was conducted, there were 387 students in attendance, many of whom had travelled from other states and divisions to receive their education. After graduating, many alumni choose to remain in Yangon, most often finding low paid work in manual labour. In some cases, small groups of deaf people are able to work together in businesses run by deaf people and their families, or in organisations with a history of employing deaf staff (see Figure 1.3). In general, however, the deaf community is dispersed throughout the city and its suburbs. In the absence of a shared neighbourhood, connections are maintained through frequent social events and informal gatherings. As a result, my meetings with deaf participants took place in homes and workplaces across the city, as well as in tea shops, restaurants, shopping centres, places of worship and at the Mary Chapman School. These visits offered insight into the rhythm of deaf life in the city, and the complex web of social connections that sustain it.

Figure 1.2 Downtown Yangon

Figure 1.3 A small group of deaf people work together, crafting ornaments for the city’s pagodas

I first came to know about the Yangon deaf community as a postgraduate student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Justin Watkins, a professor of Burmese, had met with several deaf signers during his visits to Yangon, and he described what he’d learned about the community and the language to me. However, with Myanmar only just emerging from five decades of isolation, there had been no previous research conducted with the community and little was known about their linguistic situation. Moreover, the government’s plan to create a national sign language, by unifying Yangon and Mandalay Sign Languages, raised questions about the future of YSL. Having studied British Sign Language and Deaf Studies, and with an interest in sociolinguistics and the politics of minoritised languages, my curiosity was piqued. A year later I visited Yangon where I made contact with a small group of deaf signers and began exploring the sociolinguistic context of the community and assessing the feasibility of conducting research.

In September 2014 I returned to the city to embark on the ten months of ethnographic fieldwork. Re-establishing contact with the signers I had met previously, I also began visiting other deaf people around the city. It was during these initial forays into the community that I met with a remarkably hospitable and enthusiastic deaf woman in her early 50s. She would become a key person in the research, assuming multiple roles including that of gatekeeper, unofficial research assistant and research participant. Over time we not only developed a strong working relationship, but also became friends, spending many hours at her home in downtown Yangon talking about various aspects of community life. In addition to sharing this cultural insight, she also invited me to attend numerous deaf community events and gatherings.

Within the first few weeks of arriving in Yangon I also made contact with the Mary Chapman School, introducing myself to the School Principal and Deputy Head, and explaining my plans for fieldwork. Initially, I spent my time at the school in the handicraft room, which proved to be a particularly fertile site for participant observation as deaf people of all ages made frequent social calls. It also brought me into contact with a deaf woman in her late 40s who supervised the room and was renowned not only for her involvement in the school, but also for her linguistic prowess and ability to communicate with deaf signers of all ages. Unwavering in her willingness to answer my many questions on community life, she too became key to the research, inviting me to a wide range of gatherings and events and providing another valuable point of entry to the community as I embarked on this ethnographic research.

Aims of the Research

This book presents a critical ethnographic study of language policy processes in the Yangon deaf community, where participants negotiate language, identity and belonging amidst an ever-changing socio-political landscape.

By attending to the complex interaction between unofficial local language policies and top-down official language policies, this book aims to illuminate the ways in which participants construct, adopt, adapt and at times subvert language policy; in doing so, it seeks to elucidate the community ideologies, beliefs and values that underpin these processes. The text further aims to foreground the dynamic relationship between structure and agency as participants engage with language policy and negotiate their place in the social world. More broadly, the book locates these research findings in the context of their wider theoretical significance and considers their implications for policy making.

Researching Language Policy Processes in Deaf Communities

Over the last several decades, ethnographic research has both broadened and deepened our understanding of language planning and policy (LPP), illuminating its dynamic and processual nature within specific contexts. Such research has also focused attention on the agency of local stakeholders as they create, interpret and appropriate language policies (Johnson, 2013; Hornberger and Johnson, 2011). There remains, however, a notable paucity of ethnographic studies that examine these processes in deaf communities; what little LPP research there is regarding sign languages has tended to present descriptive overviews of official, top-down policy.¹

This lack of ethnographic LPP research risks obscuring the agency of deaf sign language users and undermining our capacity to develop a fine-grained understanding of language policy processes and their social consequences. In turn, this hinders the development of more sophisticated and representative theories of how language policy processes unfold in diverse linguistic settings. Consequently, our understanding of LPP risks relying on observations and theories developed solely through the study of spoken-language communities. In an effort to bridge this gap, the research presented in this book locates itself specifically within the field of critical ethnography, defined by Thomas (1993, p. 4) as ‘conventional ethnography with a political purpose’. To this extent, the book not only addresses issues of inequality in LPP, but also seeks to reflect indigenous deaf epistemologies, destabilising dominant scholarly frameworks and assumptions in favour of local ways of knowing (e.g. Madison, 2012; Makoni and Pennycook, 2007).

Community ideologies of language occupy a central position in this research, revealing the narratives through which participants trace linkages between language, culture and identity, and permitting a closer understanding of the reasons why community members engage with language policy as they do (see, for example, Martin-Jones and Da Costa Cabral, 2018, Lüpke and Storch, 2013). Attention is also given to the broader spectrum of community beliefs and values that further shape policy processes, with a particular focus on community conceptualisations of equality and citizenship. While the scholarly literature accepts that language policy decisions form part of a broader discussion on issues relating to citizenship, very little research to date has attended to community beliefs about the meaning of socio-political participation and their bearing on policy processes (Stroud, 2001; McCarty, 2011; Jaffe, 2011). By examining local models of equality and participation, this book presents a case study of linguistic citizenship (Stroud, 2001, 2018; Wee, 2011). In doing so, the text reveals how deaf participants in Yangon challenge marginalising societal perceptions of sign language and deafness as they introduce alternative representations into the social sphere. On the basis of this analysis, the book reflects on frameworks of equality developed in the global north and contemplates the potential consequences of uncritically imposing these onto minoritised language communities. In this way, the research prompts fresh reflection on dominant discourses of linguistic minority advocacy, introducing alternative perspectives and political schemas to the scholarly forum.

Methodology

Fieldwork and Positionality

Research for this book was conducted in the Yangon deaf community over two five-month periods, between October 2014 and September 2015. Multiple research methods were employed, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews and focus groups.

Throughout the fieldwork I spent the majority of my days conducting participant observation in the community, interacting with deaf people and working to develop an understanding of their lives. To engage with participants it was essential to communicate in YSL, and a significant amount of my time in the field was spent learning the language. While acquiring YSL was a pre-requisite for conducting participant observation, the process of learning the language also served an important social function, helping me to forge relationships with participants during the initial stages of the fieldwork; throughout the research, deaf people went to great lengths to help me learn their language and appeared to take pride in teaching it to me. As Everett (2001) points out, learning the local language is often conducive to building trusting and respectful friendships in the field, dismantling the traditional researcher-participant hierarchy and positioning the researcher in a more subordinate role.

While participant observation provided me with valuable insight into community life, and a wealth of rich data, the extent to which I was able to fully participate in the practices of the community was nevertheless restricted by my status as a guest; people seemed happy for me to spend time with them, yet I struggled to involve myself in the full range of day-to-day community activities, such as helping with chores or preparing food and drink. As Musante and DeWalt (2002, p. 27) point out, while researchers may strive to participate fully in community life, often the role of ‘learner or neophyte is the one most readily available to someone so clearly different’. To this extent, I spent the majority of my time conducting informal conversational interviews, spontaneously asking questions during natural conversation in order to gain a deeper understanding of the participants’ social realities.

The restrictions imposed on my full participation in community life forced me to consider my ‘outsider’ status and my positionali...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Deafness and Sign Language in Myanmar
• 3 The Politics of Language in Myanmar
• 4 Entering the Deaf Community: Language, Identity and Social Participation
• 5 Negotiating Language and Reconstructing Identities: Language Policy at the Mary Chapman School
• 6 Community Ideologies of Linguistic Authenticity and Their Political Function: Unofficial Community Language Policy
• 7 Diverse Perspectives on Language, Equality and Citizenship
• 8 Community Responses to the Myanmar Sign Language Standardisation Project
• 9 Final Reflections
• Index