Documentation and description of sign language in Côte d’Ivoire

Tano Angoua Jean-Jacques, University of Cocody at Abidjan

Project Details:

Individual Graduate Studentship. Duration: 2010-2013. £43,180

Project Summary:

Like in several countries in West Africa, at least two sign languages are used in Ivory Coast. American Sign Language (ASL) is used in Deaf education and by educated Deaf adults. Deaf people with no formal schooling use various forms of Ivorian Sign Language. ASL is spreading in the Ivorian Deaf community at the cost of Ivorian Sign Language or Langue des Signes de Côte d’Ivoire (LSCI). This project will carry out the documentation and analysis of LSCI. It will include a digital corpus that features a representative sample of signed discourse, a lexical database and a description and analysis of selected features of the language.