BAAL 2018 Annual Meeting

Annelies Kusters, Heriot-Watt University

Plenary presentation:
Sign multilingual and translingual practices and ideologies

Being skilled in a signed language creates unique possibilities and opportunities for communication across linguistic and national borders. Signers’ local and international mobilities are rapidly increasing and a growing number of people are proficient in more than one sign language. Signers learn other sign languages often in a short time span, and may use them in private, social, professional and academic contexts. An important factor factor in the globalisation of deaf space is the ability to communicate through International Sign (IS). This unique linguistic and social phenomenon has emerged from interactions between signers with different linguistic backgrounds and has been traced back to international deaf gatherings in the 19th century. It is mostly used in international contexts and it has no equivalent in spoken languages. There are conventionalized and less conventionalized uses of IS.

People who engage in IS and other sign multilingual practices are often translanguaging. The multilingual repertoires upon which signers draw are multimodal. People may speak, point, mouthe, gesture, sign, fingerspell, write, in a variety of combinations. Because of the unique ways in which sign, gesture, writing and mouthing are used by signers when they communicate, the research of sign multilingualism expands current concepts of translanguaging.

Scholars have described tensions that occur between the use of different sign languages when signers hierarchize these languages. Indeed sign languages constitute a complex terrain upon and in which different interests and agendas are produced and negotiated by different stakeholders. Also, the use and form of IS is connected to a complex set of language ideologies, especially concerning the use of lexicon from American Sign Language and English (eg in mouthings and fingerspelling). Being able to use the more conventional varieties of IS is related to signers’ mobility, privilege and the ability to make use of certain linguistic repertoires against others.

Summarized, this presentation focuses on sign multilingual practices and ideologies, situating them in different kinds of spaces and relating them to different kinds of mobilities and interests.

About Annelies:
Annelies Kusters is Assistant Professor in Sign Language and Intercultural Research at Heriot-Watt University. She leads the research project Deaf mobilities across international borders: Visualising intersectionality and translanguaging, funded by the European Research Council (2017-2022). Annelies Kusters has master’s degrees in Social and Cultural Anthropology (KULeuven in Belgium) and in Deaf Studies (University of Bristol), and a PhD in Deaf Studies (2012, University of Bristol). Between 2013 and 2017 she worked as research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany. Her current work is situated at the intersection of linguistic anthropology and social geography, in particular the study of multilingual language practices, language ideologies, transnationalism and mobilities. Since 2004, Annelies has engaged in ethnographic research in South America, Asia and Africa, such as in a school, boarding house and club of deaf people in Paramaribo city (Surinam); in compartments for people with disabilities in the Mumbai trains; and in Adamorobe, a Ghanaian village where hereditary deafness occurs. In 2016 she received the Jean Rouch Award (2016) from the Society for Visual Anthropology for her ethnographic film Ishaare: Gestures and signs in Mumbai and in 2015 she received the Ton Vallen Award for her written work on sociolinguistic issues in Adamorobe.

Erez Levon, Queen Mary University of London

Plenary presentation:
Language, indexicality and gender ideologies: contextual effects on the perceived credibility of women

It is well established that listeners’ attitudes to variability in language are affected by context. One speaker’s use of a particular form will not necessarily be evaluated in the same way as another’s use of that same form (e.g., Campbell-Kibler 2008; Pharao et al. 2014), and the pragmatic meanings listeners associate with variation depend on the specific social setting in which that variation occurs (e.g., Hay et al. 2006; Levon 2014). In this talk, I explore how this contextual sensitivity of sociolinguistic perception interacts with broader ideologies about gender. Specifically, I examine how the use of “uptalk”, or rising final intonation on declarative utterances, impacts on the perceived credibility of women versus men in different legal contexts, including those characterized by strong ideologies of gender (e.g., a sexual assault trial; Ehrlich 2014; Hildebrand-Edgar & Ehrlich 2017) and those in which that ideological framing is less pronounced (e.g., a medical malpractice trial). My goal is to identify how social information – including social ideologies about gender – affect listeners’ perceptions of uptalk, and to explore the ramifications that these perceptions may have on women’s ability to be believed in a courtroom.

Uptalk is an increasingly common feature of English around the world. Having originated in Australia in the 1960s (Guy et al. 1980), uptalk did not arrive in Britain until the late 1980s (Cruttenden 1995; Bradford 1997). Since then, uptalk has become an entrenched feature of Southern British English, found primarily among young, White, middle-class speakers in London and the South East. As in other locations, the appearance of uptalk in Britain has been accompanied by a set of negative linguistic stereotypes, associating the feature with the speech of young women and a style of speaking that is said to be lacking in confidence, authority or credibility. In recent work (Levon 2016), I have shown that the reality of how uptalk is used is very different: uptalk is equally (if not more) prevalent in the speech of young men in the London area, and it is used by speakers to assert control over how narratives are framed in interaction and to encourage alignment with the speaker’s point of view. Because of this particular function, uptalk would actually be predicted to occur in the speech of young Londoners giving testimony in a trial, i.e., a context in which the speaker wishes to convince the court that their perspective is the correct one (particularly when confronted with aggressive cross-examination). The predicted use of uptalk in a legal setting to perform an instrumental function of activity alignment (Stivers 2008) thus contradicts the stereotypical perception of the feature as a signal of epistemic uncertainty. It is precisely this contrast between how uptalk is actually used and the stereotypical expectations of how it is used that I explore in this talk.

My discussion is based on the results of two speaker evaluation experiments. In the first, listeners rated different samples of expert witness testimony in a medical malpractice trial given by a woman and a man for perceived credibility (Brodsky et al. 2010). Recordings were digitally manipulated so as to contain occurrences of uptalk or not, so as to investigate the effect of both linguistic form and gender on how credible a witness is perceived to be. In the second experiment, recordings both with and without uptalk were again presented to a new group of listeners. In this case, however, the testimony was drawn from a sexual assault trial (Ehrlich 1998), in which a complainant (a woman) accused the defendant (a man) of having raped her. Analyses of the second experiment thus examine the extent to which uptalk, gender and the more ideologically loaded context of a sexual assault trial (as compared to a medical malpractice trial) constrain how credible a witness sounds. In the talk, I detail how the findings of the experiments relate to respondents’ own beliefs and gender and sexism, as well as their relative endorsement of popular rape myths (Payne et al. 1999). I also discuss the broader ramifications of the results for our understanding of how language is perceived in context more generally.

About Erez:

Erez Levon is Reader in Sociolinguistics at Queen Mary University of London. His work uses quantitative, qualitative and experimental methods to examine patterns of socially meaningful variation in language. In particular, he investigates how linguistic forms come to be associated with different categories of speakers, and how, in turn, speakers use these associations in their everyday linguistic interactions. He primarily focuses on the relationship between language and gender/sexuality, and is interested in examining how gender and sexuality intersect with other categories of lived experience (notably, race, nation and social class). He has conducted fieldwork in the UK, the USA, Israel and South Africa, and is the author of Language and the Politics of Sexuality: Lesbians and Gays in Israel (Palgrave, 2010) and co-editor of Language, Sexuality and Power: Studies in Intersectional Sociolinguistics (OUP, 2016). He is also Associate Editor of Linguistics Vanguard and Journal of Sociolinguistics.

Anne Pauwels, SOAS, University of London

Plenary presentation:
Applied linguistics, language and asylum seekers: a linguistic ethnography of an asylum reception centre in France

Between 2015 and 2017 Europe experienced a massive influx of migrants and refugees estimated to be above 3 million according to European Asylum Support Office. The main source countries are Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq as well as some African nations notably Eritrea, Somalia, and Ethiopia. This influx has been described as the largest movement of people in Europe since the Second World War. It soon transpired that many European countries (EU and non-EU) were poorly prepared to deal with this situation administratively, politically, socio-economically, culturally and last but not least, linguistically. The linguistic issues and hurdles facing this ‘wave’ of migrants and refugees in the ‘acceptance process are wide-ranging: from being subjected to language tests to prove their origin for asylum legitimacy, managing life in legal and illegal camps and refugee centres to winding one’s way through the application processes. Despite the relative recency of these developments, the ‘community’ of linguists – applied, sociolinguists and others – has started working and commenting on various linguistic aspects of this situation, including the linguistic problems surrounding the widely used LADO test [Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin], the multilingual repertoires of the current refugee populations, the impact on urban linguistic landscapes as well as reconfiguring adult language learning in this new context.

With this talk I wish to make a contribution to the study of this ‘new’ linguistic scenario that is becoming a prevalent one in an increasing number of countries. Using an ethnographic approach (incorporating a linguistic landscape orientation) my main focus will be on documenting the linguistic rules governing the interactions between asylum seekers and various levels of authority as well as contrasting these with the ‘actual’ linguistic practices of both parties as observed in a French asylum/refugee reception centre located in Paris – Porte de la Chapelle -. As applied linguist, I will also reflect on the possible role I/we can or should play in facilitating (improving?) this interactional process. The data upon which I draw for this presentation derive from a current interdisciplinary project in which I am a co-investigator entitled LIMINAL – Linguistic and Intercultural Mediations in the context of International Migrations- This project, funded by the French National Agency for Research – ANR, examines the linguistic and cultural issues of asylum seekers in three French reception centres located in Paris, Ventimille and Grande Synthe (Calais).

About Anne:

Anne Pauwels is Professor of Sociolinguistics at SOAS, University of London. Prior to arriving in the UK she worked for almost thirty years in Australian universities in the capacity of Professor of Linguistics (Universities of New England, Wollongong and Western Australia) and of the Dean of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (Universities of Wollongong and Western Australia). During her time in Australia she was involved in many initiatives relating to language policy at federal, state and local level. She has been President of the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia and Vice President of the Australian Linguistic Society. Her research areas include multilingualism, especially in immigrant contexts, language maintenance and shift, language policies in higher education and the relationship between language and gender. She has published books in each of these areas with the latest contribution being Language maintenance and shift (2016, CUP). Currently she leads a project on multilingual practices and attitudes towards multilingualism among university students in Europe. This investigation forms part of the Cross-language Dynamics project (University of Manchester, AHRC–OWRI). She is also involved in a project that examines social, cultural and linguistic practices in refugee camps in France (led by INALCO, Paris).

Bill VanPatten, Independent Scholar

Pit Corder Lecture:
The (risky) promise of instructed SLA

In 1967, S. Pit Corder suggested that only by knowing about how language acquisition actually proceeds could we make any informed advances in language teaching. In 1972, Larry Selinker suggested that instruction on formal properties of language would have a negligible impact (if any) on real development in the learner. Finally, in 1983, Michael Long asked the question of whether instruction on formal properties of language made a difference in acquisition surveying a number of classroom-versus non-classroom studies available at the time. Since these publications, numerous empirical studies have been published on everything from the effects of instruction to the effects of error correction and feedback. This research in turn has resulted in meta-analyses and overviews that many researchers use to make claims about the impact of instruction on SLA. In this presentation, I will argue that current claims about the positive effects of instruction are overblown and are a result of what scholars call “going beyond the data.”

About Bill:

Bill VanPatten is an award-winning scholar, teacher, and writer with an international presence in the field of second language acquisition. Professor of Spanish and Second Language Studies at Michigan State University, VanPatten researches and teaches in the area of linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches to second language acquisition. He is the author of multiple books, edited volumes, and some 130 articles and book chapters. Among teachers he is known for his reader-friendly books, While We’re On the Topic: BVP on Language, Language Acquisition, and Classroom Practice, Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen and From Input to Output: A Teacher’s Guide to Second Language Acquisition, as well as his textbooks in Spanish and French. He is also the host of the successful radio show/podcast “Tea with BVP.” When not engaged in L2-related activities, VanPatten writes fiction. He used to perform standup comedy.