Will this ever stop?
I received this request today from a colleague:
“Do you know of any research I could quote that evidences the need for native / strong levels of BSL if working with someone who is minimal language / language deprivation / mental health? I’m working with someone who is in hospital and the ex manager is telling people signing isn’t important, she can get by.”
My reply is here for posterity because I do not doubt I will receive the same request again in no time:
This is just disgusting. It’s not for anybody’s manager (particularly ex!) to decide on their behalf what an individual’s linguistic needs might be.
It’s been a long time since I pointed at my chest and said PAY ATTENTION TO ME but as a qualified clinical psychologist with 35 years working in BSL with Deaf people I can say with absolute certainty that:
A person’s requirement for grammatically correct language provision is INVERSELY proportional to their fluency.
That is, a highly fluent BSL user will have the neurocognitive development to be able to decode and perform all the additional processing to work out what sub-optimal communication is provided to them. A less-than-fluent BSL user needs language provision in which the lack of ambiguity is baked-in. That is, language based upon grammatical structures that have evolved over thousands of years in vivo. And not, for example, Makaton, lip-reading, Franglais, or bloody Widgit symbols…. Where ambiguity inevitably surfaces in an interaction, the fluent signer/interpreter will be able to do the metalinguistic processing to ensure comprehension, because somebody with minimal language/language deprivation/impaired mental health will be relatively unable to do so.
Inevitably, because we are talking about the Deaf Community, I can’t find anything properly relevant to point at for this. You’d think it would be obvious though, and anyone wanting “proof” of this argument is just trying to knock the argument into the weeds. They should prove THEIR side. #russellsteapot
I’ve included the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities though cos it’s possibly helpful (and we ARE signed up to it cos UK signed up prior to Brexit and Brexit has no mechanism for unsigning as of yet. Deaf stuff is usefully highlighted by me in yellow.
Feel free to quote me and either Bowdlerize or add fruity language as you see fit.