In general, religion plays a crucial role in the history of Deaf communities across the
world, especially in the education and the diffusion of sign languages. Similarly to
Ferguson’s (1982) analysis of the concurrent spread of religion and language, some
factors in the Deaf case in Africa indicate that missionaries are the source of the diffusion
of sign languages.
This paper will present a sign-language contact issue of missionization and in the Deaf
community of Eritrea and proposes an innovative methodological approach on
documenting language continuum of a multi-language community. Eritrean Sign
Language is the product of missionary sign languages from Finland and Sweden after the
establishment of a Deaf institute in 1955. In the process of developing their first-ever
sign language dictionary, a small group of language planners (mostly Deaf) decided on a
linguistic objective which was to excise any foreign element in their sign language.
Consequently, Eritrean Sign Language underwent a language change through
“demissionization,” a process of reversing from missionization and an attempt at
indigenous purism.
The methodological approach is to provide a diagram that illustrates a language
continuum incorporating each language used in a particular community. The diagram
developed for the Deaf Eritrean community shows the continuum synthesizing both
language variations and repertories. The layout is designed to place the continuum
between two polar points of both types of sign languages, Authenticity (natural sign
language) and Artificiality (coded to a spoken language). In addition, in the middle area
of this diagram, it attempts to place each possible language repertoire from different
social groups in the Deaf Eritrean community. At the further right endpoint of the
continuum, the language diverges from a normal Deaf use of language as it codes exactly
to the grammatical structure as the spoken languages of Tigrinya (or English). That will
be Exact-Tigrinya Signs, which exhibits the most contact-influenced language in this
continuum, as it incorporates spoken languages and borrows heavily from the Missionary
sign languages. At the opposite point of the continuum, the signs or languages in Eritrea
are indigenous or village signs. They are considered as the least-contact-influenced
languages. They are the most free from any other modality or foreign influence in signs,
exhibiting authentic Eritrean signs; hence the continuum portrays that point as “Natural
sign language” for Eritrea. That direction is the ideological variation of the “authentic”
language, which language planners aimed to demissionize their language by soliciting
and reviving the indigenous/village signs and diverging away from the massive contacts
on the other end of the continuum.
This graph has two functions by paralleling and linking the ranges of influence from two
points—foreign sign language and foreign modality (spoken language)—and laying out
the continuum from extreme missionized language or artificial language to indigenous
signs (and home signs) or the language planners’ desired-for an “authentic” language.
Finally, this diagram offers an useful tool for a language contact research, laying out the
aims and largely-complex language variations of a signing community.
Reference:
Ferguson, Charles. 1982. “Religious Factors in Language Spread.” In Language Spread:
Studies in Diffusion and Social Change, Robert L. Cooper (ed.), p. 95 - 106.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Figure 1. Proposed Diagram for a Multi-language Community.