8

Calibrating and Language Learning

Erin Moriarty, Annelies Kusters, Sanchayeeta Iyer, Amandine le Maire, and Steven Emery

Calibrating (see Figure 8.1) is an English translation of a sign used in British Sign Language (BSL) and other sign languages that depicts a person spinning one or two dials on the body (Hodge & Goswell, 2021; Moriarty & Kusters, 2021). This sign (here displayed in two variants) is used to describe how people align to their interlocutors by communicating in ways that they hope the other will understand. It is often used to describe a person adapting while signing with someone who has a different sign language background from their own, such as someone from a different region in the country (Palfreyman, 2019), from a different country (Zeshan, 2015), or who is a new signer (De Meulder, 2019). It can involve using different signs for the same concept, enactments and examples, repetitions and changes of speed, more or fewer mouthings, more or less fingerspelling, and so on.

In the literature on spoken languages, a word that has a similar meaning as “calibrating” is “languaging”: “a cover term for activities involving language” (Love, 2017, p. 115). This includes signing, speaking, writing, reading; in other words, it means “doing language.” “Languaging” as a practice precedes languages as bounded entities (e.g., “British Sign Language”), as “[t]here must be languaging before there can be languages” (Love, 2017, p. 117). Put simply, labels for languages (e.g., “British Sign Language” or “English”) are the result of commonplace understandings that a particular set of language practices can be categorized as a single language, and that a range of linguistic variation can be grouped together. The consensus that there is a British Sign Language means an agreement to group (regional) variation under a single nomer (Palfreyman & Schembri, 2022). In this chapter, our aim is to explore calibration as a deaf-authored practice and ideology—hence, our use of a term that is a translation of a sign emic to deaf communities rather than using the term “languaging.”

Calibration can involve “translanguaging,” which is a term often used to describe the languaging practices of bilinguals and multilinguals in which elements of different languages are combined (Garcia & Li, 2014). For example, deaf people may mix two or more different sign languages when communicating (Zeshan & Webster, 2020). They may also use mouthings of different spoken languages in their signing or point at written English to connect their signed narrative with specific English terms. The meaning of the term “calibration” is different from translanguaging because it is broader: Calibration does not necessarily entail multilingual language use, which is what translanguaging researchers typically focus on. Also, at the core of (the sign) CALIBRATION is the practice of signing: Even when people make use of nonsigned resources such as text, calibration is about using signing (in alternation) with these other resources. Many of the examples in this chapter involve International Sign (IS). Conversations in IS make use of a variety of calibrating practices. When people use IS, they may slow down, unmark signs (i.e., simplify handshapes), and engage in enactments and other visualizations (e.g., mapping) to explain things. IS also can be (and often is) a translanguaging practice that makes use of resources from different named languages. Interlocutors may use signs from different national sign languages (often, European sign languages and American Sign Language [ASL]), which they regard as relatively transparent and/or widely known, and often, two or more semantically equivalent signs (e.g., from different sign languages) are offered or exchanged. IS often includes mouthings and fingerspelled words from spoken languages (usually English). The process of calibration in IS could be said to be specific to it because certain resources and strategies are preferred over others, as we explore in this chapter.

Figure 8.1. CALIBRATING (two variants).

Over the years, repeated interactions at international deaf events, like the Deaflympics and the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) Congress, have led to the emergence of common repertoires of signs, primarily derived from various European national sign languages and ASL. Although the lexicon used can differ based on the event type, there is overlap. In this chapter, when we use expressions such as “know IS,” “learn IS,” and “exposed to IS,” we mean conventional IS as used in conferences. IS takes a wide range of forms in different contexts and between different interlocutors, being both the process of calibrating between people who have little shared language in common (Zeshan, 2015) and the product of it: the use of a more conventionalized lexicon at, for example, international conferences (see This Is IS: Episodes 3 and 5). In such contexts, both adept users and novices calibrate to better connect with their audiences or interlocutors, which shows that there is no strict demarcation between conventional IS and the process of calibration in these contexts.

In this chapter, we show that deaf cosmopolitanism—the possibility of connecting with deaf people across national and linguistic borders—is based on this ability to calibrate. When calibrating, deaf people deploy a variety of semiotic resources, which are used to understand or be understood in communication, such as gestures, signs, spoken words, mouthings, and various forms of writing (Kusters et al., 2017c). Deaf people who are mobile constantly add to their semiotic repertoires by learning words, signs, and concepts from different national and local sign languages, as well as spoken and written languages (Moriarty & Kusters, 2021). We will mostly write about repertoires as residing in individuals as sets of resources that can be expanded through learning. However, semiotic repertoires also include objects in the environment, which people may or may not use or refer to (e.g., pens, paper, mobile devices), and locations that people point at, both on their bodies and in the environment (Canagarajah, 2021b). The semiotic repertoires of interactions are not only specific to the individuals involved but also incorporate and span the broader environments in which these interactions occur.

Mobilities are intimately tied to a person’s life trajectory. This trajectory may include moving between places and shifting between languages, in what Busch (2012, 2017) calls the “language trajectory.” The languages that people use in their everyday lives move with them when they travel or migrate to a new place. People may also learn new (bits of) languages. Language learning may take place in formal educational settings, or informally. When people are mobile, they encounter other people from different languaging backgrounds and learn new words or signs. Language learning practices are also intimately tied to mobility on different scales; a person’s language use in a local context is likely to change as they move into regional, national, international, or transnational domains. For example, a deaf person in the Global South who moves from a rural village to a city for work, training, or educational opportunities is likely to encounter and/or have the opportunity to learn the national sign language for the first time (Moriarty Harrelson, 2017b). Additionally, people may expand their repertoire in advance of moving, by joining language courses or asking someone to practice with them. Sometimes, a person’s accumulated repertoire may not fit the place they are in (Blommaert et al., 2005; Busch, 2017). As people move through places, they learn what types of languaging are appropriate in which locations or on which scale. For example, the flexible use of IS that takes place in an intimate gathering of friends would not be appropriate on the stage at a World Federation of the Deaf congress, where conventionalized IS lexicon is used.

In this chapter, we describe contexts and encounters where deaf practices of calibrating and language learning take place. We connect these practices to “language ideologies,” the attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs that shape them. As deaf people travel and circulate languages, so do their ideas about languages. For example, some sign languages may be valued more than others, for reasons including their earlier emergence, comparative prestige, and/or their more widespread use (Kusters et al., 2020). Language ideologies serve social interests and, as such, they are always multiple and contested (Piller, 2015). Ideologies about languages also shape (and are shaped by) how people think about themselves, other people, and their languages (Irvine & Gal, 2000).

Language and ideology influence each other, and this is a moral process. Differences in language practices can lead to value judgments about people who communicate differently. The ideologically laden nature of languages and languaging thus sometimes leads to conflicts, tensions, and grievances between people in transnational settings. Often, these value judgments lead to people telling others what they are doing “wrong” with language (Straaijer, 2016); this includes statements about people using “too much ASL in IS” (Kusters, 2020) or that someone is using the wrong language in the wrong place (e.g., migrants in the United Kingdom who use ASL).

ASL (or parts of its lexicon) has been introduced in various forms by missionaries, educators, and development workers in a significant number of countries in Africa, Asia, and South America (see Kusters, 2021, for an overview). Deaf people from all over the world have attended universities in the United States (such as Gallaudet University) and often brought ASL signs to their home countries (Parks, 2014). ASL is abundant on the internet in the form of vlogs, stories, performances, and news broadcasts. Therefore, in deaf communities outside of the United States, ASL is often seen as a language with more status, depth, breadth, visibility, and/or complexity than other sign languages (McKee & McKee, 2020). ASL has also been associated with linguistic imperialism and the loss of linguistic diversity in sign languages outside the United States (Moriarty, 2020a). The ideology of ASL being a “super spreader” or “killer” language may or may not shape languaging practices. In some contexts, its use is minimized because of its negative connotations; in others, ASL is seen as a useful bridging language in international deaf communication.

In another example of morality, people choose to use certain forms of signing to align with others and show respect to people from the country they visit, such as deaf tourists picking up “bits” of Indonesian and Balinese sign languages (Moriarty & Kusters, 2021). Everyday sense-making involves words and signs tied to distinct bounded languages, especially among people of different national or local language backgrounds. However, our research shows that mobile deaf people, through their everyday experiences of languaging practices, also challenge language boundaries. Our own meetings demonstrate this, because the MobileDeaf team used combinations of BSL, English, and ASL to communicate effectively. Sign languages are in contact in various forms, ranging from sign-sign contact to the incorporation of mouthings and fingerspelling (Adam & Braithwaite, 2022). Due to historical contact between deaf signers and the iconic motivations of some signs, it is often not possible to determine the origins of a sign (McKee & McKee, 2020; Zeshan & Panda, 2019), and we agree with Pennycook’s (2010) argument that the idea of having discrete, countable languages is an ideological project. Classification of languages and languaging practices is a colonial idea that reduces complex situations of languaging and language mixing into easily understandable categories (for the colonizers). In practice, there is no such thing as a delineated, “pure” language bound to a territorial area such as a nation-state. We view language as emergent from contexts of interaction (Pennycook, 2010, p. 85), hence our emphasis on calibrating as a social activity.

Although we believe that language boundaries are ideological (i.e., are themselves language ideologies), we also believe that sign languages are “real” languages, and we acknowledge that boundaries between languages may be important, productive, empowering, or disempowering (Kusters et al., 2020). Within this context, our data not only focus on languaging as a practice, but also on how mobile deaf people are expected to learn bounded languages—not just a few “bits,” but attaining fluency. Examples include deaf migrants to the United Kingdom being expected to learn both BSL and (written) English, and deaf refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp being expected to learn Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) and (written) English. Perceptions of skilled calibrating practices and linguistic competency in bounded languages are often tied to opportunities for advancement. However, the system often does not work to people’s advantage: Long waiting lists for BSL classes are a barrier to formal language learning for deaf migrants in London.

Many mobile deaf people have complicated feelings about their own language practices and learning processes. It is common for deaf people to have some form of language trauma or to experience the stigma of language deprivation, having faced barriers to informal and formal language learning within the family or in the larger community/village/city (Glickman & Hall, 2019). Many deaf refugees and migrants arriving in new host countries had not formally learned a sign language in the country they left. For these deaf people, learning a new language in their new host country may be paired with an ideological “devaluing” of their previous language practices, which may then be labeled “not language,” “village signs,” “home sign,” or “gesture.” For example, many deaf people in Kakuma Refugee Camp claimed that their country of origin does not have a sign language despite evidence to the contrary.

In our analysis, we draw on data collected across the four subprojects to show examples of the ways in which mobile deaf people engage in calibrating and language learning, and how they understand and talk about what they are doing. We draw heavily on linguistic ethnography and on film materials recorded in the field (Moriarty, 2020b), especially our ethnographic films #deaftravel: Deaf Tourism in Bali, Finding Spaces to Belong, and the This Is IS series. We show how meaning-making is a morally laden, mutually constructed activity that draws on the semiotic resources afforded or constrained by specific life trajectories, ideologies, and communicative settings.

Calibrating

We start with a number of examples showing how deaf people calibrate in international encounters.

•Example A (#deaftravel, 01:14:49):¹ Wahyu, the Balinese Deaf Guide, brought a group of deaf tourists from the Netherlands to Bengkala, the “deaf village” in north Bali (see Chapter 6), and introduced them to one of the deaf families living there. The group sat chatting on the porch in front of the house. Using Kata Kolok (the village sign language), one of the deaf villagers asked if two women from the Netherlands were sisters (Figure 8.2a). They did not understand, so another deaf villager (her sister) repeated the question (Figure 8.2b). The latter then turned to Wahyu, who explained to the tourists that the Kata Kolok sign just shown means “sister,” using the ASL sign SISTER and mouthing in English (Figure 8.2c). He then added fingerspelling in the ASL/IS alphabet, S-I-S-T-E-R (Figure 8.2d). During this interaction, Wahyu also explained that Kata Kolok is “very different” from BISINDO (Indonesian Sign Language) and gave the example of signs for “age.” He fingerspelled A-G-E in ASL/IS alphabet and mouthed in English, and then showed the signs used in the south (of Bali) (Figure 8.2e) and in the village (Figure 8.2f), and a widely used IS sign (Figure 8.2g). Wahyu connected each of these signs to geographical locations, saying that a particular sign is used “here,” “over there,” and “in the south.”

•Example B: Abdi, a refugee from Somalia, was talking about experiencing war in his country in an interview with Amandine in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya. He used a KSL sign that Amandine did not understand (Figure 8.3a). She asked for clarification. Abdi spelled T-R-O-O-P-S using ASL fingerspelling (Figure 8.3b). To check that she had understood him correctly, Amandine replied with the sign in ASL meaning “army” (Figure 8.3c). Abdi seemed to recognize or understand the sign, and he copied Amandine’s sign with a slightly different hand orientation (Figure 8.3d).

•Example C (This Is IS: Episode 1, 00:12:10): 2. Hyemi from Korea and Lenka S. from the Czech Republic were among a group of youths arriving in Denmark to take part in the Frontrunners course. They first met each other at the train station. After exchanging their sign names, Lenka signed: FROM CZECH-REPUBLIC. Hyemi looked questioningly at Lenka and repeated Lenka’s sign. Lenka responded with the sign PRAGUE (Figure 8.4a). Hyemi continued to repeat CZECH-REPUBLIC in a puzzled way (Figure 8.4b), to which Lenka responded by fingerspelling C-Z-E-C-H-R-E-P-U-B using the IS/ASL alphabet (Figures 8.4b–c), while Hyemi simultaneously used her finger to write out the word in Roman script on her palm (Figure 8.4c). Hyemi, who uses a different fingerspelling alphabet and a different written script in Korea, later explained that this transition from fingerspelling to the Roman script helps her understand it. At the letter “B,” Hyemi shook her head to indicate that she gave up, and Lenka switched tactics, signing CLOSE GERMANY with a questioning expression to check whether Hyemi understood. Hyemi responded quickly: GERMANY KNOW. Lenka then visualized where the Czech Republic is situated in relation to Germany (Figure 8.4d) and outlined the shape of the Czech Republic (Figure 8.4e). She then also showed the location of Poland and Austria (in a similar way to Figure 8.4d), along with internationally used sign names for these countries. Hyemi kept repeating the sign CZECH-REPUBLIC. She understood that Lenka was showing where the Czech Republic is located, but she struggled to visualize the map in her head. Lenka ended the interaction by telling Hyemi that she would show it to her on a physical map later, recognizing that the map she had conjured through signs relied on a frame of reference they did not share. Hyemi understood and nodded, signing THANK YOU and NICE TO MEET YOU. The two embraced.

•Example D: Aisha, an Indian woman who had recently migrated to London, asked Sanchayeeta to aid her in advancing her English skills. She sent occasional text messages via WhatsApp, asking Sanchayeeta to explain English text. Aisha sometimes sent screenshots of text, underlining or circling words and sentences she did not understand. In Figure 8.5a, Aisha asked Sanchayeeta for the meaning of the word “whether.” Sanchayeeta responded at first by explaining the meaning in an English sentence. When Aisha responded that she did not understand, Sanchayeeta sent a BSL video of herself giving a definition. Aisha responded with a BSL video to check whether she had understood the explanation correctly (Figure 8.5b), and a screenshot of the word used in a textbook (Figure 8.5c). Later in the research project, Sanchayeeta changed the strategy in her explanations, using more gifs and emoticons. In Figures 8.5d–g, Aisha asked for the meaning of nappy and tantrums. Sanchayeeta first thought that Aisha was asking the meaning of the sentences “(nappies) may still be needed” and “(tantrums) may still be a thing,” and explained these in English (Figures 8.5d and 8.5e). However, Aisha clarified that it was the words “nappy” and “tantrum” that she did not understand, and Sanchayeeta explained these using text and gifs (Figures 8.5f and 8.5g).

Figure 8.2. Balinese tour guide Wahyu and deaf people from the deaf village discuss differences between Kata Kolok and BISINDO signs.

Figure 8.3. Abdi, a Somalian refugee, and Amandine clarify the meaning of “army” through calibration.

Figure 8.4. Lenka S. and Hyemi use various calibration strategies to communicate the name and location of the Czech Republic.

Across the different subprojects, we found that many of our participants engaged in a collective process of calibrating and language learning, sometimes involving us as researchers (as in Examples B and D). As people engaged in calibrating, they would slow down the speed of their signing or use more visual and gestural styles (e.g., Lenka S. outlining a map in Example C). In the deaf mental map (see Chapter 7), the body can become a geographical entity, which is a widely used method of demonstrating specific places in relation to each other. For example, a hand may be used as a map by pointing to the location on the hand corresponding to the approximate geographical location of a specific place (see #deaftravel, 00:38:25):³ Ubud, a town in Bali, is described with a tap of an index finger in the middle of the back of the hand, whereas Bengkala is at the top of the back of the hand, further north than Ubud.

Figure 8.5. WhatsApp messages showing a range of modalities to clarify the meaning of English words.

In Examples A and B, previously, people made use of fingerspelling, which helped to identify the term and acted as a bridge for exchanging signs when people knew corresponding English terms for the signs and knew the alphabet used in ASL and/or IS (both are similar and widely used). In other situations, this did not work, as the example of “Czech Republic” (Example C) shows. Different communication strategies are used in different spaces and through different media, as shown in Example D where communication via WhatsApp is more text-based than the other interactions and is stretched out over a longer time. Visual elements are inserted by way of emoticons and GIFs, and by using images on which lines and circles are added to point to key terms; sign language videos can also be sent. Example D illustrates how the semiotic repertoire spans between people and objects, text, and images external to people’s bodies.

In these and other examples of calibrating, people are oriented toward understanding each other, and they often learn language, such as signs from other languages and the meaning of English words, as part of the process. The use of smartphones can be a mediator, too: We observed the use of phones in face-to-face interactions to pull up a picture or to translate a word or phrase into another written language (see, e.g., 00:25:47 in This Is IS: Episode 1).⁴ The diversity of people’s bodies and their use (or not) of parts of their bodies were reflected in the ways that they calibrated in international space. Examples Annelies observed in her study on IS (Kusters, forthcoming) include deafblind people using Protactile, or touch-based, signing (see Chapter 9 for more on deafblind people’s experiences), and writing numbers with a finger on the hand palm rather than holding up a number of fingers. Deaf people whose mouths were covered—for example, those wearing a niqab or a face mask—adapted their signing by using more fingerspelling and adjusting their pace. A deaf person who used a wheelchair used their leg in the role of the nondominant hand. Deaf people at the 19th Winter Deaflympics were observed writing with their finger in the snow or on their snowboards, or simplifying signs when signing with thick gloves.

The people in these interactions were motivated to communicate, to make each other understand. We interpret these examples using the deaf cosmopolitanism concept as defined by Moriarty and Kusters (2021). Deaf cosmopolitanism is an (idealistic) orientation of openness to sameness and difference among deaf people of various backgrounds (see Chapter 1). A common refrain among deaf people is that shared deafness and signing skills lead to potential connection with other deaf people and allow them to communicate across national and linguistic borders (Green, 2014). IS could be said to be a manifestation of deaf cosmopolitanism. A particular scene in the film #deaftravel: Deaf Tourism in Bali shows several examples of calibrating during a dinner with members of the local deaf community (00:35:46).⁵ The scene concerns Ronja, a woman from Germany who is a new signer of German Sign Language (DGS). New signers are those who have learned how to sign later in life rather than as a child, often outside home or school, and often after acquiring a spoken language first (De Meulder, 2019). Ronja, who was new to IS, had a travel “buddy” from her country, Sabrina, who took responsibility for Ronja’s learning of IS and ASL and provided brokering support (see #deaftravel, 00:40:47–onward).⁶ Sign language brokering is a form of informal interpreting used to mediate expected or experienced communication difficulties (Napier, 2020), and having this support is a form of social capital and an indicator of privilege. On the 10-day multinational and multilingual Travass tour, Sabrina explained that she felt like Ronja was her child and that she felt “responsible” for her enjoyment of the “deaf travel” experience, in which language learning and brokering are central to engaging in deaf sociality. Sabrina was morally oriented toward supporting Ronja’s communication with other tourists in the group and with deaf Balinese people, and she used familial and affective terms to describe this orientation (see Chapter 9 for further discussion of family terms). The clip illustrates how calibrating and language learning is a shared task.

However, although IS is international in that it is used for international communication and incorporates signs from different sign languages, this incorporation is not necessarily evenly distributed. Many signs that are used in conventional versions of IS are from European sign languages or are used in European gestural cultures. The term “International Sign” (or alternatives such as “International Sign Language”) is widely understood in Europe, and deaf white Europeans dominate much of the discourse around IS. An example of this also concerns Sabrina. In an interview, she explained that it was important to meet the other person in the middle, and she talked about a young Balinese man she met during the previously mentioned deaf community dinner:

I was explaining things to him, and he felt lost. […] I noticed [Balinese deaf people] didn’t know English. They only signed without any mouthing, which was hard to follow. They signed their own way [BISINDO]. It was a bit hard, not very gestural with pointing. I said that we do not need examples in signing, we need gestures. For them, the alphabet was hard because they use a two-handed alphabet. I can understand it is hard, but the world uses it [i.e., a one-handed alphabet]. […] Since I am from Germany and they were from Bali, we should meet in the middle and sign IS. They need to learn IS. IS must be gestural. I learned some of their signs while I was watching carefully. I signed IS gesturally. (#deaftravel, 00:40:01)⁷

Calibration is integral to the deaf cosmopolitanism ethos, and both examples concerning Sabrina illustrate “ethical” language practices and the ways in which language ideologies are shaped by moral orientations. However, as the above quotation suggests, not all parties in the communicative encounter calibrate in the same ways, because semiotic resources are unevenly distributed and tied to scales of (im)mobility. Sabrina understood that there were differences and inequalities tied to language and mobility, and she found the Balinese person’s calibration strategies unsuitable to international communication.

However, this Balinese person calibrated in different ways, with different semiotic resources and strategies that Sabrina did not necessarily recognize. Palfreyman (2019) found that BISINDO has a high degree of regional variation and that Indonesian signers are constantly calibrating to other signers from elsewhere in the archipelago. In contrast to Ronja, the Balinese deaf person did not have a more experienced “buddy” to share metalinguistic information with them and to support the process of international communication. Instead, the Balinese people worked together as a group to clarify meanings through chaining. Chaining means that different modalities are sequentially employed to highlight equivalents—for example, by fingerspelling the (English) word for a concept and then signing it in the relevant sign language(s), as described in Example A. Other chaining processes include pointing at a written word and then signing/saying it, simultaneously mouthing and signing, or mouthing and fingerspelling (see also Bagga-Gupta, 2000; Tapio, 2019). These various processes contribute to learning different, often overlapping aspects of new languages. An example of this is shown in #deaftravel: when Sabrina asked to see the sign for rice, one Balinese deaf man demonstrated the BISINDO sign RICE, and the other Balinese man repeated the sign in a validation of its correctness (#deaftravel, 00:39:40).⁸

The previous quotation also shows that there are language ideologies about how IS communication should happen: that interlocutors should use “universal” (ASL/IS) fingerspelling (which is harder for deaf people who use very different alphabets in their everyday life, such as Hyemi in Example C, previously) and should avoid using too many signs from their own sign languages (such as BISINDO). Instead, what people call “gesturing” or “signing more visually” is valued as a border-crossing visual phenomenon that is not influenced by national sign languages. However, as mentioned before, “gesturing” practices that are commonly used in IS are not necessarily familiar to everyone in the interaction. Finally, the quotation shows that there are language ideologies circulating that define IS as the “golden middle way” (see Moriarty & Kusters, 2021). However, we met many deaf people who did not see IS as “meeting in the middle” but as a “European thing.” We return to this later.

As a tourist-facing professional of several years’ standing (see Chapter 6), Wahyu has a wealth of experience of calibrating to tourists of different nationalities because his ability to adjust to foreigners from a range of countries is key to his business:

When I work as a deaf guide, I use IS and Auslan mainly. When I meet deaf people from Bali, I switch to BISINDO, but during work I generally use IS because most people come from America, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and so on. When Australians come, I need to switch the way I sign, and that is a bit more difficult because of their two-handed alphabet. […] When they slow down it is fine. […] When a Chinese person comes, I sign differently compared to when a German or a Dutch person comes—I use a different IS. […] I have to adjust, yes. When deaf people come here and don’t understand my IS, I have to adjust. I use some German signs if a German person comes, but only a bit. For example, I will mouth “Willkommen” while signing WELCOME, it is only a bit and we understand each other better after that. But I mostly use IS. […] I learn while communicating. When I meet a deaf person, I use the signs I learned before, which helps us to communicate.

Wahyu reported that he learns and adopts from other languages, incorporating a range of signs, mouthings, and fingerspelling alphabets into his languaging to various degrees. He also indicated that IS takes different forms, or “looks different,” depending on whom he is interacting with. His language learning is connected with tourist mobility, and he uses “bits” from the semiotic repertoire he has accumulated from previous encounters with tourists. Sometimes he has had to adjust to tourists from different countries at once: Erin observed Wahyu changing his fingerspelling system in response to his interlocutors, using BSL/Auslan fingerspelling with tourists from Australia and immediately switching to IS/ASL fingerspelling with deaf Indian and Italian tourists in the same tour group (#deaftravel, 00:47:18).⁹ Wahyu also adapted topics and frames of reference to the nationality of the person or group he was guiding at the time. For example, Erin observed that Wahyu talked openly about the Dutch colonization of Indonesia with a tourist from the United States, but he avoided an overly negative framing when he was with tourists from the Netherlands.

Tourist encounters are short-term encounters, ranging from a few hours to a few days in duration. Conversely, Annelies observed a group in which IS was learned and used over a longer time: the Frontrunners course in Denmark. The language of the course is IS, which students acquire through immersion; some already have considerable experience of IS when they arrive, whereas others are still new to it. Over their 9 months in the program, the Frontrunners learn to calibrate in various ways, including by changing their signing speed, being “more visual” or “using gestures,” avoiding ASL signs, and signing some concepts in different ways. Some of this calibrating is learned from their teachers, but much is picked up through trial and error. It appears that deeply rooted in the practice of IS is the cosmopolitan ideology that all participants in the interaction should make an active effort to bridge linguistic differences. Many people value the exchange of national signs, viewing it as a form of communicative creativity and cooperation. Relatedly, many of Annelies’s Frontrunners interviewees said that they found IS more difficult to understand if a lot of ASL signs were used because ASL-dominated IS tended to be signed more quickly and is seen as less adaptive, “less visual,” and thus less cooperative (Kusters, 2020). Ideologically, using IS is supposed to be “meeting in the middle,” to use Sabrina’s words; however, we noted that this process tends to be skewed toward ways of calibration and uses of (IS) lexicon that are more particular to Europe.

After 8 months in the Frontrunners program, the students said that they had internalized IS sufficiently, both IS as calibration and conventionalized IS lexicon. Their signing was faster, and they asked for fewer clarifications. Many frequently used signs were understood by all; ASL signs, IS signs, and signs from the students’ national sign languages had circulated. However, whereas they recognized that their communication had sped up, they also said that they had become better at slowing down when required and had learned strategies to make themselves more understandable. When signing for outside audiences, on video, or with people in the group who did not understand their signing, students had learned to sign “more visually”—for example, using a large signing space or enacting scenarios. They had learned to use forms of IS with more or less ASL in it, depending on the audience. In other words, they had not only expanded their semiotic repertoires by learning new lexicon but had also learned a variety of calibration strategies to adapt to a variety of audiences.

In this process of calibrating and learning, there were inequalities within the group. Repetition is an important strategy in calibration, but not everyone was equally comfortable asking for repetition. People who understood less had more need for repetition, but they worried about how requesting it would reflect on them. Hyemi, the South Korean woman mentioned in Example C, explained:

In Korea, it is culturally different—if I don’t understand, I can’t ask for someone to repeat themselves over and over again. People who ask for repetition because they continually don’t understand are seen as inferior. In Asia, we are always polite and calm. I can’t always say everything, so instead I stay still [i.e., passive]. Later, I understand [having absorbed and processed new signs]—that is how I learn. It is not easy. I really have to try and ask others. That is important. I don’t want to ask the same person over and over again, so instead I ask everyone. Through that approach I can learn. (This Is IS: Episode 1, 00:25:59)¹⁰

Due to her cultural background, Hyemi hesitated to ask for repetition too often. She also expressed concern about national stereotyping, that is, that people will think that “all Koreans are the same and do not understand” (see Chapter 5). “Not understanding” is not purely a question of not knowing particular signs but also not knowing about underlying concepts and cultural mores. In addition to having had less exposure to “European” IS lexicon before arriving at the Frontrunners course, students from the Global South explained that they felt removed from European cultures (This Is IS: Episode 1, 01:05:28 onward).¹¹ Majdi, a student from Jordan, explained:

I come from an Arab country. When they [the other students] refer to something, I can understand the sign, but I don’t understand the context or culture. They know many films that I don’t know of. We will see how it progresses.

Although Hyemi and Majdi gradually became more comfortable asking questions, Majdi reflected at the end of the course that he still understood “half of what is signed.” With less background knowledge about Deaf Studies and Sign Language Studies, Majdi felt it was not possible to “catch up” with the Europeans and the person from the United States in the group. Majdi and Hyemi both felt that they had to work harder to learn IS lexicon as well as English (the language used in mouthings and fingerspelling and on PowerPoint slides), and to learn about the other attendees’ underlying cultures, in addition to “cultural deaf” concepts. They had a bigger linguistic and cultural distance to bridge. Thus, even as the Frontrunners expanded their semiotic repertoires by learning to calibrate to people with various backgrounds, those with shared frames of references and prior knowledge of IS lexicon were privileged over others. Some students in the group were aware of this and actively brokered communication with students who struggled. Others admitted that they were “lazy” in this regard because they wanted to communicate quickly.

We observed that well-traveled Europeans and people from the United States who are fluent signers tend to say “I am calibrating” to signal a cosmopolitan attitude. In practice, however, it was often new signers and Global Southerners who did most of the calibrating. They experienced the steepest learning curve and worked the hardest to understand certain cultural references (such as the sign for Einstein; This Is IS: Episode 1, 01:06:04).¹² This labor seemed largely invisible to their (often white) interlocutors, who would announce their own “openness” to cultural differences and willingness to “adapt” their signing. Calibrating and language learning are branded as cosmopolitan, but they are uneven processes that do not happen on a level playing field.

Deaf cosmopolitanism is not limited to people who travel widely to different countries and continents. Amandine met deaf refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp who come from different countries on the African continent and have broad semiotic repertoires, including signing in different national or local sign languages and writing and/or speaking one or more spoken language(s). Deaf inhabitants of the camp were seen to communicate with each other using different national sign languages, such as ASL and/or KSL, and also using so-called “village signs,” also known in the literature as “rural sign language,” “rural homesign,” “local sign(s),” and “natural sign(s)” (Green, 2022; Nyst et al., 2012). These are forms of signing that have emerged in local communities and that include gestures from the local gesture substrate. Despite using village signs, many deaf refugees considered themselves only to have become good signers when they learned KSL or ASL. In the camp’s schools, deaf signers tended to shift toward more “formal” signing, using Signing Exact English (SEE) (which they called “ASL,” as discussed later in this chapter) and KSL. Historically, KSL has been strongly influenced by ASL, and this influence was evident in the signing taking place in schools; however, when people were informally communicating outside of school, they shifted toward informal KSL, using signs specific to Kenya and Kakuma Refugee Camp and incorporating signs they had picked up in their home countries. People thus calibrated according to the interlocutors and contexts, and village signs remained part of their repertoires. Abdi, from Example B, explained that he used village signs from Somalia to converse with his deaf Somali friend who was also living in the camp.

In this process of calibration, certain resources are privileged over others. On the structural level, KSL is seen as the main sign language used in the camp, whereas ASL has been imported into the schools (see Chapter 3). Historically, ASL was dispersed throughout Africa through the establishment of deaf schools, often crowding out local sign languages and tending to be considered of higher status (Nyst, 2010). ASL has influenced KSL through missionary workshops, American sponsorship of some deaf schools via the provision of ASL teaching materials, deaf Kenyans who have lived or studied in the United States, and volunteers who visit Kenya from different countries (Morgan et al., 2015). When communicating with Amandine, deaf refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp used ASL and English fingerspelling (in the ASL alphabet) as bridging languages when Amandine did not know particular signs in KSL. In Example B, we saw that ASL functioned as a lingua franca.

Amandine noted that in informal conversations or interviews she had with deaf inhabitants of the camp, they tended to use the same signs that Amandine used—that is, from ASL or from IS, instead of KSL. As we explain in the following section on language learning in migration contexts, newcomers to the United Kingdom are often expected to learn the host country’s sign language (i.e., BSL); however, in the context of Kakuma Refugee Camp, deaf refugees calibrated toward Amandine’s language use, despite her being the newcomer in Kenya and in the process of acquiring KSL. Deaf refugees using non-KSL signs with Amandine could be interpreted as calibrating toward someone perceived to be of higher status and/or whose language is given higher status. However, another interpretation is that it was an intuitive attempt to share the burden of communication with someone learning a new sign language, because refugees in the camp were also observed calibrating toward each other in similar ways.

Annelies did fieldwork in a very different site in Kenya: the DOOR International campus in Nairobi, where various teams were working to translate the Bible into their national sign languages. As mentioned in Chapter 5, KSL was seen as the lingua franca of the campus, and teams who spent time (often months or years) there were expected to learn KSL through immersion and socialization (similar to the Frontrunners’ acquisition of IS). Indian Sign Language (ISL) also made its way into the semiotic repertoire at DOOR because of interactions between deaf Indians and Kenyans in both Kenya and India. Each translation team had several consultants who were expected to learn their team’s sign language, so deaf consultants from Costa Rica and Kenya learned Mozambican Sign Language to work with a team of translators from Mozambique. Kenyans were also aware that they were in a privileged position due to being from the host country, and they tried to mitigate this. Zablon, one of the Kenyan translators, said: “They learn KSL, but it doesn’t mean they must know KSL in its entirety. I also learn their language. If I don’t understand something, they explain in their language, which means I learn too” (This Is IS: Episode 2, 00:06:22).¹³ Paul, the director of DOOR International Africa, had worked with teams in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Nigeria, and he explained his communication with deaf people from different African countries as follows:

I think the best way is for me to sign KSL, and for them to express themselves in their sign language. We meet in the middle and connect, because it helps them to see the bigger picture. […] Most of the time it is a 50/50 split between their signing and my own. I would not know their sign language in its entirety, and the same would go for them. It is a sharing form of communication which is called C-O-D-E M-I-X-I-N-G. It is my signing and their signing integrated together, and we would be able to understand each other clearly that way. (This Is IS: Episode 2, 00:03:21)¹⁴

There are obvious parallels here with strategies used in IS: Language socialization and calibration are two sides of the same coin, and an open orientation is key. However, whereas IS use is often seen as the golden middle way, there are signing communities of practice where other international communication norms have emerged from calibrating (see Part II in Zeshan & Webster, 2020). At the DOOR campus, signs from the employees’ national sign languages were used alongside ASL and ISL when people mixed during meals and sports. At the same time, people were working on translations between sign languages, meaning there was a strong emphasis on learning each other’s sign languages and keeping bounded sign languages separate during translation work. There were spaces of calibration (e.g., dinners, sports) and spaces of separation (the translation labs).

Exchanging and Bestowing Signs

Not only are sign languages the key to deaf sociality itself, but they are also a frequent topic of discussion. Deaf people in multilingual groups often compare their respective signs for concepts, which has developed into a “deaf meme” video template that circulates on social media. Often, these videos are created by deaf tourists or deaf project workers who have traveled to another country and encountered deaf “locals.” They usually involve two people in the frame of the video signing at the same time, so as to compare the lexicon of different sign languages. These videos are made by multiple people in different locations—for example, a man from Bengkala has posted a video on Instagram of himself signing the alphabet in BISINDO alongside a woman from Germany signing the alphabet in DGS. In her online ethnography, Erin found multiple videos produced by deaf people of different nationalities with different sign language backgrounds, demonstrating how their sign languages differ from each other; this may be seen as an example of the commodification of languages in tourism. The social media videos are the result of, or elicited version of, a common practice in international deaf encounters: exchanging signs. Our observations of conversations between deaf people of different nationalities led to the insight that deaf people in transnational encounters often engage in metalinguistic conversations, comparing certain signs from their native sign languages, speculating about the origins of certain signs, and/or discussing the influence of hegemonic sign languages, especially ASL and BSL, on IS and on less widely used sign languages.

The videos produced for social media compare signs in the manner of a dictionary, whereas the MobileDeaf ethnographic films feature naturalistic metalinguistic discussions. For example, in the beginning of This Is IS: Episode 1, a scene at a coffee machine shows three Frontrunners from Brazil, the United States, and Togo exchanging their signs for “sugar,” the meaning reinforced by pointing at the sugar and fingerspelling S-U-G-A-R; they then note both similarities and differences in their respective signs, going into more depth than the social media videos (00:07:26).¹⁵In This Is IS: Episode 2, three deaf men from Mozambique, South Sudan, and Kenya compare their signs for numbers by signing them simultaneously (00:07:23; Figure 8.6).¹⁶

In #deaftravel, tourists from India and Italy and their Indonesian guide, exchange signs for “belief.” When visiting a Balinese temple, Wahyu, the guide, talked about belief using the Auslan sign and English mouthings. Heena, from India, copied the Auslan sign that Wahyu used and asked whether she was reproducing it accurately; Wahyu repeated the sign twice, modeling it for Heena and confirming she had it right. An Italian man standing behind Wahyu then also copied the sign. Heena then asked an Italian woman for the Italian sign for “belief.” In response, Wahyu produced the LIS (Italian Sign Language) sign, while the woman (who had not seen Wahyu nor understood Heena) copied the sign that Heena had produced. The Italian woman then turned to Wahyu, who repeated the LIS sign to her; she and then Heena copied it. In this short interaction, lasting only a few seconds, Heena learned and embodied two new signs for “belief,” and people copied each other multiple times (#deaftravel, 00:46:11).¹⁷ Copying new signs is a key strategy for learning: The learner takes in the new sign and then demonstrates through reproducing it whether or not they have mastered it and understood it (Hoffmann-Dilloway, 2021). Wahyu played a key role here because he knew several signs signifying “belief,” and from there engaged in chaining (see Tapio, 2019).

It is through the comparison of signs, in which copying and chaining are key practices, that the differences between signs are embodied, indexed, and marked, rather than the similarities. It is effectively a way of noting that DEAF-SAME (see Chapter 1) does not mean SIGN-SAME. However, the people in the MobileDeaf films do engage in comparing signs as a form of sameness work, by which we mean the ways in which deaf people of different national backgrounds connect to one another and establish DEAF-SAME through metalinguistic discussions about sign languages. We therefore see the act of comparing and copying signs as an example of deaf cosmopolitanism. Being able to pinpoint and compare specific signs allows people to align, understand, and exchange with each other. By showing openness toward each other’s signs, they take a moral stance toward cosmopolitanism.

Figure 8.6. Deaf men from Mozambique, South Sudan, and Kenya signing “6.”

Sometimes, signs learned in this way come to function as souvenirs. Souvenirs have a long association with travel and the memory of travel; they are material objects of tourism, and they travel home with the people who acquire or purchase them. Souvenirs are incarnations of memory; they can be a thing, a place, an occasion, an event, or even a person that recreates memories of travel (Morgan & Pritchard, 2005). In international deaf mobilities, sign names may function as souvenirs. Sign names may be based on striking physical or personal characteristics of the person, their history, their name (including loan translations or initializations), a memory associated with them, or even the enrollment number by which they were known at their deaf school (Day & Sutton-Spence, 2010). While they were working in Bali, Erin had a conversation with Jorn (the cameraman with whom she worked on #deaftravel) about his sign name, which led to the insight that sign names sometimes served as a reminder of a person’s mobility. Jorn was given his sign name, which looks like a figure diving into the water, during his participation as a swimmer for Belgium in the 20th Summer Deaflympics in Australia in 2005. Jorn kept this sign name as a reminder of his experience of participating in the Deaflympics.

Having sign names that originated abroad is a recurring theme in the data. Kareer, a man from London who was a part of the Travass tour group in Bali, explained that he was given his sign name by young deaf students when he worked as a Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) volunteer in the Philippines. His sign name is an iconic sign that denotes “beard”; the students gave it to him because he had a beard at the time. Kareer no longer has a beard, but he kept the sign name as a memento of his experience in the Philippines. Ronja, from Germany, who was part of the same tour group, did not have a sign name yet, and one of the ongoing themes of the 10-day tour was the process of assigning her a sign name. On the island of Lombok, as they waited for their boat to arrive, Erin observed the group discussing their sign names and debating what Ronja’s sign name should be. This became a humorous exchange because different members of the group used their observations of Ronja to create signs based on her characteristics and behavior.

Like souvenirs, language also plays a significant role in tourism as a marker of “authenticity” (Heller, 2003). In their study of the linguistic landscape of Chinatown in Washington, DC, Leeman and Modan (2009) write:

Souvenirs with writing in another language signal that one has been somewhere foreign, exciting or exotic, and thus serve as commodified markers of distinction as well as keepsakes of the experience. (p. 340)

Encountering a “foreign” or minority language in the linguistic landscape can give visitors to a country the sense of having visited an authentic place rather than going to a “tourist trap” (Leeman & Modan, 2009). In the “deaf village” in Bali (see Chapter 6), deaf tourists tended to learn a few signs that are used in the village, such as the sign DEAF, mediated through Wahyu (see Figure 8.7a, and #deaftravel, 01:09:16).¹⁸ They were thus exposed not only to BISINDO (through interactions with Wahyu and other Indonesian deaf people) but also to Kata Kolok, the sign language used in the village. Tourists tended to learn a few specific signs through Wahyu’s demonstrations while brokering conversations between the tourists and villagers, as shown in Example A (see Figure 8.2).

An Indian deaf tourist, Harish, who was on honeymoon to Bali with his wife Heena, talked about “taking signs home” in the same way as taking a souvenir home:

It’s fun; when we come back from traveling, we feel the need to meet up with friends and discuss new signs and what we’ve learned. I think that’s the deaf way. To be fascinated by signs and report back what you’ve learned, and that way you pass on knowledge. If they go there one day, they will already know some of the signs. […] So, by telling our friends back in India, when they visit the same places [as us], they can reference us and the locals remember and that’s an essential part of the deaf community, the close bonds that we form. For example, one of our friends might ask us what the Indonesian sign LIKE is [uses the ISL sign, then gives both the ASL and BISINDO signs]. If one of our friends asks us, we would show them and that’s how we exchange information. Also, we will be taking back their sign DEAF [Figure 8.7b], as people will no doubt find that fascinating. In that way, we learn from each other in our network where we can import and export signs. That’s the deaf way of doing this. (#deaftravel, 00:46:44)¹⁹

Heena and Harish both talked about sharing new signs and new knowledge with their friends after they returned home from their travels. This is a form of deaf development (Friedner, 2015b), where deaf people pool resources and knowledge with their own deaf networks (see Chapter 7). As Harish put it, to be fascinated by new signs and to pool semiotic resources and social capital “is the deaf way.” Sharing signs is a form of networking, anchoring connections that can be drawn on in the future. By showing his friends in India the BISINDO sign DEAF, Harish introduces a point of reference for possible future encounters between his friends and the people in Indonesia. The sign itself is a mnemonic device for both Harish and his network; as the BISINDO signs DEAF and LIKE travel from Bali to India, a potential future encounter between Heena and Harish’s friends and the deaf people they met in Bali is established. As BISINDO signs become part of their repertoires, they may act as a talisman for future networking, as Harish and Heena’s friends could, on a visit to Bali, use these signs and explain who taught the BISINDO signs to them, thereby potentially plugging into Heena and Harish’s network.

People using signs they had picked up from others is something we also observed in the Frontrunners course. As students interacted with each other and with their teachers over a period of months, they naturally adopted signs from each other. In This Is IS: Episode 1, we see the teachers in positions of authority and influence, often standing in front of the classroom. Students picked up signs from them, such as a widely used IS sign, ATTITUDE (00:28:56, Figure 8.8a),²⁰ and a Finnish sign, IDENTITY (01:15:19, Figure 8.8b).²¹ Students also picked up signs from each other: For example, the Catalan signs AGREE (Figure 8.9a) and DISAGREE (Figure 8.9b) and the Libras (Brazilian) sign FINISHED (Figure 8.9c, with Portuguese mouthing, 01:15:59).²²

Figure 8.7. Demonstrating the signs for “deaf” in Kata Kolok (a) and BISINDO (b).

Figure 8.8. Teachers at Frontrunners demonstrating the IS sign ATTITUDE (a) and the Finnish sign IDENTITY (b).

The Frontrunners lived in small groups in cottages on the campus, where the atmosphere was more informal than the classroom and often playful. Here, they picked up many more signs from each other’s sign languages. In This Is IS: Episode 1, students are shown laughing and teasing each other by using signs from Denmark, Italy, and Jordan (01:20:38).²³ The students joked about using Danish signs, and then they exchanged their respective signs for “proud.” Majdi, from Jordan, mixed the Italian and Arabic signs into one composite sign, made possible by the two signs being located in different places on the body (Figure 8.10). Majdi showed amusement at the Italian sign PROUD, because it reminded him of shampoo. Esther, from Spain, teased him that this is an example of “linguicism” (language oppression), a term they had just learned in class.

Figure 8.9. Students at Frontrunners demonstrating the Catalan signs agree (a), DISAGREE (b), and the Libras sign FINISHED (c).

Figure 8.10. Frontrunner Majdi simultaneously produces Arabic and Italian signs for PROUD.

In the same scene, we see the other students showing amusement with Arabic signs and mouthings that they have learned from Majdi. Majdi appeared to enjoy that the other students were so entertained by his signs, which, as Esther explained to Annelies in an interview, are “completely not visual” and “very different.” Here, we see how language play may have embedded within it a tendency to signal othering of sign languages and, by implication, the people who use them. It seemed that Arabic signs were primarily seen as a source of humor and entertainment.

In contrast to Majdi, Hyemi seemed to have experienced people laughing at her signs as discriminatory. She mentioned an example of people making fun of a sign she used and wondered if it was racism:

One day, one of them made fun of me, and I was offended. I was wondering if they did it because of racism. […] The signs for “hearing” here [in Europe] and in Asia are different [see Figure 8.11]. They laughed at the Asian sign HEARING [Figure 8.11b]. I argued back why the European sign HEARING [Figure 8.11a] is not great, and how it can be confused for DEAF since it might seem the person does not speak. We discussed it and pranked each other until we all accepted our differences. Now we use both signs for “hearing” flexibly. (This Is IS: Episode 1, 01:12:12)²⁴

Linguistic humor can be a form of language shaming, and in some cases, it is based on linguistic racism, as Hyemi suggested in the previous example. Language shaming (Piller, 2017) refers to interactions that deride, disparage, or demean particular ways of using language, and practices and ideologies that produce or perpetuate unequal linguistic power. It frames certain ways of using language as “backward” or “stupid,” and this framing is often directed toward language users who are migrants or people whose languages are less dominant or less widely known outside their territorialized contexts, including the sign languages used by deaf signers in the Global South. This is a reflection of the power dynamics involved in interactions between people of different positionalities. Linguistic racism can be explicit, including abusive and racially charged attacks targeting people’s language use, but it can also be more implicit and subtle (Dovchin, 2020). In the case of humor, it can be hard to identify.

Figure 8.11. Frontrunner Hyemi demonstrates the sign HEARING as used in Europe (a) and Asia (b).

Laughing about or critiquing signs can, however, also be the result of cosmopolitan wonder at variety in language use, rooted in genuine curiosity about difference, and can lead people to converse happily about language differences. People can find each other’s pronunciation or word choice cute, funny, or sexy, and they can discuss these at length on, for example, social media (Rymes, 2020). The line between wonderment and curiosity at each other’s signs (e.g., Harish’s wonderment about the BISINDO sign for “deaf”) on the one hand, and linguistic racism or language shaming on the other, can be thin, especially when the involved people are friends. In the Frontrunners group, we found that friendships between students made it difficult for them to determine whether or not these occurrences were examples of racism. In the following example from Erin’s research in Bali, the interaction described did not happen between friends, and it resulted in an altercation. Ferdy Yanto, a deaf teacher at the school for deaf children in Denpasar, explained an experience that he had had with two women from Croatia, where they disparaged the way that the letter “A” is signed in BISINDO:

The only person I had a bad experience with was with two dirty-minded lesbians from Croatia. We have similar alphabets, but we sign the letter A differently from them [see Figure 8.12; the Croatian letter A uses the middle finger]. She [signed A in Croatian Sign Language, then] flipped me the middle fingers, which is negative in our culture. I was not angry, I only said that she needs to show some respect. […] That is forbidden—what that person from Croatia did is forbidden. (see #deaftravel, 01:00:00)²⁵

The Croatian tourists appeared to want Yanto to change his signing to conform to their own norms, which he found distasteful:

BISINDO is beautiful, there is no need to sign the same as it is done in Croatia. I showed them respect since they are tourists in Bali. I said that showing a middle finger is not appropriate in Balinese culture, and that first they need to learn our language. These people didn’t know anything. That is the reason: They had no education, and that is why they tried to influence our sign language. I told them to show respect to our culture. The people just left without even saying thank you. Fine—no problem—go away.

Figure 8.12. The distinction between the fingerspelled letter A in Croatian Sign Language (left) and BISINDO (right).

These excerpts give an example of the ways that tourists engage in language shaming. According to Yanto, these women did not like the way that the letter “A” is signed in BISINDO, and they tried to force their perspective—and their sign—on him, “flipping the middle finger” at him in the process. Yanto pushed back by telling them that they needed to respect Bali or leave; however, he also claimed that he was not angry and was respectful toward them because they were tourists in Bali. Bali’s economy is heavily dependent on tourism, and it should be noted that hearing Indonesian people shared similar ambivalent sentiments with Erin, telling her that they were both appreciative of tourism-based income and also angry because of the ways in which tourists violated their religious beliefs. For example, menstruating women are explicitly forbidden from visiting temples; Erin’s interviewees attributed the increased frequency of volcanic eruptions on the island to disrespectful tourist behavior and flouting these religious rules.

Deaf cosmopolitanism is related to the mobility of language ideologies, semiotic resources, concepts, and people at different scales. This is illustrated by Yanto’s observation that the two tourists from Croatia “didn’t know anything […] and that is why they tried to influence our sign language.” Yanto’s observation is a commentary on the Croatian tourists’ lack of cosmopolitanism because they did not calibrate in a way that he saw as appropriate, in contrast to his own openness to and respect for difference.

As Yanto narrated his interaction with the Croatian tourists to Erin, he dismissed them with negative facial expressions and described them as “dirty-minded lesbians from Croatia.” Because Erin did not meet these tourists, we do not know whether they were actually lesbians, but this example shows how language ideologies can be used to position people and the ways in which this can occur at multiple levels and from different directions—for example, that Yanto’s characterization of these women as “dirty-minded lesbians from Croatia” followed them criticizing BISINDO and making offensive gestures toward him. It also suggests that when people do not mutually respect each other in terms of culture, education, sexual orientation, and so on, they may be less generous in their interpretation and acceptance of each other’s signs, showing a “failure” of deaf cosmopolitanism.

Learning a New National Sign Language

The examples in the previous section feature the informal learning of bits of national sign languages in short-term contexts of mobility: through tourism, on residential courses, and while undertaking fieldwork. In the context of long-term mobility (migration), expectations of language learning are often more explicit and have higher stakes attached. Deaf migrants are often expected to know or learn two or more new languages upon arrival in a host country: the (written version of) the main spoken language and a/the national sign language. Some of these expectations are official—for example, migrants may have to demonstrate sufficient written language proficiency to obtain residence permits. However, the expectation to learn is usually more implicit. The ability to use the host country’s national sign language(s) is typically linked to feelings of belonging (see Chapter 9), access to certain social spaces, and access to educational spaces.

As has been shown, there are different processes involved in language learning and several routes toward it, both formal and informal. Whereas formal education is often perceived as the most appropriate way to learn a new language, we have seen that informal language learning is an important feature of deaf sociality: Mobile deaf people typically pick up new signs from those they meet, even briefly. Learning a new language (signed, spoken, or written) is likely to involve the strategy of “copying,” discussed in the previous section, as well as translating new vocabulary via a lingua franca (e.g., English, IS, ASL), often through the process of chaining. For example, some mobile deaf people learn the national sign language of the new country first, and then they apply their knowledge of the accompanying mouthings when learning the written version of the national spoken language. This was the experience of Sujit, Annelies’s husband, who learned VGT (Flemish Sign Language) and in so doing became able to recognize written Dutch words from their similarity to VGT mouthings.

There are structural differences in who can or cannot easily learn a new national sign language. The examples that follow show that the learning of a new national sign language upon migration is a multilayered racialized, classed, and gendered process. It is also an emotional process that results in different feelings for different people, including pleasure, surprise, disappointment, and frustration.

We start with examples from the United Kingdom, both as a research site (London) and as the site of our research team’s base (Edinburgh). In the United Kingdom, deaf spaces are typically dominated by the use of BSL, Sign Supported English (SSE; a mix of BSL and English), and English in various modalities. Many migrants are not necessarily familiar with BSL, because the linguistic distance between BSL and the sign language(s) they already know varies. BSL is linguistically close to sign languages such as Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL), but it is considerably distant from others, such as ASL. Some deaf migrants to the United Kingdom learn BSL online in advance of moving, whether via webcam conversations and/or through watching videos, but most are socialized into BSL after arrival, such as the Indian female migrants whom Sanchayeeta interviewed; they learned BSL from their new husbands in the United Kingdom.

Not knowing BSL does not mean that deaf signers will be completely unable to engage in British deaf spaces, however. As we have seen, many deaf people (new migrants and deaf people in the host country alike) are skilled at calibrating and are able and willing to communicate flexibly. Additionally, many deaf people who live in the United Kingdom are knowledgeable in sign languages other than BSL (such as ASL), having traveled or lived abroad. This previous language knowledge can help when communicating with new migrants. However, within institutional fields, including service provision to deaf people (e.g., nongovernmental organizations [NGOs], social services, education programs), BSL is dominant; hence, migrants require a degree of mastery of BSL to access these fields. Many migrants have reported finding it easier to communicate with other deaf people than with hearing people, including hearing BSL interpreters; however, it is hearing BSL interpreters who provide the bulk of sign language access to services. The desire to learn “proper” and “pure” BSL can be related to the wish to access these services.

Our first example of language learning in the context of migration concerns three of the authors of this chapter, who migrated to Scotland from Belgium, Germany, and the United States at the beginning of the MobileDeaf project. Deaf professional academic mobility is highly privileged mobility: We came to the United Kingdom upon securing employment or a funded doctoral position (see Chapter 2). In order to enroll as a doctoral student at Heriot-Watt University, Amandine was required to demonstrate her knowledge of written English through an IELTS test; for BSL, however, there was no requirement to demonstrate fluency or enroll in a formal course. Instead, in common with the tendency for internationally mobile deaf professionals to learn new sign languages informally, we acquired BSL by socialization.

The priority for the MobileDeaf team was to understand and to be understood, without necessarily adhering to language boundaries. Annelies had picked up BSL in Bristol (England) years earlier, and she mixed her southern English signs with IS. Erin and Amandine were both new BSL learners, and Amandine’s emerging BSL incorporated Northern Irish signs learned from her (then new) partner. She had previously learned ASL, so she and Erin used ASL to fill in the gaps in their knowledge of BSL. Steve and Sanchayeeta, the British people in the group, were familiar with both ASL and IS as well.

The team’s mixed language practices (BSL variations, ASL, and IS) initially limited our ability to work efficiently with some BSL interpreters, and it also produced tension with some hearing BSL learners at the university. The department offers degree courses for training BSL interpreters, and there is a group of deaf and hearing signers (research assistants, master’s/doctoral researchers, postdoctoral researchers, and other staff) researching various topics related to deaf people and sign languages. Within this larger group, some deaf and hearing people knew IS and/or ASL and were comfortable mixing sign languages, but within wider departmental activities, there was the expectation that we should use BSL as much as possible. One hearing new signer of BSL expressed frustration about their own acquisition of BSL because of the lack of “pure” or “correct” BSL used in meetings and workshops. Other hearing staff members and doctoral students expressed (to us or to others) that they could not understand our signing. These hearing people had English-speaking privilege and used this within the university. The complex mosaic of language privileges and language choices foregrounded the MobileDeaf team’s work.

Over time, as our BSL improved, our repertoires changed to fit particular spaces. We made more effort to learn and use “correct” BSL at the university, retaining our more flexible use of ASL and IS in informal settings—such as when socializing at Annelies’s home, where ISL and VGT were also used. An example of how blurred language boundaries were in our practices, and how context dependent, is that for several months, Erin assumed that the sign she had learned at Annelies’s home for wine (a topic more common in informal spaces than in academic workshops) was a VGT sign, and not a BSL sign.

In common with the teams of translators at DOOR International in Kenya, the MobileDeaf team alternated between spaces where sign languages are mixed (spaces of calibration) and spaces in which we were expected to adhere to (sign) language boundaries (spaces of separation). Our personal experience of this brought to the fore the ways in which signed communication can be very flexible in practice, but it can also be a source of anxiety due to the expectation of “correct” language in some contexts. “Correct” BSL was challenging to pick up informally because we frequently translanguaged with people inside and outside of the MobileDeaf team. Language learning, language practices, and language ideologies had always been at the forefront of our research agenda, but they also became personal to us as a team of deaf researchers, of whom half were migrants to the United Kingdom and new language learners. The situation of having to rapidly learn and use one or more new sign languages in a range of different registers is the reality for many deaf academic professionals (Byun, 2020).

Other examples of language learning in the context of migration are given next. These examples relate to people who had already mastered a sign language and then added BSL to their repertoire; the experience of learning a sign language for the first time after moving to the United Kingdom, and the resulting shift in identity, was discussed in Chapter 4. Starting with the subproject on migration to London, many of Sanchayeeta and Steve’s research participants undertook informal processes of language learning similar to those of the MobileDeaf team; some also attended formal BSL courses. Pedros, a man from Brazil in his 20s, talked about his aspiration to learn BSL, and he worked to improve his fluency by attending courses. Having first visited the United Kingdom on holiday, Pedros decided to move there because he believed there to be better opportunities for deaf people—one of many examples in this book of how different types of mobilities (e.g., tourism and migration) are linked. Pedros stated that he aspires to be able to communicate fluently in BSL with deaf and hearing BSL signers, and he described his experience of language learning:

When I met people, they would sign in BSL so fast, and I couldn’t understand the two-handed fingerspelling. Even the signs went over my head. I had to practice little by little with my friend. He taught me and I enjoyed making progress with this different sign language. It was interesting. My signing improved, as did my communication. I surprised myself with my own BSL skills. Then I went to City Lit [college], where I did [a Regulated Qualification Framework test] Level 1 [in] BSL and I enjoyed signing away. My BSL got better and better, and I was able to communicate within the deaf community. I was determined to keep improving.

Pedros experienced pleasure and surprise at his own improving skills. Importantly, practicing BSL with his friend allowed him to establish a base level of fluency upon which he could build by taking a formal class. He found that as his communication improved, so did his feeling of belonging within the British deaf community.

Not every migrant has both the opportunity and the tenacity to learn BSL, however. Some people with learning disabilities, language deprivation, and some forms of neurodivergence may have difficulties learning BSL, whether in a (neuro)typical classroom setting or by informal interactions with (neurotypical/able-bodied) people. Furthermore, life circumstances can create barriers. Meera, who moved to the United Kingdom from India, is a working woman and her children’s primary caregiver, and has limited time to immerse herself in BSL. Her experience demonstrates the classed and gendered nature of access to language learning. She noted that she had been in the United Kingdom for nearly two decades, but she felt that she still did not know BSL well:

Now it has been 17 years, and I still haven’t mastered BSL skills. I am disappointed. No time to go to deaf events, pubs and other social gatherings. No time to learn to sign. I [am responsible for] two children, cooking and the house. I used to work from Monday to Saturday. I used to work in central London and had no time to learn sign. I just gave up, and now I prefer to use SSE. It suits me, because I use lip patterns and have hearing friends in my area. It is full of hearing mums and there are no deaf ones. You understand? It is hard work [to learn BSL]. There are some British people who know ASL. I use ASL with them like [with other Indian deaf migrants], they know ASL.

Meera undertook traditionally gendered work, which limited her ability to engage in informal BSL learning. She labeled her language use as SSE and noted that this enabled her to socialize with other (hearing) mothers who communicated in spoken English. She grew up with an oral approach in school and was able to speak; she had also learned ASL because some deaf schools in India teach using ASL rather than ISL (also the case in Kenya, where ASL is present in deaf education alongside KSL), and she used ASL to communicate with some deaf people.

In a different scenario, Shahina, another of Sanchayeeta’s participants in the London study, explained how time constraints, work, and networks shaped her language learning. Shahina was first exposed to ASL at her school in India, and she had been educated at Gallaudet University and two other universities in the United States, living there for a number of years prior to moving to the United Kingdom. She owns a business in the United Arab Emirates and, prior to the coronavirus lockdowns, frequently visited her family in India. As a result, she was hypermobile between countries, and she felt she had not fully settled in the United Kingdom. There, she used ASL with her new husband. Her hypermobility resulted in her feeling unmotivated to become fluent in BSL:

I don’t have the motivation to learn BSL because the timing is wrong. I fly regularly to Dubai and other places. I haven’t settled in this country yet; I have no stability yet. I fly to Dubai for work and to America to see my friends, to India to attend my cousins’ weddings, so I fly a lot and I don’t stay here constantly. So, I don’t try BSL with people. If I’m here constantly, I will use BSL with people. When I see an NHS doctor, I don’t have a problem with [communicating with] a BSL interpreter. My access via an interpreter seems fine, they seemed to understand me so it’s fine, I’m confident.

In the few settings where she needed to, Shahina felt confident working with BSL interpreters, and she felt that English mouthing facilitated her communication with BSL users; she thus did not feel the urgency to learn more BSL lexicon. In this example, we can see how aspiration, class, and mobility can lead to not engaging in language learning. Shahina not only referenced her own hypermobility, and the resulting language switches, but also how the mobility of others had an impact on language use in London. She referred to the Shakespeare’s Head pub, a London pub where international deaf people gather regularly (see Chapter 9), and she noted that BSL was not exclusively used there but was featured alongside IS and other sign languages. She thus did not see this pub and other spaces where sign languages were mixed as optimal spaces to learn BSL. This is reminiscent of the situation encountered by the MobileDeaf team at Heriot-Watt University: Participating in a mixed international space can slow down national sign language learning.

However, in an interview a year later, Sanchayeeta remarked that Shahina’s use of ASL had decreased and that she was using BSL signs for terms she had previously expressed in ASL (e.g., UNIVERSITY). When Sanchayeeta pointed this out to Shahina, she confirmed that she had been signing more in BSL. The context for this shift was that her attachment to London had strengthened. Shahina had, through necessity, spent more time in the United Kingdom during the lockdown periods, and she had started to envision London as a place where she wanted to raise her children and make her home, so she became more open to learning BSL.

The extent to which deaf signers pick up BSL after moving to the United Kingdom is, thus, hugely variable. Some deaf migrants gradually shift to full BSL; others do not—because of barriers, because it is not their priority, or because it is not necessary for them. Similarly, while Frontrunners students in Denmark picked up a few Danish Sign Language (DTS) signs, they did not feel obliged to learn more DTS because IS was used in their course. In another example, during the years Annelies worked in Germany in an all-hearing, English-using workplace, she worked with BSL interpreters rather than DGS interpreters, and she did not learn or use much DGS during that time; this was because she was there temporarily, in a small town with few deaf people, and pregnant or on maternity leave for a large proportion of her stay. These examples show complex combinations of priorities and opportunities, or the lack thereof.

As the example from our own university department shows, migrants not knowing the/a national sign language of the host country can lead to tensions. Shahina experienced criticism from a woman who had moved to the United Kingdom from Belarus:

The Belarusian woman, she is white, told me that my BSL was not good, it was rubbish. It knocked my confidence. […] She said I was signing like a hearing person who is learning the language.

Shahina contrasted this comment with her experiences with BSL interpreters:

I went to an NHS hospital and an interpreter came. I explained to her that I am an ASL user and my BSL is not strong, but I can understand BSL. The interpreter was fantastic, […] she was able to interpret for me with the doctor. Afterwards, I asked her if she understood my BSL: “Is my BSL ok?” She told me that it is good and it’s improving. I was like, really? I felt […] this [Belarusian] person was negative, and the interpreter was positive, you know what I mean? Again, I was at my next hospital appointment and had a different interpreter, she said the same thing, that my signing has improved. This was a different interpreter, so I got suspicious of that Belarusian woman’s comment over my signing skills.

Both the white Belarusian deaf woman and Shahina were migrants, although the Belarusian woman had been living in the United Kingdom for longer. Notably, Shahina positioned hearing BSL/English interpreters as language experts over her fellow deaf migrant. Yet, hearing people are not only positioned as experts but also as novices; being accused of signing “like a hearing new signer” is something that several deaf migrants have experienced. Lenka N., a migrant to London, left what was then Czechoslovakia with her deaf identity suppressed. Her first employment in the United Kingdom was as an au pair for a hearing family, and she hid her deafness from her employer out of fear of losing her job; she was able to do this because she could speak English. When she became aware of the deaf community in the United Kingdom, questions of deaf culture and sign language became central to her experience:

I grew up in Czechoslovakia, and growing up I never questioned how to sign—it was just my way. I made sure I matched whichever deaf person I was talking to, whether that meant a slower pace, more facial expressions, or professional conversations with more lip patterns. However, when I arrived here, I was criticized a lot by other deaf people. That discrimination toward a deaf person by other deaf people really struck me. I’d never experienced anything like that before. It happened a lot here, and it forced me to think of that distinction between small d and large D deaf. […] They would tell me that I didn’t look like a natural signer. I didn’t even know what that meant! […] They would also criticize my lip patterns as foreign and not British. I don’t know what they expected me to say to them—that’s just me. I can’t change who I am. I can’t adopt full English lip patterns. My handshapes are just that—mine. It’s the same with foreign hearing people who speak with an accent. You should never judge how other people sign. (Finding Spaces to Belong, 00:48:47)²⁶

Lenka N. experienced language shaming in the United Kingdom. She had been used to calibrating flexibly in her native country, but she was criticized for signing differently from the average British deaf person, for using accented mouthings, and for signing in a way that people did not find “natural.” “Natural signing” refers to a natural flow within sign language use, and the signing of “new signers,” or of signers who use a lot of English in their signing, is often seen as inauthentic or “unnatural” (Kusters & Fenlon, 2021). Signing can be accented, too: Migrants may use handshapes, facial expressions, or body movements that are different from those used by deaf people who have grown up in the United Kingdom. Learning a new national sign language is also an unequal process of acculturation. The pressures that Erin and Amandine felt, as white women in a university setting in Edinburgh, were very different from the pressures that people of color may experience in migration to the United Kingdom. In Finding Spaces to Belong, Sana, from India, commented that it had taken her a long time to embody the “stiffer” style of British signing (00:45:40),²⁷ and Sanchayeeta’s Indian newlywed participants also felt they had to work to reduce their Indian body language (such as wobbling the head to indicate “yes” or “no”) in favor of more British norms.

Whereas the majority of migrants to the United Kingdom move voluntarily (Kierans, 2020), the migrants in Kakuma Refugee Camp had all experienced forced migration. Refugee camps are initially set up in times of emergency as temporary housing, but many people end up staying for years, even decades, and thus their situation is one of long-term migration. There are well-established institutions in the camp in which the host country’s national sign language (e.g., KSL) is used, including deaf units in schools—indeed, some deaf refugees were brought by relatives into Kakuma Refugee Camp specifically to access education (see Chapter 4). At the same time, the camp has a temporary feel as people prepare for resettlement. This also has an impact on their language learning aspirations: Some deaf camp inhabitants expect that becoming fluent in ASL may increase their chance of being resettled in the United States.

Different generations of deaf refugees in the camp have had different exposure to ASL and KSL within the schools’ deaf units. Initially, more ASL was used in the deaf units, due to teachers coming from several countries; by the time of Amandine’s research, KSL was also used. Atem, a deaf South Sudanese man, explained that he had used “village signs” during his childhood, then progressed to learning ASL at a deaf unit in Kakuma Refugee Camp, and then learned KSL in a residential deaf high school in the west of Kenya. The younger generation learned KSL in Kakuma: Nyathak, a woman from Sudan who was 18 years old at the time of interview, had been taught by Kenyan teachers using KSL. However, deaf refugees also expand their repertoire outside of formal education, picking up bits of KSL, ASL, and other sign languages in everyday encounters with other deaf refugees in churches, in private homes, and on vocational courses. Halimo, a Somali woman, came as an adult to Kakuma Refugee Camp from Dadaab Refugee Camp; at the time of her arrival in Dadaab, there were no schools there, and thus she had never had the opportunity to attend a deaf unit. She learned to sign by watching deaf refugees play football:

I have never been to school. I stayed at home in Dadaab Refugee Camp with my husband and I became pregnant. I noticed [deaf] people playing football and signing. I watched them every day and I learned through that [i.e., watching their interactions]. I learned signing fast. […] I stood and watched from morning to lunch time, and I went home to sleep and came back the next day. I learned fast.

Halimo took the opportunity to learn sign language in informal contexts, by watching natural interactions.

For many deaf refugees, the camp is the first context in which they have the opportunity to learn a conventional sign language (e.g., KSL, ASL), whether formally in deaf units or through informal interactions. When certain deaf people migrate to a new place—typically those from the Global South moving into the Global North or from rural to urban districts—they are frequently said to have “no language”—that is, to have language deprivation (Moriarty Harrelson, 2017b). The trope of “language deprivation” (Humphries et al., 2012) is considered crucial by those advocating against deaf children receiving inadequate or no access to sign language; the term emphasizes that deaf children need full access to language, and they experience cognitive and social delays without it. The label of language deprivation, however, can obscure the fact that deaf refugees with “no language” do communicate: They calibrate by using gestures and pointing, and they use physical objects as part of everyday languaging (Sivunen & Tapio, 2020). Indeed, in communities where the “village signs” draw on local gesturing conventions, the line between gesturing and signing can be so blurred that people may not agree on whether somebody “can sign” or not (Hou, 2020). Henner and Robinson (2021) use the term “crip linguistics” in a call to validate forms of languaging that are seen as “broken language” or “no language,” rather than “full language” or “proper language” (and to reject such labels). Duggan and Holmström (2022) also flag that the terms “language deprivation” and “no language” are used too liberally because some of the people defined as having no language had been to deaf schools where signing was used in their home countries. The ideology of “no language” can display a language hierarchy between “real”/“better” languages (i.e., the languages used in the host country) and “nonlanguages” (the signs migrants bring with them). This ideology is often related to race, ethnicity, and country of origin. One legacy of colonialism is that black people have frequently been framed as having no language both historically and also in the present (Oostendorp, 2021). Deaf people from the Global South are most vulnerable to being labeled as “having no language,” both within the Global North (as Duggan & Holmström [2022] show) and also within the Global South, as the following example shows.

When Amandine asked refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp about whether there were deaf schools or sign language in their home countries, the reactions were always the same: “No, there is no deaf school! No sign language!” This was despite the fact that many deaf refugees used “village signs” that they had brought from their home villages in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Congo. On one occasion when Amandine visited with a group of deaf refugees socializing at Halimo’s house, the conversation turned to various sign languages and forms of language use. The group was talking about different sign languages and engaging in the common deaf sociality practice of comparing signs. They signed variants of PREGNANT, saying, “this is in KSL” and “that is in ASL.” Amandine took the opportunity to ask Halimo how PREGNANT would be signed in Somalia, and she reacted strongly, adamantly stating, “No! There are no signs in Somali, there are no Somali signs.” The common assertion made by deaf refugees that there was an absolute lack of native sign languages in their homelands is at odds with research showing the existence of sign languages in both Somalia and Sudan (Morgan et al., 2015; Woodford, 2006). One reason for this discrepancy might relate to refugees’ fear of the prospect of going back to these countries; the absence of sign language and/or deaf education there validates their need and desire to be resettled in a Western country. Another potential reason is the early age that many of the refugees moved to the camp, having had little or no exposure to Somalian or Sudanese signs or to the education system there, because deaf schools do indeed exist in both countries. Certainly, there is a strong association between formal sign language learning and national sign languages. Atem, when explaining his desire to ultimately return to his home country of what is now South Sudan, described a sense of responsibility toward improving the educational system there:

When I went back […], I was the only one who knew sign language, the only one to understand well. All the other deaf people are not like me, they are village people. I want to teach sign language. I want in the future to write a paper to ask our government in Sudan to support us to build a school for many deaf people. But now, deaf people don’t have schools [there].

The establishment of schools was seen as central to the development of sign language learning in their home countries, and Atem expressed the intent to return and educate the village people with formal sign language. He may have meant that there are no deaf schools in many areas of Sudan, rather than no deaf schools there at all, but in either case he saw a responsibility to “bring sign language” there. This is an issue of language hierarchies: Deaf refugees who state that there is “no sign language” in their home country are likely responding to the sign language in their home country being less well-established and formally recognized than other sign languages. In other words, if there is signing taking place, it is not a “formal” sign language and is therefore discounted.

There is an interesting link between the above example and Annelies’s data gathered in another part of Kenya: at the DOOR campus, where South Sudanese deaf translators were translating the Bible. The existence of this translation project seems to indicate that there is a sign language in place to some extent in South Sudan. Cesar, one of the translators, explained to Annelies that the sign language in South Sudan consisted of “village signs” combined with influences from other sign languages:

In South Sudan, there is still no sign language or sign language dictionary. There is nothing official. It’s because of the war, and it caused a lot of mayhem. The capital, Juba, was the only place where there was signing. At that time, it was Arabic-based signing that then was spread throughout the country and remembered for years. Once the separation [from the Republic of Sudan] happened, they had to learn English-based signing from Uganda and so on. They learned different sign languages, mixing them. I remember seeing and using some village signs, so these different signs were inserted into the translation videos too. (This Is IS: Episode 2, 00:12:43).²⁸

This is not an unusual situation: Many countries in the Global South have a complicated linguistic history, with their own indigenous signs existing alongside signs that have been imported—often from several different sign languages—in the context of colonialism or postcolonial development (see Moges, 2015; Parks, 2014). Furthermore, countries in which deaf education is more established, such as Kenya and Uganda, also play a role in the export of signs. Deaf people from surrounding countries often go to school there and then bring Kenyan and Ugandan signs back to their home country (Morgan et al., 2015). This history of a truncated and layered import of signs, often combined with the devaluation of local, “village” signs, may give the impression that there is “no sign language” or “no own sign language” in a country. In other words, “no sign language” can mean the use of village signs, and/or it can mean the use of signs from different sign languages (e.g., from ASL and/or from the sign languages used in adjoining countries); it means there is no “own national sign language.”

Learning and Using English

As a global language, English is widely believed to be important for achieving social inclusion and material success. It is not surprising, therefore, that knowledge of English was a much-discussed theme in each of the four MobileDeaf subprojects. Because English is a worldwide lingua franca, knowledge of English is often tied to capital, mobility, and opportunities for hearing and deaf people alike (Kellett Bidoli & Ochse, 2008). When traveling internationally, knowing how to read and write English is helpful for accessing information from the environment in many parts of the world, and it is often a crucial tool when navigating communication with hearing people. English is also often used in interactions between deaf people, especially in the context of deaf professional mobility, whether through fingerspelling, mouthings, written documents, PowerPoint slides, and so on. There have been several projects for the online teaching of English through national sign languages and IS (e.g., Hilzensauer & Skant, 2008) so as to enable deaf people to use written English as a lingua franca. Many mobile deaf people have complicated feelings about English. In countries where English is not an official language, many deaf people do not have access to English at school. Access to and the ability to use English, as well as people’s thoughts and feelings about English, reflect broader social inequalities.

As described previously, Wahyu, the deaf tour guide in Indonesia, is an expert when it comes to calibrating. Wahyu had a diverse repertoire, including English, that he drew on as a part of his work. He writes in English when necessary, but he only learned a small amount in school. To develop his fluency, he took the initiative to teach himself more English:

I write in English. From junior school onward, we had to write in English; however, we learned only a bit from the teacher. When I started working, I realized I had to learn English because people from across the world come here and I need it for communication. I learned it on my own. I don’t know it 100%, because I have to use five different languages and adjust all the time. I write less than I sign.

Wahyu had to learn English out of necessity, and he expanded his knowledge of it on the job. For example, he explained that he first came across the English term “deaf village” when someone messaged him requesting to book a tour there, and he needed someone to explain it to him in BISINDO. Despite not considering himself fully fluent, Wahyu uses written English to communicate with tourists via Facebook and Facebook Messenger, and he also uses English in his signing, fingerspelling English terms for concepts. He often uses English to bridge when a miscommunication happens between himself and a tourist. He has a knowledge of English vocabulary that is relevant to his work, like “deaf village” and “ceremony,” which he fingerspells (#deaftravel, 00:47:12).²⁹ This is a way that many deaf people use English: in the form of words inserted in signed discourse.

Although English is used in many international settings, it is often not an official language of the country where the gatherings happen. For example, the Frontrunners course used English and IS rather than Danish and DTS. Prior knowledge of English is somewhat presupposed in the Frontrunners course, where it is used in PowerPoints and in the form of fingerspelling and mouthing. Some students made heavy use of Google Translate to translate English to other written languages, looking up single words by typing them in or taking photographs of slides which are then automatically translated. Making use of this strategy requires knowledge of another written language. Majdi, the student from Jordan, did not consider this an option because he did not know Arabic well enough to benefit from English-to-Arabic translations.

Another student, Aline, experienced a transition in her feelings toward English during the Frontrunners course. She had learned a little bit of written English at school in Brazil, but she was not interested in learning English further. Despite this, her mother kept encouraging her to learn English, connecting English with international mobility. When Aline met other deaf people from throughout the world, she became motivated to learn more English on her own, but her learning process was challenging:

When I got older and I had a chance to see Frontrunners, Europeans, Americans, and others from around the world, I realized my mum was right. I started reading, watching movies, but it was not going very well. When I was chosen to join Frontrunners 13, I was so excited and motivated to learn English, but it wasn’t easy. I was dealing with time constraints because of work. I learned a bit. Then I came here, and I was ready to learn—not nervous, but confident. On the plane I was given a note [by a flight attendant]—something written in English. I could only understand one word out of the entire note—it was the word “HELP.” I told them: “Yes, help me [by pointing to the word] [smiles].” Then they wrote “Thank you” on the other side. I said thank you. When I meet deaf people, I sign in IS. When I encounter hearing people, I would like to be able to write something in English—like at the airports, in a restaurant, and so on.

Even a minimal knowledge of English can be useful while communicating with hearing people during short interactions. Aline understood one word on a written note and was able to infer that the attendant was offering her help; making informed guesses based on minimal information is a common deaf practice. Aline was motivated to learn more English during Frontrunners. However, 8 months later when she was reinterviewed by Annelies, she felt that she had made only limited progress despite making huge efforts to learn the language. She had ultimately put the importance of knowing English into perspective after experiencing getting by without advanced English during her internships in Module 2 of the Frontrunners course:

I do not have to learn English. It can be good to know it; however, I can live without it. For example, during Module 1, I had been trying to learn English. I could see only small improvements. In contrast, my IS improved a lot. During Module 2, when I had to go out and do internships on my own [in England, France, and Italy], I was taking the initiative. For example, I can use a phone to translate words from Portuguese to English, or I can use more gestures. A basis [in English] is good, but a large amount is not necessary. Basic words can help me when I travel, for going to restaurants for example.

Aline still feels that English is useful but has also learned that she can communicate in more diverse ways. This change of perspective is reminiscent of the repertoire expansion the Frontrunners students went through.

Both Wahyu and Aline were using English in the context of international interactions. They learned English later in life, after learning other written languages in school, and they learned the bits of English that were particularly useful to them in their work and travels. The context of migration to an English-majority country is different: English may then be needed in more domains of life. Deaf migrants to the United Kingdom (and to other countries where English is the/an official language) may know some English upon arrival. However, the degree of knowledge and understanding of English varies between migrants. Kwame is from Ghana, where English is the official language inherited from the colonial era; he had come to the United Kingdom to do a postgraduate degree, and his knowledge of English enabled him to access captions during lectures. Other participants, such as Adrian, from Romania, had only basic knowledge of how to write short English sentences; he could not make use of these same resources. There are fields in which deaf migrants will have some degree of linguistic capital (i.e., knowledge of a language deemed of value) that may be of use when reading signs or purchasing food; however, they may not be able to get a job or enter a course where greater fluency in English is required.

Many deaf migrants seek to improve their English in the United Kingdom. To complicate matters, English is often learned at the same time as BSL and other language learning—for example, picking up signs from other sign languages as part of the cosmopolitan practice of exchanging signs. At City Lit adult education college in London, Sanchayeeta and Steve observed classes for migrants who were learning English and English classes that were mainly made up of deaf migrants but that deaf U.K. nationals could attend, too. The class, which Steve observed, taught by a tutor who had themselves migrated from Russia more than 20 years before, was for beginners (the next level would be “English entry 1”) and consisted of deaf people from Kuwait, Mongolia, Romania, Iran, Ireland, and Ukraine. The class was very lively; the students were signing with and teasing each other. The key method through which students were asked to demonstrate their grasp of English was fingerspelling, in combination with learning (a) BSL sign(s) for the same concept. Throughout the class, two brothers from Kuwait helped each other by explaining terms in their native language. Although they were reminded to sign in BSL, students often used non-BSL signs, especially during breaks. They found it fascinating to learn the different signs of each country, and they engaged in the act of comparing signs, which we also observed in the other subprojects. The second class (a more advanced English class) was taught by a white hearing British man, and it consisted of nationals from Sierra Leone, Latvia, Estonia, Sudan, Venezuela, Australia, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. Most of the class were migrants who had been in the United Kingdom for many years and therefore mainly used BSL in the class; here, English competency was demonstrated through both fingerspelling and writing (Aldersson, 2023).

The desire to improve in English is not necessarily enough for successful language learning due to barriers to accessing education services. The City Lit classes are free, but they are heavily subscribed and subject to cutbacks. Adrian, for example, had to be put on a waiting list to learn English, and he was frustrated by this:

I had a look around [City Lit], liked what I saw, and they asked if I wanted to study. I really wanted to get good English. Then I met […] the teacher here, but the course was full, so I had to go to the bottom of the waiting list. They said they would let me know by email, but I had to wait 2 years to start.

Adrian was in the country and eager to improve, but his desire to learn a new language was thwarted by the unavailability of services, and obtaining access to classes was a slow process. There are systematic barriers in place that make it challenging for deaf migrants to the United Kingdom to learn English.

Some deaf migrants have used English extensively in their country of origin, but they experience barriers in relation to English upon arriving in the United Kingdom. Adult literacy courses for deaf people in the Global South very often focus on English literacy (e.g., Webster & Zeshan, 2021), yet English literacy skills that are sufficient to get by in one country may not “transfer” well to other countries. In India, English courses for deaf adults are manifold, offered by different nongovernmental organizations, universities, and charities, and many Indian deaf people in cities have subscribed to multiple (typically entry-level) English courses in succession (Friedner, 2015b). Aisha had attended, and even taught, such courses before she moved from India to the United Kingdom for marriage. In India, she had established a career as a teacher in a deaf school in Mumbai, with stability and a good pay scale. To gain this role, her skills had been assessed through classroom observation. Her limited English literacy skills were not an obstacle to this and had not been an obstacle to her obtaining a bachelor of arts degree. However, in the United Kingdom, she found that her limited English became a barrier to her transitioning into the deaf education sector. Aisha was disheartened when she did not get a job interview for a learning assistant role at a deaf school, with the feedback stating that an interview could only be offered to candidates with a minimum of Level 2 English (a government-accredited English qualification equivalent to a General Certificate of Secondary Education grade C/grade 4). She had obtained an entry-level course (pre-Level 1) at City Lit and was seeking access to English Level 1, which City Lit college did not offer at the time due to a shortage of BSL-using English teachers.

Aisha expressed her frustration with the United Kingdom’s employment system, feeling that her employment pathway in India had been more advantageous. She felt that in the United Kingdom, her English was not considered good enough, whereas in India she could get by. She was committed to improving her English skills, as shown in Example D at the beginning of this chapter: She read and practiced her English daily, and she often texted Sanchayeeta to ask for explanations of vocabulary. She was also involved in the previously mentioned English courses from India, which were offered online during the pandemic. Having progressed to Level 6 in BSL, she subsequently experienced barriers in her efforts to join a higher level BSL course due to the requirement for written English in assignments. BSL courses are almost exclusively modeled for hearing BSL learners who already have foundational skills in English; deaf learners with limited English are disadvantaged (also see Barnes & Atherton, 2015).

Deaf migrants who have moved to the United Kingdom also face obstacles because of the assumption that they do not know English, based on their status as “foreign.” Lenka N., from the Czech Republic, explained that her aspirations for self-development through higher education were almost derailed by systemic barriers and ignorance. Lenka had previously obtained a bachelor of arts degree in the United Kingdom, but when she tried to enroll for a master’s degree, she was told that she needed to take a test to “prove” her ability in English. Despite having passed the entrance interview, her enrollment was blocked until she passed a specific language test—one that was inaccessible:

I didn’t understand what [the test was] for, as I already had a [BA] degree, which I’d achieved 3 or 4 years prior. Nobody had ever asked me about my English. […] The female administrator blocked my enrollment, saying it was impossible without going for an academic English fluency test. […] [I]t was an online assessment that would require me to wear headphones and select the right answers on a computer screen. But I can’t do that […] I explained this, but they still said I couldn’t do it. So, I asked them to put this in writing and they sent it to me. When I had that evidence, I knew I had a strong case in relation to my rights and how I’d been treated. I sent this to my boss, copying some important people, so that they could understand that any future deaf professionals should be treated with respect and not have to face barriers over their spoken English. I got a flurry of apologetic replies and I was allowed into the degree program.

Despite Lenka N.’s high levels of written English, she experienced barriers because the testing system was designed for hearing people. This is reminiscent of Aisha’s experience of barriers to a BSL course designed for hearing learners. Lenka already had a university degree, fluency in English, and valuable contacts; she thus had the linguistic and social capital to make a case for her discrimination. Other deaf migrants without the same level of fluency, or the same support system, may have felt shame for their perceived lack of fluency in English.

Language Out of Place

In general, people tend to subscribe to the ideology that languages are territorially bound—for example, that ASL belongs to the United States, and BSL belongs to the United Kingdom. In other words, people often see the use of specific semiotic resources or calibration practices as being appropriate only in certain spaces or within certain boundaries. As mentioned previously in the chapter, there are ideological spaces of calibration and spaces of separation. In various subprojects, occasions arose where participants felt that there was too much ASL being used in spaces where its use was contested, which they said was disrespectful, oppressive, and/or simply out of place. Conversely, Meera, the Indian woman who felt she had not become fluent in BSL despite living in the United Kingdom for 17 years, explained that she felt that BSL users were not willing to calibrate and that she had experienced prejudice and anti-migration rhetoric as an ASL user of Asian descent:

When I first moved here … British deaf people are so different—they use BSL and I use ASL. They signed faster with blank expressions, and I didn’t understand what they were saying. […] It was stressful for me to understand them and to process what they were saying. Secondly, some deaf complained to me, “Why would you move here if you are still using ASL?” They were annoyed that I was using ASL and they couldn’t understand me. They were also making negative comments to me. I was patient. I couldn’t help learning slowly. [They asked] why was I proud to use ASL? I grew up using an oral approach and one-handed alphabets. My behavior was different from British deaf people; they were more fluent and freer with their signs and with their facial expressions. They asked my husband what he married me for. [They said that] since I moved here, I have to respect [the community] by using BSL. I had told them that I had just moved, and it takes time for me to learn the new language, but they misunderstood. I had to remain calm when I continued to receive negative comments, and I’d distance myself from them.

This excerpt shows how language ideologies intersect with xenophobia and antimigrant ideologies. Meera was subjected to language shaming by way of comments about being a “proud” (i.e., arrogant) ASL user, and she and her British Indian husband (whose parents, of Indian heritage, were from Uganda) were subjected to questioning about their decision to marry. Meera saw learning BSL as “respectful” of the community and was trying to improve, but she was taken aback by the blank facial expressions and pace of signing, which did not signal a cosmopolitan attitude of calibration. She felt this slowed down her learning process. Having a history of communicating orally further set her apart as “different.” Meera, as a migrant, was positioned as “out of place,” as was her “inappropriate” language use.

In the United Kingdom, ASL may be unwelcome and considered “out of place,” but this is not necessarily related to acute endangerment of BSL. Conversely, in many developing countries, ASL is seen as threatening the “own” (e.g., local, national) sign language. When Erin accompanied various tour groups in Bali, she observed conversations and languaging practices that revealed ambivalent attitudes about sign language contact in tourism, in relation to other sign languages (e.g., BSL, French Sign Language) as well as ASL. In one example, a deaf teacher at a Balinese deaf school told tourists to sign only to him so as not to “confuse” the children or “contaminate” their BISINDO (Moriarty, 2020a). It was not only ASL and other Global North sign languages that were perceived as contaminators. The opinion of Wahyu and the deaf teachers at the deaf school was that the BISINDO used in south Bali was having a negative influence on Kata Kolok in Bengkala, with deaf villagers exchanging some local signs for others with different iconic referents that are used more widely in Bali. Wahyu gave the example of the Kata Kolok sign COFFEE (#deaftravel, 01:15:57),³⁰ which has changed from an index finger pointing at the hair growing at the forehead (Figure 8.13a), a reference to the color of the coffee being like the color of the villagers’ hair, to an index finger stirring a held cup (Figure 8.13b). Similarly, Wahyu commented that he sometimes felt that he was slowly forgetting his BISINDO because he spends so much time with tourists, working 14-hour days.

Erin did not observe the villagers themselves talk about language contamination or change; instead, this seemed to be more of a concern for tourists and sign language researchers who worked in Bengkala. This appears to be a common pattern in the Global South: It is often outsiders who express concern about sign language endangerment, which then inspires them to study sign languages (Braithwaite, 2020; Webster & Safar, 2020). In previous research, Annelies had observed the same phenomenon in Adamorobe, a deaf village in Ghana: Outsiders such as tourists and researchers were projecting their ideologies onto the villagers about the need to use their own sign language and to preserve it (Kusters, 2015).

ASL is also often seen as out of place in situations where no national sign language is dominant. In the Frontrunners program, where IS was used, ASL was a hot topic of debate. As explained earlier in the chapter, over the course of the program, Frontrunners expanded their repertoires; a key example of this process was certain students learning to produce versions of IS using no or less ASL. Whereas some of the other Frontrunners had had previous exposure to IS through, for example, European camps, others—such as Majdi, from Jordan, and Hyemi, from South Korea—had been more exposed to ASL than to “European” IS before they arrived at Frontrunners, and they were alerted by fellow students to their use of ASL signs for everyday concepts such as “day” or “have.” Majdi struggled to keep ASL out of his signing:

Figure 8.13. Wahyu comparing the Kata Kolok (a) and more common (b) sign for COFFEE.

I have to be aware to just use IS and to avoid ASL. My signing is a mix of IS and ASL. I feel that I am using ASL a lot here. I use IS as well, but it depends—more IS or less, it fluctuates. If people give me feedback, I will remember it more. If they don’t tell me, I use less IS. (This Is IS: Episode 1, 00:54:15)³¹

Some Frontrunners from Europe also struggled with identifying and avoiding ASL, but they had “home ground advantage”: They were in Europe, were more experienced in communicating with other Europeans through IS, and had better knowledge of English as a bridging lingua franca. The irony is that some people from “outside Europe” (which is often used as a synonym for “Global South”) are less exposed to IS and more to ASL (although this is changing because of increasing IS use on social media). However, they are also seen as people who understand ASL less (see Kusters, 2020), an assumption based on these people’s perceived lack of knowledge of English. Knowledge of ASL and knowledge of English are often ideologically associated with each other, an ideology discussed in depth next. We observed multiple times across the subprojects that vilifying ASL use puts deaf people from the Global South in multiple disadvantaged positions. Deaf people originating in the Global South feel they have to work harder to learn to communicate in ways expected by the majority, especially when they experience racism and xenophobia; also, due to the history of ASL spread in the world (a process through which local sign languages were sidelined), they may have had more access to ASL than to IS or BSL, but are chided for using it.

Some deaf Americans have become aware of anti-United States and anti-ASL sentiments in many international contexts. In the film This Is IS: Episode 1, we see Hyemi learning more ASL from David, to improve her knowledge of ASL in addition to IS, but when David notices that she has started to use more ASL in her signing, he expresses concern that she cannot keep ASL and IS separate (00:59:36).³² David felt responsible for not “contaminating” the Frontrunners program with ASL, and he wondered whether, as an American, he was the main ASL influence there.

Deaf American institutions (as well as European white people) are often seen as the hegemonic voice of the global deaf community; this is the context in which Julie, a white American deaf professor working at Gallaudet University, was situated. She attended and gave a keynote lecture at the SIGN8 conference in Brazil in 2017, where IS and Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) were used, and she was conscious of her visibility as an American and of ASL influences in her international signing. The quotation below comes from an interview following a workshop about IS organized by Annelies (excerpts can be seen in This Is IS: Episode 3). Some people in the workshop had uttered strongly negative statements about ASL, framing it as out of place in IS. Julie reflected:

I think if I stand up as an American with ASL and say something, they’ll see that as me dictating to them. I don’t want that. I’ll just hold back. In both my talks and workshops, I’m always conscious of how I communicate and interact with people, being mindful that I’m an ASL user. I’ve always tried to learn signs; on nights out having a drink, or during meals and conversations, I’m learning how people talk to each other and their ways. I can see other people calibrating as well, such as signing Flemish [VGT], and they adapt to IS, and it’s the same with me: I adopt that attitude from others too. […] Anyway, there’s these various views. That limits my conversation, as there’s negativity emanating from people because I come from America and I come from Gallaudet, they look at me like that. I feel really self-conscious, and I just want to go away and hide. Chill out with the birds and stuff, just like being tired from mixing with lots of people and having my brain whirring all the time. I’m a really strong introvert, so I’ll go off and have a rest. […] [Later,] I felt able to come back and mix again. That’s my strategy. (This Is IS: Episode 3, 00:44:36)³³

Julie was conscious of representing Gallaudet as a hegemonic institution in the deaf space, and conscious of national stereotypes (see Chapter 5 on stereotyping). She emphasized that she consciously calibrated to others, but she was also conscious that her Americanness was visible in her signing. She also observed that she was a “strong introvert,” which played a part in how she interacted with other people in the deaf space, and it reinforced her feeling that she had to “hold herself back.” International events are intensive environments. The process of calibrating and of learning new signs in a short time span—at the same time as meeting new people and maybe even giving a presentation—can be exhausting; this is particularly true for deaf people who are introverted and/or have disabilities (other than deafness) or chronic illnesses. Unfortunately, we do not have a lot of data on how personality types, “hidden” disabilities (e.g., resulting from neurodivergence), and old age impact international deaf interactions.

Anti-ASL sentiments are not always dominant, however. At the DOOR campus in Kenya, ASL was seen as a lingua franca to bridge different sign languages. Simon, a translator from Kenya, explained:

Yes, I think ASL helps because when I see people from other countries like Ghana or Nigeria or Tanzania, I can see they understand some ASL, and when I ask where they got ASL from, it’s because many American missionaries have gone to other poor countries to provide help, and they use ASL and teach that, so those people understand ASL. […] Using a little ASL helps us understand each other, and makes communication easier. If each of us only used our own sign language like KSL and TSL (Tanzanian Sign Language), we would not be able to understand each other.

Because deaf Africans have learned ASL at school and the use of ASL-influenced sign languages is widespread in Africa, ASL was used in calibrating practices at DOOR, both with deaf people from other African countries and with American and other foreign visitors. It was clear to Annelies that people did not see KSL as being “at risk” from ASL but as a “strong sign language” in East Africa, influencing sign languages in adjoining countries; this is because it is comparatively well supported by institutions compared to the sign languages in many other African countries. Additionally, at DOOR, translators were employed for the development of materials in the sign languages of their countries of origin, to be used instead of ASL resources; in so doing, they were contributing to the continuing development of their own sign languages. In this context, Paul, the director, was not worried about the influence of ASL in the same way that the deaf teacher in Indonesia had been worried about foreign sign languages; this was potentially also because the people working at DOOR were deaf language professionals rather than deaf schoolchildren or villagers who were seen as vulnerable to language influences:

In DOOR, there are many different deaf people. When an American comes and signs ASL, we encourage them. We understand them, but if we miss something, we give them the KSL sign to use. There is not the worry that they will bring their language here because if you look at Africa, you can see that KSL is very strongly rooted. So, any sign language is welcome. (This Is IS: Episode 2: 00,44:44)³⁴

In another context in the same country, ASL was seen as desirable because it was seen as out of place. In contrast to Annelies’s findings in DOOR, many deaf refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp thought that ASL was “better” than other sign languages, including KSL. This is not unusual in Africa; other researchers have reported similar language ideologies (e.g., Nyst, 2010). ASL was associated with the United States and, importantly, with resettlement. For example, Ken, a deaf Sudanese person from a Dinka tribe, desired resettlement in the United States, and he believed that learning ASL would enable him to continue his studies there:

I love American signs better because if you know American signs you can go to university, but if you know Kenyan signs you cannot go to university. The life in Kakuma is hard: I stay at home, it’s boring, I don’t have work, UN[HCR] don’t support me with money, my parents don’t pay me, I’m alone at home. I’m asking UN how to get work; I’m searching for work. I want a job with signs, but it is hard. So, I ask UN, please help me, I want to go to the United States, and I want to study there in university. […] I love American signs. I’m learning this language [ASL] and it is better for me.

It is not unusual for refugees to be concerned with learning languages that will be useful after resettlement, rather than the language of the host country they reside in (Netto et al., 2019). Ken believed that ASL was the language most pertinent to his future. This example shows how language education and formal language-learning are intimately tied to aspirations for self-improvement and for future mobility (see Chapter 10). In addition, language ideologies about the nature of ASL versus KSL are in play here. Ken considered ASL to be a richer language and much more extensive than KSL, with better resources and therefore easier to learn. ASL is also associated with English more than KSL is, even though English mouthings and fingerspelling are used in both languages. Margaret, a deaf Sudanese woman, had a good knowledge of English and found ASL easier to understand because “it follows English”:

I understand well. I understand faster. In Kenya [signing], the communication is short, I don’t understand well […] English sentences are easy, I learned it at school. I understand well. English sentences are longer. […] America is better than Kenya.

Margaret said that the sentences in “American signs” are longer because they follow English and that she preferred it for this reason. Examples such as this show that people have different understandings of what “ASL” means (see also Kusters, 2020). In Kakuma Refugee Camp, and indeed in large parts of Africa, what people call “ASL” would be called “Signing Exact English” (SEE) by others. In a key example, Amandine observed a deaf teacher, John, writing “Where is the teacher?” on the blackboard (see Figure 8.14) and then signing each word in this sentence. Deaf people in the United States would probably call his language use SEE because the signs were produced in English word order and followed English grammar; conversely, the sign order attributed to KSL (TEACHER WHERE?) would be considered “correct ASL.” Many deaf people in Kakuma Refugee Camp, however, believed that (what they consider to be) “ASL” (i.e., SEE) is the signed equivalent of writing and speaking (formal) English, and they ascribed a lot of value to it. KSL was understood as a form of signing that has less status and complexity than the ASL/English conflation. In this example, the “sign language out of place” is thus connected to higher status, resettlement, and the English language.

Even IS, a seemingly cosmopolitan practice, can be seen as “out of place,” as observed earlier in relation to our own use of IS in our workplace at a British university. Many of the DOOR participants positioned IS as something “European,” from “outside,” or “from WFD.” When Annelies asked people whether they knew “International Sign,” most of them said that they did not know it or only knew a little bit. Because Annelies was using IS herself, especially during the first 2 days, reactions to her signing were revealing of how they perceived IS. At the end of her interview with Ingrid, a consultant from Costa Rica, Annelies asked whether people at DOOR sometimes used IS. Ingrid’s response was: “I’ve never met a person using International Sign, never. I don’t know it.” Annelies responded: “But I use IS.” Ingrid responded: “Great! I understand you. […] You asked questions, and I understood, definitely. It’s easy with facial expressions and signs.” This was one of many times at DOOR when Annelies got the impression that people did not recognize her signing as IS. Their expectation was that people would use “KSL mixed with own signs”; more than once, people stated that they thought Annelies was using KSL mixed with “Belgian signs.”

Figure 8.14. Writing on the blackboard comparing ASL and KSL.

Deaf people on the DOOR campus used many of the calibrating strategies that deaf Europeans typically call IS: using signs from different sign languages including ASL, expanding utterances by giving examples, and so on. It was the conventionalized versions of IS that were seen as non-African. Rahul mentioned that he had learned and used IS at the SIGN6 conference in India in 2013, which Annelies also had attended; the conference served as a shared point of reference (see Chapter 7). Rahul recalled:

I met many people [at SIGN6], and there are also many videos on YouTube and the internet. Now, I see you and I recall IS—I understand you, but I am a bit weak at signing back in IS. That is because I don’t meet them [people who use IS] here, I’m busy meeting with people from Burundi, Kenya, and Indians from the north and south. There are also people from Mozambique and South Sudan here, so we socialize together, eat together, and discuss things so they influence my signing. ASL is also in my signing spectrum from my previous teachers, so it’s all in here. Here, I never meet with people using IS. (This Is IS: Episode 2, 00:33:48)³⁵

At DOOR, Rahul engaged in interactions with people from a range of countries, but he did not see their signing as IS; this is likely because the signing at DOOR was not the conventionalized IS he had seen in other contexts. However, later in the same interview, Rahul also recognized that the calibrating and language mixing at DOOR is similar to informal interactions in IS, acknowledging that “maybe that is what International Sign is” (00:43:59).

In another example of IS being out of place, well-known American “super-traveler” Calvin Young explained to Erin that he had experienced criticism for using IS in the United States, especially from older deaf people. Language ideologies vary based on age and lived experiences, and Calvin observed that younger people, such as students at the deaf schools where he has given presentations about his travels, tend to be more open and interested in learning IS:

A lot of students come up to me regarding my signing in a visual way, and copy some of what they see. They like it and then use it when socializing with their friends. That’s something that IS can do!

Having IS in one’s repertoire can translate into social capital; in this example, Calvin, a white hypermobile world traveler, brings IS—itself symbolic of mobility—to the schools he visits, where it becomes part of the students’ repertoires. From Calvin’s comments, we can conclude that these students are introduced to cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan values through their interactions with Calvin. Calvin notes that the resistance to IS is not just “an American thing” because he has experienced criticism for using IS in Australia as well. In this quotation, Calvin connects mobility with “open minds,” which is a feature of cosmopolitanism:

If they haven’t gone out of their community and stay very insular without other influences, they are close-minded. […] I’ve seen open-minded people be exposed to it, they find it interesting, think it’s beautiful and dive in and accept it. The emphasis is on being open-minded, that is the key.

Here, IS is associated with being “open-minded,” and it is therefore only marked as “out of place” by people who are perceived as being “not open to differences.”

Conclusion

The study of language and languaging practices as they relate to mobility requires a lens that centers deaf social practices and the spaces where they take place. Using this lens, we have shown the ways in which different types of mobility shape languaging practices on various scales. We have shown the ways that language, languaging practices, and semiotic resources move with people as they engage in mobility; these can then be embraced but also marked as “out of place.” We have noted the ways in which human mobility and people’s life trajectories are reflected in their semiotic repertoires. During mobility, people also expand their repertoires—that is, they learn languages as they go along. Language learning is linked to social and linguistic capital and aspirations toward a better life, material success, and self-development. For mobile deaf people, learning IS or a new national sign language, or improving fluency in languages such as BSL or English, can be linked to the ability to capitalize on new opportunities, both social and material. Such opportunities and resources are distributed unevenly among deaf people who engage in mobility.

A core practice of deaf cosmopolitanism is calibration—the flexible and strategic use of, and rapid switching between, languages and modalities. Calibration is not limited to international deaf interactions, but it is something that deaf people bring from their everyday lives, which typically involves communicating with deaf and hearing people in a wide variety of ways (Crasborn & Hiddinga, 2015; Hodge & Goswell, 2021). Calibration is often seen as the core of IS. Conventionalized IS is a product of calibration, in which some signs have become consolidated. IS is treated as a bounded or established language in some contexts—for example, when it is expected that ASL should be kept out of it, or when IS is seen as a “European” form of communication. Calibration may be seen as central to IS, but international calibration per se may not be seen as IS.

We have shown that deaf people frequently engage in learning single signs in their international encounters. Some also aspire to learn other sign languages more fully. This is partially associated with the expectations of the contexts they are in or move through. In some contexts, it is entirely appropriate to learn only a few signs of (an)other sign language(s), especially when comparing signs—a practice we observed in all settings of our research. Signs compared and discussed can then function as sign names, as souvenirs, as anchors for future visitors, and as parts of group lexica. Although drawing comparisons between signs can be seen as a core manifestation of deaf cosmopolitanism, this does not mean that comparisons are always harmless: They can be the result of wonderment but can also be experienced as discriminatory and even racist.

In some contexts, bounded sign language learning is expected or needed, and not just the learning of single signs. For example, many deaf people who move abroad learn other sign languages more fully. However, this expectation is found mostly in the context of migrations; migrants (including refugees) are expected to learn the language(s) of the country in which they arrive. Migrants learn new sign languages often with the assistance of a buddy, partner, or teacher who introduces them to the language. However, people are not always interested in becoming or are able to become, fluent in the (sign) language that is most widely used in the place where they are. We showed that this is linked to individuals’ responsibilities and aspirations in life, which translate into priorities.

Drawing comparisons between migrants’ and nonmigrants’ skills in the host country’s sign language can be shaped by xenophobia. Migrants may be shamed by others for using foreign or accented signing or mouthing or for drawing on a lingua franca (ASL or IS) to get by in the new country. They may be expected to use “correct,” “pure,” “appropriate,” or “natural” signing. Furthermore, comparing the signing of deaf people who use (a) dominant sign language(s) and who have been to school and the signing of deaf people from other backgrounds may lead to the latter being labeled as having “no language,” as shown in the discussion of attitudes toward “village signs.” There is a tendency to downplay the linguistic status of the signing used in some countries or as used by some people, and migration adds an extra layer to this—especially in situations where the migrating deaf person has fled a war and/or has had no access to formal education in their country of origin.

In many cases, participants in the research project explained key moments of their lives in relation to languages and language practices—not only sign languages, but also English. In nonmigration contexts, familiarity with English may be seen as useful, but having a limited level of English may suffice. Conversely, many deaf migrants (including refugees) saw English as crucial to advancement. Yet, deaf migrants to London often find themselves facing systemic barriers to learning English (and, indeed, BSL), such as the need to pass (sometimes inaccessible) English proficiency tests to join courses or to be considered for jobs, as well as oversubscribed courses and waiting lists.

As we have noted, mobile deaf people may have internalized broad semiotic repertoires, but their repertoires do not always “fit” as they move from locale to locale (Blommaert & Dong, 2020; Busch, 2017). When a person’s languages do not “fit,” they are likely to also feel that they do not fit or belong, exacerbated by oppression linked to xenophobia, racism, and ableism (the latter of which is insufficiently covered in this research). Privilege can attenuate such effects. Hypermobile deaf travelers getting negative responses to their signing are in a different position from migrants who are made to feel unwelcome. (Post)colonial histories of language spread and language imperialism complicate these narratives. In particular, ASL is seen as “of America” and linked to mobilities to and from the United States; however, it is also seen as “being everywhere” and, therefore, “out of place,” a threat, a useful resource, an aspiration, or several of these at once.

Languaging and language learning also happened during the research itself. The research team learned new signs and parts of sign languages, such as BISINDO and KSL, along the way. We learned how our language use was seen in the country or countries we had migrated to ourselves, and in our research settings. We noted how others copied signs from us, and we witnessed participants’ language learning processes more fully (e.g., in courses) and supported them sometimes in their learning.

We have also noted, in varying degrees of depth, how the following factors can have an impact on interaction, communication, and languaging: race and ethnicity, gender, class, nationality, experience of language deprivation, being a new signer, being from the Global North versus the Global South, being disabled, or being introverted. The ways different identities or positions intersect in specific contexts shapes people’s calibration strategies and language learning in these contexts; however, there are myriad possible combinations of factors that make it difficult, or impossible, to pinpoint which factors may matter more or be more prominent in each situation. For example, in many of the situations described in this chapter, it was not possible to separate racism from xenophobia and audism; drawing sharp distinctions between different motivators of discrimination is, to some extent, impossible because these motivations are often hidden and combined.

To return to the theme of deaf cosmopolitanism, this chapter has shown how calibration, linguistic border crossing, and a tendency toward curiosity about other people’s signs are central to the concept. Because signing deaf people are often experienced in various ways of calibration, they often learn and consume new sign languages quickly. Language differences lead to comparisons, and differences are “overcome” with the help of multimodal languaging skills. Deaf cosmopolitanism, however, does not mean automatic acceptance of the language practices of others, as found in the examples involving language shaming or the use of a lingua franca such as ASL or IS in the “wrong” place. Also, the examples show that, underneath the ideology that deaf people are exceptionally well equipped to engage in cosmopolitan calibration, there are always people who (are expected to) work harder to communicate.

1. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=1h14m49s

2. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=12m10s

3. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=38m25s

4. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=25m47s

5. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=35m46s

6. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=40m47s

7. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=40m01s

8. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=39m40s

9. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=47m18s

10. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=25m59s

11. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=1h5m28s

12. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=1h6m4s

13. https://vimeo.com/728777656#t=6m22s

14. https://vimeo.com/728777656#t=3m21s

15. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=7m26s

16. https://vimeo.com/728777656#t=7m23s

17. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=46m11s

18. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=1h9m16s

19. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=46m44s

20. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=28m56s

21. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=1h15m19s

22. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=1h15m59s

23. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=1h20m38s

24. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=1h12m12s

25. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=1h0m0s

26. https://vimeo.com/854367099#t=48m47s

27. https://vimeo.com/854367099#t=00h45m40s

28. https://vimeo.com/728777656#t=12m43s

29. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=47m12s

30. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=1h15m57s

31. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=54m15s

32. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=59m36s

33. https://vimeo.com/744266936#t=44m36s

34. https://vimeo.com/728777656#t=44m44s

35. https://vimeo.com/728777656#t=33m48s

36. https://vimeo.com/728777656#t=43m59s