Bencie Woll is the Director of the new ESRC-funded research centre for Deafness, Cognition and Language (DCAL). She was born in Canada and brought up in the United States. After taking an undergraduate degree in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, she came to Britain to study for an MA at the University of Essex. She worked at Bristol University then City University before moving to University College in 2005.
“I first became interested in British Sign Language (BSL) while I was working at the University of Bristol. I’d gone there in 1973 after completing my Masters at Essex to work on an ESRC-funded project on hearing children who learn English as their first language.
In 1977 a new colleague, Jim Kyle, joined the department at Bristol. He was a psychologist who’d previously been involved in a project that looked at the poor reading ability of deaf children. Of the very few whose reading age was the same as hearing children, a high proportion had parents who were deaf and used sign language.
It was through discussing this research with him that I first became interested in BSL. At that time, there was a debate about whether BSL really was a language as such. Deaf children were still being encouraged to communicate orally in schools, and were sometimes punished if they were caught signing. Hardly any research was being done on the topic, and I thought it would be an interesting area to explore. So I switched from child language research to research in BSL.
I then did an ESRC-funded project on the history of BSL that also looked at variations in the forms of sign language people used, and several others on how children learned BSL. I found that all the linguistics theory I had learned to date was surprisingly applicable. I was particularly interested in the relationship between language and modality - in other words the extent to which language ‘is as it is’ because it’s either spoken or signed.
Sign language has a more complex structure than English; there’s a different word order. Also, you can make use of both hands simultaneously. So, for example, in English where we say ‘the blue ball’, and in French the word order is ‘the ball blue’, in BSL you can actually sign the noun and adjective - ‘ball’ and ‘blue’ - simultaneously.
I don’t really like the word ‘deafness’. I prefer the term coined by the sociologist, Paddy Ladd - ‘deafhood’. It reflects the idea that being deaf is not just about how your ears work, it can also be about being part of a community of deaf people. A lot is changing within that community. In the past there were no telephones that could be used by deaf people, no subtitling on TV, and no texting. Plus, the use of BSL was very stigmatised. This meant that deaf clubs traditionally played an important role in people’s lives, though this may be changing now.
In this respect the deaf community shares many similarities with minority ethnic groups - in that they often tend to stick together, and that there is a distinct deaf culture. There are also other practical barriers to communication in speech - for example, it can be very difficult if you have limited hearing to try to communicate in a crowded pub where there are all sorts of other noises in the background.
Another thing that’s changed is the increased availability of cochlear implants, though only some people benefit from them, and there are all sorts of difficult issues involved. If you have implants does this mean you no longer want to be part of the deaf community? Plus it’s parents who have to make the decision for their children, and not everyone is comfortable with making a decision with such potentially far-reaching consequences so early on in their child’s life.
There are many other difficult issues surrounding hearing impairment and signing. BSL was finally recognised as a language in 2003, but all the funding for interpreting is granted under disability legislation. Many people who use BSL believe this puts the focus on disability rather than on the cultural and social aspects of signing. Some deaf people are intent on being seen as a linguistic minority rather than as people with a disability.
Although at UCL we already have good links with the deaf community, we will have research students and post-docs working at DCAL who are themselves part of the deaf community. The language skills of researchers is really important when you’re working closely with deaf families, as we will be.
The research we’ll be doing will look at theory, policy and practice, including health service provision. What provision is there for deaf people who have strokes, for example? How are hearing parents with a deaf child supported to learn BSL?
We’ll start off by investigating the existing knowledge base, looking at language and cognition, and develop that further. Then we’ll progress into researching the position of the individual in the community and issues such as bilingualism and interpreting, and how technology can aid people with restricted hearing.
I’m a linguist, so I’m particularly interested in how BSL works, and in looking at people within the deaf community who are bilingual in English and BSL. The two areas of research I’ve been most involved in over the last few years have been atypical signing, such as that used by deaf people who have had strokes and perhaps have the use of only one hand, and also dialect variation and whether this works in the same way with BSL as with speakers of any other language.
What we want to achieve with DCAL is a better understanding of the whole field of human language. Through looking at how deaf people communicate we hope to gain a better understanding of how language in general works. In the process, we hope deaf people will feel respected for the way they communicate, and, through that, that they will gain a sense of empowerment”.
A series of movies presented in British Sign Language about the Deafness, Cognition and Language centre are available to download in the external links section (right). All movies are in QuickTime format. (File sizes given are for guidance only.)