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From:
"Angus B. Grieve-Smith" Date: Fri Aug 20, 1999 2:58 pm Subject: Re: Acronyms (one last time :-) | ||||||||||||||||||||
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On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Valerie Sutton wrote: > Plus, Michael also devised a way to refer to dialects and several > signed languages within one country. See his web page: This is a good start, but it still privileges one signed language as the "unmarked" language of a country. Take Canada for example. I don't know everything about the situation there, so Canadian signers please correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but "Canadian Sign Language" is mutually intelligible with ASL, and is usually called "ASL," but the "CSL" name is a political one. However, ASL is only used by a portion of the country's signers; a large number of them use LSQ. Why was ASL chosen to receive the name "Canadian Sign Language," when LSQ is the one that is truly indigenous to Canada? What about the two other signed languages listed as spoken in Canada, Eskimo Sign Language and Nova Scotian Sign Language? My point is that people setting standards have no business furthering the dominance of one language group over another by setting one up as the "default" for that country. I would suggest that wherever there is a country with more than one signed language, or a SL with more than one dialect, that ALL signed varieties be expressed with a suffix, so "Canadian Sign Language" would be "sgn-CA-eng" to show that it is usually spoken by people connected with the English Canadian cultures. -- Angus B. Grieve-Smith Linguistics Department The University of New Mexico | ||||||||||||||||||||
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