International Summer School on
Language Documentation and Description

School of Oriental and African Studies, London

22 June - 3 July 2009

Documenting sign languages: from field to archive

The first week of the course, co-taught by Adam Schembri and Edward Garrett, covers the apparatus and technology of sign language documentation. We begin with a session on filming techniques, focusing both on technical aspects such as lighting, color, camera positioning, and the use of multiple cameras, as well as on ways to facilitate the ethical capture of high-quality naturalistic data. We then cover annotation standards and tools, with a tutorial on the use of ELAN in sign language documentation, and issues of archiving and web-delivery, including topics such as video compression for the web, creating subtitled videos and audio overlays, and implementing an access system that respects various stakeholders' rights to the data. We conclude the first week with a contrastive examination of three sign language archives: NGT, Auslan, and the British Sign Language Corpus.

The second week of the course, taught by Victoria Nyst, shifts the focus from apparatus and technology of documentation to the challenges of the field research situation. Without a trained eye, linguistic fieldworkers can easily overlook the existence of a sign language in their field site, especially given the severe fragility and understudied nature of many - especially rural - sign languages. The second week therefore aims at creating a basic awareness about sign languages and their documentation, providing information about the methodologies and tools necessary for identifying and documenting and describing in a preliminary, but adequate way a previously undescribed sign language.

The week begins with an introduction into sign linguistics, looking at sign languages from the perspectives of linguistic structure and of linguistic anthropology respectively. Consequently, we will treat sociolinguistic issues, such as multilingualism, language contact (sign-sign and spoken-sign languages) and sign language endangerment. Also, different types of rural and urban sign languages and signing communities are discussed, including home sign, so-called "deaf villages", and alternate sign languages. The course ends with methodological issues concerning sign language documentation, including linguistic (data collection, analysis) and ethical (privacy, ownership) issues.