Dr Robert Adam is an assistant professor at Heriot-Watt University and a lecturer in Linguistics, British Sign Language and Deaf Studies.
In the course of his essay, Robert asks, who are the arbiters of British Sign Language? How can its evolution be managed?
Robert shares how fewer deaf children are learning British Sign Language at school, and more are now learning it later in life, as young adults. From an outsider’s perspective this may seem relatively harmless, but this language deprivation and dispersal of deaf people from each other, means that deaf children do not get the chance to develop extensive peer groups, or learn to sign from a fluent or native signer.
Robert goes on to explore the colonial history of British Sign Language and how there is no single country that ‘owns’ the one language, and British Sign Language is certainly not owned solely by the British Deaf community. He talks wryly of the irony of deaf people in the UK continuing to struggle with equal access to information and participation in broader society and yet BSL is a colonising language.
Robert talks frankly of how on various platforms we are now witnessing astonishing bastardisations of sign language, to the point that a BSL Watchdog has recently been established by a group of concerned deaf people. There are also concerns about sign language gradually being eroded as new generations of deaf children are denied access to it through what Robert sees as misguided attempts at so-called “inclusion” in education. Will so-called, ‘proper sign language’ become a thing of the past?
A Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3.