National Sign Languages and Language Policies
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NATIONAL SIGN LANGUAGES AND LANGUAGE POLICIES
INTRODUCTION
On 27 June 1999, 4,000 people marched through London in support of British Sign Language (BSL), demanding its recognition as the language of the British Deaf community and asserting the right of Deaf children to be educated in a bilingual environment with BSL as the language of instruction (Deaf History Journal, 1999). While the British Deaf were marching, the Parliament of Thailand was in the process of formally recognizing Thai Sign Language as a fully fledged language, as the first language of Thai deaf people, and as the language through which Thai deaf people should be educated in a bilingual environment. By late March 2005, the British Deaf community were celebrating the fact that the government had recognized the existence of BSL1 but were fervent about the need to continue agitating to have BSL legalized so that BSL users have the legal right to use it, “bringing years of language discrimination to an end,” indeed for BSL to be recognized as “the UK’s fourth indigenous language” (BDA News/ Press Releases for 16 May 2005, http://www.signcommunity.org.uk/ news). In June 2004, the New Zealand Sign Language Bill went before a Committee of the New Zealand Parliament. On 10 April 2006, Royal Assent was given to the Bill and NZSL became New Zealand’s third official language, along with English and Maori (see http://www.odi. govt.nz). On 6 July 2005, the Austrian Parliament voted for the recognition of Austrian Sign Language, giving the language constitutional recognition. In countries around the world, in the policy-making bodies of the EU and the UN, and in the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD), Deaf people and their hearing supporters have been agitating, with particular intensity over the past decade, for the formal, legal, and constitutional recognition of sign languages as the natural and first languages of Deaf people. It is a struggle that has challenged the firmly socialized prejudices of individuals and governments alike against the so-called “disabled,” and has also eaten away at the very foundations of linguistics 1
BSL was recognized as an official British language by the UK government on 18 March 2003, but it does not have any legal protection.
S. May and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 1: Language Policy and Political Issues in Education, 151–165. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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JAN BRANSON AND DON MILLER
and the philosophy of language. At its heart has been an ongoing confrontation with the shape and purpose of formal education. Both the development of national sign languages and the development of formal government language policies associated with sign languages are relatively recent, products of the spread of nationalism and of national and international movements in the fields of human rights and education (cf. May, 2006, Language Education, Pluralism and Citizenship, Volume 1; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2006, Human Rights and Language Policy in Education, Volume 1). Do national
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