Graduation (Image credit: Emily Pacheco)

During my Master of Research (MRes) studies, whenever I met someone new, they would often enquire about what I was doing for my thesis.

When I told them, I was doing research with hearing children of Deaf migrants, people would respond and say, “Wow, that is very specific, do you know anyone personally that applies to?”.

I would then proudly explain that I have Deaf parents whose families migrated to the U.S. and that I do know many wonderful people who also grew up using signed and spoken languages and experienced ‘interpreting’ for their parents. I always enjoy it when my thesis intrigues people, and oftentimes they express they had never thought about migrant Deaf-hearing families and all the languages that could be used in interactions with them.

Because of my identity as a Coda (child of Deaf adults), occasionally a viral clip will be sent to me, or I will stumble across ones like these that captures a hearing child ‘interpreting’ for their Deaf parent:

• “Daddy’s Little Interpreter”
• “Fantastic’ 4-year-old uses sign language to interpret movie for deaf parents, wins hearts online”

The children in the viral clips above are acting as sign language brokers, and this practice is one part of what my thesis investigated.

In my thesis, I created and used the term Comda (child of migrant Deaf adults) to focus on the brokering and heritage language maintenance experiences of participants in their migrant Deaf-hearing families.

By creating the term Comda in my MRes research, this population was explicitly researched for the first time. My study found that Comdas broker frequently inside and outside the home. In the family, multilingual practices led to Comdas feeling conflicted with both emotions of linguistic pride and linguistic burden. Linguistic pride stemmed from praise given by family members to Comdas who maintain sign language use in their multilingual repertoires. Some also felt pride in keeping the connections to their Deaf and cultural heritages through their multilingualism.

However, at times, they experienced their multilingualism as a double-edged sword. While it brought pride, it also constituted a linguistic burden in the family when Comdas felt their hearing family members were not putting in the expected effort, as they had, to communicate with Deaf family members.

In institutional settings outside of the home, Comdas broker in low and high-stakes contexts. Comdas enjoyed brokering in low-stakes contexts (telephone conversations, restaurants, and shops) but felt pressure in high-stakes contexts (legal or medical environments). In addition to brokering in these contexts, Comdas’ multilingual experiences also led them to broker for other Deaf migrants in their communities.

Through uncovering the brokering experiences summarised above, I found Comdas valued them and felt brokering supported their multilingualism. By highlighting this positive impact, the skills Comdas can develop through brokering in their families in low-stakes institutional contexts can in turn support their future interactions with multilingual Deaf communities.

Additionally, my study found that the family language policies of migrant Deaf-hearing families are nuanced, as evidenced by the multilingual repertoires present in Comdas’ lives. Their multilingualism presented mixing of a spoken and signed language or two signed languages, which was commonly done by their parents and themselves. This language mixing practice was normal in their upbringings, and Comdas had to learn to separate these languages in formal institutions. The language acquisition of Comdas was not clear cut as to which languages came first in their upbringings. Comdas reflected a holistic and interconnected use of signed and spoken languages which was learned through brokering for their migrant Deaf parents.

Through my analysis and uncovering Comdas’ unique linguistic experiences, we can further understand the languaging skills they develop and how Comdas overcome audism by possessing a multilingual mindset (Lising, 2024). This resilience supports the intersection of brokering and heritage language maintenance.

The full thesis can be downloaded here: Sign Language Brokering and Heritage Language Maintenance Among Hearing Children of Deaf Migrant Parents

References

Lising, L. (2024). Multilingual mindset: A necessary concept for fostering inclusive multilingualism in migrant societies. AILA Review, 37(1), 35–53. https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.23023.lis

You may have seen the movie, CODA, which portrays the experience of a hearing teenager that has a Deaf family. A Coda, a child of Deaf adults, is an identity that represents the experience of having Deaf parents. Jessica showcases a perspective that is not widely discussed, which is the perspective of a Goda, a grandchild of Deaf adults. Her memoir explains the navigation of Deaf and hearing cultures in Australia with grandparents who migrated from the UK. The House With All The Lights On highlights and discusses themes around oralism, language deprivation, Deafness and music, and more!

The House With All The Lights On explores linguistic and cultural dynamics within Deaf-hearing families. Jessica shares her experience having Deaf grandparents and navigating the cultural borderline between Deaf and hearing cultures. It is a wonderful memoir about family, the complexities of identity, and linguistic diversity.

Enjoy the show!

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Transcript

Emily: Welcome to the Language on the Move Podcast, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Emily Pacheco, and I’m a Master of Research candidate in Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

My guest today is Dr Jessica Kirkness. Jessica is an author, researcher, and teacher of nonfiction writing at Macquarie University. Her work includes researching the value of life writing and creative nonfiction in animating the hearing line: the invisible boundary between Deaf and hearing cultures. As a Goda, spelled G-O-D-A, which stands for a grandchild of deaf adults, she writes about deafness, disability, and family.

Today we are going to talk in general about linguistic diversity in Deaf-hearing families, and in particular about a 2023 novel that Jessica wrote entitled The House With All The Lights On.

Jessica, welcome to the show, and thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr Kirkness: Thanks so much for having me, Emily.

Emily: It’s wonderful to have you here! And so just to start off, could you tell our listeners a bit about yourself? What led you to undertake your PhD in life writing and Deaf studies?

Dr Kirkness: Well, I guess family and love, which sounds trite, but I grew up in a house next door to my grandparents, so it was sort of a dual occupancy household where my grandparents lived in a granny flat on one side of the property and then my family, my mum, dad, brother and sister and I were in the main house. And so, I grew up with Deaf people all around me.

So, my grandparents had a huge hand in my upbringing, and they always hosted really lively Deaf parties and gatherings where I was around sign language and Deaf culture. And I guess naturally I was fascinated by that, I suppose, and just the you know, it was at once kind of part of my everyday life but also a point of intrigue and so when I got really into writing, particularly telling true stories, so creative nonfiction and life writing, I started to dabble with telling stories about my family and my upbringing and I wrote this little essay in an undergraduate course at Macquarie actually. (Emily and Dr Kirkness laugh) Which was called Telling True Stories, and I had this wonderful tutor who encouraged me to keep going. So, I wrote this 3,000-word essay, which then became a series of essays which then became a book.

So it was, also part of the PhD that I wrote. So, this was really investigating this idea of the hearing line that you mentioned in your opening, this boundary, this kind of cultural borderline that exists between Deaf and hearing cultures and again, I was really obviously invested in that having been sitting at that threshold, at that boundary for much of my life and thinking about how I embodied hearingness, how I enacted hearingness as a, as an identity and that was something that I came to in my studies and that was quite radical.

I’d always sort of understood my grandparents to be marked as different and other and that they had a cultural and linguistic background that was their own that they were that you know they identified as part of a cultural and linguistic minority group. And I had a relatively sound understanding of that, but when I started doing my PhD research and I found a lot of Deaf studies material, was doing a lot of research, I was kind of floored by the idea that hearing culture exists and that there are hearing ways of understanding the world and being in the world and it was this real sort of Aha! sort of a moment where it was like, yes, that’s so true! There are particular idiosyncrasies that I have that that show me to be a hearing person that I’m very auditory and that I, you know, I like listening to lectures and podcasts, for example, and I, learn about the world through through that particular sense, whereas my grandparents were very, very visual people and very tactile as well. So, sign language is obviously a kind of a spatial and visual language and so they used their bodies and to communicate but they were also highly sensitive to anything visual unfolding before them. And I really wanted to write about that and that kind of the boundary, the borderlines between our cultures, the ways that we were both similar, I suppose, but then and different in a way that was really important.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, I love that. I absolutely love everything you just said. (Emily laughs) I think it is really, fascinating because you know, I myself, I have Deaf parents which we’ll talk about a bit later in the interview, but, you know, being raised by Deaf people like you were in your childhood being raised by your grandparents where they were very present in your childhood. You have a moment where you’re like, oh, like my ability to hear has influenced the way I function as a human, right?And so, people, there is a Deaf culture and I think people kind of are like, oh, what does that mean?Like, isn’t it just a language difference or a linguistic thing? But no, that visual language, that visual nature really shapes the Deaf community and certain things that are important, that maybe hearing people are perplexed by or don’t kind of relate to and that’s always fascinating to talk about and discuss I think for sure that people don’t realize they have the label as hearing, you know, that Deaf people refer to them as hearing and they may refer to the Deaf as Deaf but that is the thing, that is that difference, that boundary of difference which I think is really interesting that you talked about so thank you for that great kind of introduction.

And so, to talk about your memoir, in particular, The House With All The Lights On, definitely resonated with me as a Coda which is spelled C-O-D-A, a child of Deaf adults for those who might not be familiar with that term. So could you explain the meaning behind the title and other deaf-friendly technologies that you discuss in chapter 3, kind of those cultural things that might be different, people might not be aware of.

Dr Kirkness: Absolutely. So I think, just as preamble, I think a lot of people are surprised to learn that there is a vibrant Deaf culture and that we tend to understand in our culture deafness as a medical problem as something that needs to be fixed and every time I brought a new person home, a new friend or a partner, for example, I always had to navigate that threshold where there was some languagebrokering, there might be some interpreting, people tended not to be able to understand my grandparents voices.And so there was a lot of sort of cultural bridging that I was doing in those moments. And I was always astounded that people weren’t sure.They were very uncertain about how to communicate first of all, but also like, oh, there is a Deaf culture?And so, it felt to me like there was a real need to write a story that came from a Deafcultural space. But to be a sort of a facilitator or that cultural bridge so that I could allow hearing people an insight into the kind of the richness of Deaf culture and language.

But The House With All The Lights On really refers to the idea of literally light being in the house all the time. So, my grandparents needed to have conversations with the lights on because without the light one cannot see. (Emily and Dr Kirkness laugh) And so you can’t read lips. You can’t also read sign language. So, the house was always awash with light and so my grandmother had a million and one lamps on of an evening and she was quite frightened of the dark, because it was, I think it was just very, it took away her ability to understand the world and so darkness had a very different meaning for her I think than it did for me.

And so, the house was always full of light, but also there’s a sort of double meaning here in that sign language is often referred to as the language of light and Deaf people are often referred to as the people of the eye. And so, this kind of light and visual sort of phenomenon was something that I wanted to tease out and flag in the book, which is why the book is called The House With All The Lights On.

Emily: Yeah, I think that’s great. And certainly, sometimes people when they find out I have Deaf parents they will say oh it must be so quiet in your house, and I think that’s not the case either you know sometimes people have these assumptions but just the importance of light like you said. And The House With All The Lights On I just love that visual I think myself, so I wanted you to kind of highlight that in our interview as well.

I really enjoyed reading about the different language practices as well in your family. So could you maybe explain how your grandparents’ upbringing influenced their language and what communication looked like in your family in particular.

Dr Kirkness: Yeah, so communication was a really mixed bag in my family, and I guess for some sort of, a potted history, I suppose. Sign language was banned in many educational contexts for much of the 19th and 20th century. So, my grandparents went to schools where they were encouraged to speak and to lip read and they had a lot of speech therapy and things like that as a vital part of their education. And this was all part of a practice called oralism. And this was basically a pedagogy that encouraged children, not just encouraged, did in fact force them to speak and use auditory kind of practices. If, possible if the, if the child had any residual hearing as well. And that had left a real mark on my grandparents, and I think that they grow up, grew up, acutely aware that they were different. And that their language was not celebrated or encouraged, certainly not when they were in “hearing spaces”, and so there was a real self-consciousness that they developed. Signing in public was something that was quite difficult for them at times. They were always really aware of people staring, sometimes just out of pure curiosity, which was fine, but I think it after a while it would grate, but also people saying unkind things, or being punished at school for signing, for example.

So back in the days of oralism, children had their hands tied behind their backs. They were beaten, they were caned, they were called animals, monkeys, apes for using their native language, which is incredibly sad. But that kind of perception that speech is and and verbal language is better than signed language has been something that I think a lot of Deaf communities have had to contend with over the last several 100 years. And so that really, I think influenced the way that they felt within themselves.

So, they could be quite shy and protective about sign language and where they would sign. So, at home they would sign to one another, and they would sign with their Deaf friends and when we were very small, my siblings and my cousins and I, we would use fingerspelling, which is a, a manual way of representing the alphabet. And we did that for clarification purposes, and we knew very basic signs. So, food, home, more, chocolate, the things that we would want to ask for, the kind of the basics of communication, I suppose. But there was a limit, I think, to how we were able to communicate with one another. And once we went to school and, I actually went to a signing bilingual preschool. So, I was taught to sign at preschool, and it was a sort of I think they called it reverse integration where there were hearing and Deaf kids present and so there was a bilingual educational program and I really loved that, and my brother went to the same one. My sister actually missed out because of mum’s work.

But we, we all knew how to communicate at that basic level, but then there was just this big gap once we went to school. Signing fell to the wayside, and it was something that we, communication was something that we always had to work on. You know, it was never seamless. It was never easy. It wasn’t a thing that we took for granted. But I think as with many families with Deaf members a lot of us didn’t know how to sign fluently and that was something that I learned later in life. So even though I could always use, do the basics, my grandfather went blind in one eye later in his life and that meant that lip reading was incredibly difficult for him and was no longer a solution for us. And so, I put myself through multiple Auslan courses and got myself accredited, which was great. But it also, I guess it really enabled us to have a more meaningful relationship. It was a really beautiful thing to learn, but also a wonderful way of connecting to my grandfather in the last sort of decade of his life. And that was a really radical thing for the both of us and, and something that I still really treasure being able to, to sign with my grandmother now. That’s a real gift.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people don’t know what oralism means and thank you for explaining that and also how recent those practices were still in place I’m from the US and so that practice is not really as common anymore, but it was for even the early stages of my parents’ education. So, it’s just recently that signed languages around the world have finally been celebrated and cherished like you said for the cultural values they have and that importance there, but it was something that was kind of, you know, something you did in secret and not in public. So, I think people often don’t realize that experience of Deaf people like your grandparents and how that does influence the language practices your family had, but that’s awesome that you, you know, got to take formal Auslan courses and have that, you know, opportunity. So, thank you for sharing a bit of that story.

And if we can kind of shift now to talk about, in chapter 14 of your book, you discuss the misconceptions around cochlear implants, which are also known as CIs, and maybe the clashes that exist there with Deaf culture. So, I personally was shocked to read the comparison of the implantation rates. So, in the US, it being 59% of profoundly deaf babies receive CIs. While, in Australia, it is as high as 98% for candidates under the age of 2. So, can you tell us more about the misconceptions you’ve researched around CIs and how Deaf communities are responding to technology?

Dr Kirkness: So, I think, on that question of technology, there are lots of technologies that my grandparents did use, they were not implanted with cochlear implants and there’s a long history there that I will go into.But the technologies that were in their house were things like a doorbell that had a flashing light system, and that was connected to the main electrical system in the house.And so, when there was a caller at the door, they’d ring the, press the button and all the lights in the house would flash.There were also alarm clocks that had light functions where they would flash or vibrate and things like that.So, there were all those kinds of technologies too, but one particular technology that is quite, has been quite controversial in the Deaf community has been cochlear implants and they are an Australian invention, so, Graeme Clark pioneered these devices, and they were developed in Australia.

And so that’s one of the reasons that Australian children in particular have a very high uptake of them. And I think the, the comparison with the US is a really interesting one because we have different health systems. And so, there’s, I guess, limited access for potentially to cochlear implants in the US. I think here they’re there are rebates and sort of government incentives that allow children to be implanted at a young age. But they have been without their controversy.

So, I think back in the eighties when they were really becoming, when the public were becoming aware of them a lot of hearing people saw them as a medical miracle and it, you know, they were the bionic ear and it was fantastic and they were going to be this panacea, you know, it’s gonna fix deafness, it’s going to cure deafness. But that is antithetical to what Deaf people believe about their own state of being, that deafness is part of what makes them, them. And that they belong to a linguistic and cultural minority group and though they absolutely understand and, and experience barriers, cultural barriers and barriers with access to information, they don’t always have interpreting when it’s needed. There are, you know, all sorts of kind of barriers that Deaf people are confronting. Nevertheless, deafness and their, language and their close-knit communities and the kind of incredible, close-knit community that Deaf people have is rich and wonderful and they they don’t want to be cured and so that was a real point of tension I think between medical ways of understanding deafness and cultural ways of understanding deafness.

And so, these devices have been seen as a form of eugenics, you know, to eradicate the scourge of deafness and people have used that kind of really loaded language and there is also a long history of eugenics, and you know Deaf people being killed and exterminated in World War 2 and you know this is a really sensitive issue. But I think nowadays people have a more nuanced perhaps take on cochlear implants. There are many culturally proud Deaf people that still want to give their children cochlear implants so that they have access to the world of sound, but they want them to be raised as culturally and linguistically kind of bilingual I suppose, you know, bicultural, bilingual, so that they have access to the Deaf world from a young age but also have access to the hearing world.

So, I think it’s a really complicated thing, but they have been, you know, there’s been protests over the years about cochlear implants. And also, just challenging this idea that once you fit a child with a cochlear implant that they are hearing because they’re not that device gets switched off or taken off at the end of the day and that child remains deaf and there are lots of kind of challenging factors to understand and audiologists have their work cut out for them here. You have to learn to hear with a hearing device, whether it’s a cochlear implant or a hearing aid. And that takes a lot of investment. It takes a lot of investment from the child that’s being fitted with the device, but also from the parents, a lot of speech therapy and audiological training, you know, this is an improving technology, it’s improving all the time, but it’s not the same as hearing and that child, that person once they grow up will still be deaf.

So, I think a lot of a lot of culturally Deaf people really advocate for the use of bilingualism and giving a child access to sign language from a young age because there is that period where it’s incredibly exhausting to get used to the device and there’s a lot of arguments about fitting a child very early so that they have access to language. But there’s also another argument to be made that giving that child any language, whether it’s wherever you come from, I guess in Australia it’s probably spoken English, or whether it’s sign language, you just have to give them something so that you avoid that problem of language deprivation. So, there’s lots of conversation around this, but yeah, that’s, I guess, a little bit of the history of the (Dr Kirkness laughs)-

Emily: I know, I know it’s a loaded question, hey, and it’s definitely something the Deaf community still, is discussing and you know, audiologists do have their work cut out for them, I agree, but I think it is important to bring to the forefront like the voice and opinion of the Deaf community regarding these devices. And so, people are aware, you know, that it’s not as easy as, oh, like now you can hear and that’s, there’s a lot of work that goes into this. I think that’s important to mention. Yeah.

Dr Kirkness: Yeah, exhausting work, you know, really exhausting.

Emily: And in your novel as well, you also discuss the language barriers, which you kind of mentioned a bit so far in the interview, language barriers that you witnessed your grandparents face. And in particular, you share a few stories about the barriers your grandfather faced in hospital. So, in my personal experience I have done a fair bit of language brokering for my parents but what was it like for you to witness the language barriers and you having access to both Auslan and English in those situations?

Dr Kirkness: I think, I open the book with a passage about the moment I had to tell my grandfather he was going to die, that he was quite unwell for the last years of his life and he was rushed to emergency having had a, I don’t know if it was a heart attack, but a heart failure, he was in organ failure and there was nothing more that the doctors could do for him at that time. And he just regained consciousness and there was no interpreter available. And so, I ended up being the one to tell him that there were no more medical interventions possible. And that was a really difficult conversation to have. Not one I imagined having. And one that I, I had because I wanted to spare my mother and my uncle from having to be in that position. And I think Codas often do a lot of that language brokering as you, as you would well know and I, I think that in that moment they really wanted to be family members and they didn’t want to be a conduit for that information, particularly that information. And so that ended up coming to me and it also made sense I think because I had the skills to be able to do so and in a way it was a privilege, but it’s that double-edged sword, I think, of, of having that intimacy with a family member, and delivering such awful news, and being able to break it gently and in a way that I would like him to be treated. I suppose, you know, being able to choose the words is a sort of privilege. But also, an incredibly huge responsibility that weighed on me and I would have loved to be a family member in those moments too.

And I think his experience in hospital was, I’m going to say traumatizing and I don’t say that lightly, it was really awful to feel that he didn’t receive adequate care during his time in hospital. At various hospitals throughout Sydney, the language barriers were so profound that we didn’t feel safe to leave him on his own at any time. And so, we developed a roster so that someone would be with him to be his advocate. We, my mother would write handwritten signs and stick them on the walls with communication tips, you know, things like make sure you tap Grandpa on the shoulder to get his attention before speaking. You can’t yell, yelling will just distort your lip patterns and will mean he can’t understand you. You know, raising your voice does nothing in fact and it’s just confusing. So, there were lots of things like that, that we tried to put in place and there were some end-of-life meetings that we had at the hospital where we had an interpreter present and that was wonderful, but there were lots of moments throughout the day where, you know, an interpreter can’t shadow your loved one, 24/7. That’s just not possible.

So, there were many times that we turned up and and grandpa had had procedures without having informed consent being taken and that was very distressing for him and very distressing for us to witness and we would arrive first thing in the morning with things having been done overnight. And just grandpa having no understanding of them whatsoever. And so there was a lot of sort of calming and pacifying that we had to do for him in those moments. And it was very, very difficult. And in palliative care spaces as well, just that kind of communication breakdown and the lack of cultural awareness and lack of Deaf awareness and this is a really hard systemic thing you know, there’s not a lot of Deaf awareness in the world and you know, medical practitioners are not given a lot of training in this if at all. They might have a couple of hours in a lecture about hearing loss, not about deafness and certainly not about cultural Deafness. And so, you know, and then there’s all the other kind of structural systemic issues within hospitals themselves that I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for, but it was very very difficult to watch a loved one be so alone and so unsupported in that, in that space.

Emily: Yeah, I’m sorry to hear your family had to go through, you know, a traumatizing experience for your grandfather and for you as family members to see that happen to someone you cared about so deeply and people don’t always realize that sometimes in those instances having an interpreter is a luxury almost like you said you know, because there’s interpreter shortages in the US and inAustralia from what I’ve heard for Auslan interpreters, there is a desperate need for more people to become professional Auslan interpreters.And so, when you do get one because they’re very busy and these instances typically in medical situations are last minute or not always planned far in advance, like to book someone in can be, you know, a miracle.(Emily laughs)So, to speak, but we, I wish it wouldn’t be that way, you know, that, hospitals would have a better system and it is a systemic thing like you mentioned and then, families are impacted by that when they should be just thinking about their loved one and caring for them as a family member and not as a language broker or interpreter and so. Yeah, I think it is a huge systemic issue.So, thank you for discussing that and your personal experience. And I really do hope doctors and medical professionals really get that Deafness training because Deaf people exist and they’re gonna be their patients one day.It’s not an if chance there are Deaf people that exist and it’s important to recognize them as part of the population that they’re going to be servicing and giving care to, right?

To switch gears a bit again to discuss some of your fieldwork that you did for your PhD. It was fascinating to read the chapters where you describe doing your fieldwork for your PhD in England. You discuss oralism, Deaf education, Deaf musicians, and how diverse the experiences of the Deaf community are. So could you tell us a bit about how Deaf communities might be misunderstood by hearing society; some people might even be confused by me saying there are Deaf musicians. So, if you want to talk a bit about that.

Dr Kirkness:

Yeah, absolutely. So, I had the great pleasure of going to the UK because my grandparents were raised in the UK and they moved to Australia when I was one years old, one year old, (Dr Kirkness laughs) when I was an infant. And they were from the UK originally and went to schools for the deaf in the UK and so I got to go to both of their schools, which was really incredible, and I got to stay on site at Mary Hare Grammar School where my grandmother went to school, and they have this incredible music program which is initially what sparked my interest. I also am quite musical myself. I grew up performing a lot at school in plays and musicals and singing and playing piano. They were things that I did regularly and I actually had a little keyboard in my grandparents’ home when I was a child and I would come over to their granny flat and I would play on the keyboard and write songs and Nanny, my grandmother, would come and bring me little cups of pineapple juice because I told her that it was good for singing (Dr Kirkness laughs) and she would watch me play on on the piano, the keyboard and she would ask me about music and she was really interested in what I was doing. And then I sort of reached a point in my adolescence where I felt it was this illicit thing that I was really interested in music, and I started hiding it away from my grandparents. I felt this guilt that this was a hearing activity that I was participating in, and I thought that, you know, my grandparents can’t have any access to that world or to that particular cultural practice. So, I best keep it from them.

And so later on when I started doing some research around deafness and music, I realised in fact that I’ve been really quick to make an assumption there and in fact there are many people who are interested in music, many Deaf people who are interested in music and even perform and play professionally as deaf musicians, they might also identify as being culturally Deaf and they might also use sign language, but they’re really they love music as a language and as a phenomenon that is not just an auditory phenomenon. It’s something that is felt in the body, something that exists on a piece of paper, you know, a written score where they’re interpreting a piece of music on the page where there’s a sort of imaginative process and even in some cases with the musicians I spoke to a kind of synesthesia where all these kind of senses are kind of overlaid on one another in different sort of sensory pathways, neural pathways, in the ways that they understand music. And that was fascinating to me, and I was really, really pleased to work with an organization called Music and the Deaf, which are the only organization of their kind as far as I’m aware in the world, and they’re based in Yorkshire in the UK. And they do all sorts of work with deaf children and introduce them, particularly to rhythm and then they move on to pitched instruments and some of these kids have cochlear implants or hearing aids and so they have some auditory perception of music but there’s also that sort of embodied aspect I was talking about and one musician in particular his name’s Sean, he would talk about taking his shoes off when he plays trumpet so he can feel the drum so when he’s playing in a group he would take his shoes off so he’d feel the vibrations and keep time in that way. And he had this really interesting sort of perfect pitch and a way of locating pitch within his body. I think he talked about F sharp being his nose and F natural being in his lips or something like that. It was really, really interesting to hear his take and along with a lot of the other musicians.

I also came to realize that my grandparents were not just interested in me playing the piano because I was playing the piano, they were really fascinated by music in the world too and my grandfather in fact loved musicals and all of his favourite movies were musicals. He loved the sound of music and when my mom was a little girl she actually before captions existed, she actually transcribed the entire film including the songs by hand and my grandfather had a handbook that he would put on his lap as he was watching the film so he could move between the screen and the paper. And he just loved it. He loved the kind of the spectacle of music, performed music, especially dance and things like that. My grandmother loved dance. A lot of rhythmic things, marching bands, my grandfather loved marching bands, The Last Night of the Proms and the the Military Tattoo as well. He was fascinated by that and also things like Songs of Praise. There’s a BBC program called Songs of Praise, which is sort of a, it’s a religious program, but there’s a choir that sings and my grandmother was fascinated by faces in the ways that they would be animated when singing. So, there were all these visual elements that I was suddenly privy to as I started unpicking that assumption that I had that, oh well, music belongs in the hearing world. But in fact, just like sound, Deaf people have an understanding of sound. It’s just not an auditory one all of the time. It’s something that they feel through vibrations. It’s something that they identify with mouth movements and shapes and all sorts of other ways of apprehending the world. Yeah, and I guess that was linked in with this idea of the hearing line that music for me was this kind of threshold. So, there are, I mean, it’s not always adopted in Deaf culture. Sometimes it is seen as a kind of, belonging to the hearing world and almost as a normalising force. There are some people for whom music is just not for them. They say, I’m Deaf, music just that doesn’t appeal to me, it’s not my thing, but there are equally people for whom, music is for them. And I think that was really interesting to consider.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely can resonate with what you’re saying and, you know, my parents, they love music, you know, (Emily laughs) like you’re saying, certain Deaf people in the community do like want to be a part of that, you know, musical experience and I’ve taken my mom to like heavy metal concerts and she loves it! (Dr Kirkness laughs) Like it’s a great experience. Everyone should take their Deaf parents, their Deaf family to a heavy metal concert a lot of the vibration and being close up to the speaker, the spectacle it is, right? And the feelings that you feel in an environment like that, I think it’s awesome! So yeah, I loved reading about that in your book. And kind of to bring our interview to a close, what is next for you and your work? What other research are you working on now? If you could tell us a bit about that.

Dr Kirkness: Yeah, so another memoir actually that I’m working on, and I’m really fascinated with you know ideas around the body and so I’m interested in health and disability and embodiment and all those things. So, the next book I’m writing is actually about sudden illness and I had, it’s a personal story, so it’s about my lived experience being a carer for someone who had a very kind of cataclysmic life changing event. He had a sudden cardiac arrest in his sleep when he was very, very young and I was the first person to find him. So, I’m really writing about you know, what happens to that person who has that kind of life-altering moment, but also what happens to the people around that individual, what happens to the witness and to the to the carer and the people who provide that network of care.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, fascinating. I can’t wait to read your next memoir!

And so, thanks again, Jessica! And thanks for joining, everyone! If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe to our channel, leave a 5-star review on your podcast app of choice, and recommend the Language on the Move podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Till next time!

Auslan interpreter Stephen Nicholson gained prominence in Tasmania during Covid (Image credit: The Advocate)

When you think about Australia’s linguistic diversity, which languages come to mind?

Based on the nation’s most prominent social discourses, it is likely you first think of Australian English, the Australian Aboriginal languages, and our vast collection of migrant languages. One native Australian language that receives little attention though, is Auslan, Australia’s main sign language. Our Deaf community have a rich and interesting linguistic and cultural heritage, which traces back as far as our hearing community’s, but despite this, Auslan is often neglected from the social spotlight, and left forgotten amid the rest of Australia’s voices.

History

Auslan was developed from the signed languages brought to Australia by the first settlers and convicts, particularly British Sign Language and Irish Sign Language. The first deaf convict to introduce a European sign language into Australia was Elizabeth Steel, who arrived in 1790 on the Second Fleet. Interestingly though, the name “Auslan” was only coined relatively recently in the 1980s, when the language gained more social attention.

The latest census revealed that over 16,000 Australians use Auslan as their primary language, with the number of users growing considerably over time. The 2021 census was the first to accurately capture Auslan’s prevalence in the country, as previously ‘Auslan’ was not identified as an option to select in the “languages other than English used at home” question. A large number of Auslan users were not aware that they could nominate Auslan as an “other language,” meaning the statistics did not reflect the language’s real pervasiveness.

The number of Auslan users recorded in the census has been steadily increasing (Image credit: DeafConnect)

In 2021, Auslan was used as the prompt language for the “other” category, so the census question read:

Does (person) use a language other than English at home?

If other, for example, Auslan, please write here.

The previous lack of recognition of Auslan in the census is quite surprising, considering the Deaf community have always existed in Australia – and even now, in its home country, Auslan is still considered an “other” language. This is one example of how the Australian Deaf community have historically been socially disadvantaged and overlooked. A lack of social awareness and inclusive social structures has meant that Auslan users have had to fight for their acceptance and rights, and this struggle continues even today.

It should be noted that deaf people existed in Australia long before the Europeans arrived, and Aboriginal communities had their own signed languages. These languages are still in use today and deserve recognition, but are less prevalent than Auslan.

Recognition

One major period for Auslan’s recognition was in 1981, which was the International Year of Disabled Persons. In Australia, this year fostered pride in Deaf culture and heightened the social status of Auslan users. This newfound acceptance led to the first signing classes being offered in TAFEs, which gave hearing Australians the opportunity to connect with the Deaf community. In reality, these classes mostly taught signed English rather than Auslan, but nevertheless, it promoted recognition of signed languages as legitimate forms of communication. This significant year also inspired publication of the first Auslan dictionary.

Auslan interpreter Mikey Webb interprets at a music festival (Photo courtesy of Auslan Stage Left)

Unfortunately though, Auslan users are still far from equal in Australia today. I recently read an eye-opening article about the discrimination against sign language users in Australian juries. Currently, Auslan users are excluded from jury duty because there are no provisions in place that allow interpreters to sit with the jury. Researchers have found no linguistic evidence to justify their omission, which means Australia is in violation of its human rights obligations by treating Auslan users unequally. Their unfair exclusion in such a high status domain is significant, as it reifies flawed ideologies about the deficiency of signed languages, and only serves to block Auslan users from achieving equal status.

On a more positive note, if you were in Australia during the pandemic, you may remember that many of the official media announcements featured an Auslan interpreter. This sudden nation-wide uptake of interpreters was significant, as it marked recognition of the Deaf community and highlighted the need for accessible information for Auslan users. It brought attention to the fact that, previously, there had been a language barrier in place for Auslan users in the context of media announcements. This acknowledgement and increased visibility of the language has boosted the number of Australians wanting to learn Auslan, which is hopefully another step towards reaching equality and cross-cultural understanding.

This year, the NSW government announced that an Auslan syllabus will be introduced into the state’s schools in 2026. This comes as a response to Auslan’s recognition during the pandemic, as well as the state’s shortage of interpreters. This change has the power to shift the perspectives of the next generation towards a more inclusive, culturally-sensitive mindset, giving the Australian Deaf community hope for a better future.

Take-Home

It is clear that Australia still has a long way to go to support its Deaf community, however, it seems that progress is slowly happening. Deaf Australians have been limited for hundreds of years by a society that was not designed to include them, but the nation’s shifting attitude offers potential for better outcomes. To my fellow linguists, I encourage you to learn more about Auslan’s history, and to consider how signed languages might play a part in your own linguistic endeavours. Without increased awareness and solidarity, how can we expect to build a nation where everyone’s voices are heard?

But what if you are also Deaf or Hard of Hearing? You don’t fit in the ‘Hearing’ world or the ‘Deaf’ world. You can’t quite fit into your own family or community, either, because of your hearing loss and in the wider world you face multiple communication and language barriers. Where do you fit then? How do you manage your multiple identities?

This is what I sought to find out.

My name is Ayah and I am an Australian Lebanese-Muslim woman with a hearing impairment. I was born and raised in Australia, and growing up I have faced many challenges due to both my ethnicity and my hearing loss. My hearing loss added another barrier I have had to face, not only in the wider Australian community but in the Lebanese-Muslim community as well. There is a lack of support, understanding and awareness about hearing loss, and other disabilities, in the Lebanese-Muslim community, and a lack of understanding and acceptance of Islam, and other ethnic minority backgrounds, in Australia, including in the Deaf community.

I want to close that gap.

The intersection of fitting into these different categories related to gender, culture, religion and disability meant I have faced a unique, complex and silent experience of trying to find out who I am and where I fit. My journey of self-discovery and passion to understand the world around me led me to pursue a degree and career as a Social Researcher.

Last year, as a requirement of my Social Research and Policy Degree at the University of New South Wales, I devoted my honours research to this topic. My thesis explored the identities and lived experiences of Australian Lebanese-Muslim women with hearing impairment and investigated if they perceive their hearing loss as a ‘blessing’ or a ‘curse’. This thesis also aimed to raise awareness and break the strong cultural stigma associated with hearing loss in the Lebanese-Muslim community, as well as contribute to the wider discourse about diversity in the Deaf community.

As a researcher with these multiple identities myself, I used auto-ethnography to incorporate my own reflections and insights into the study. Auto-ethnography is a theoretical and methodological approach where ‘researchers use themselves as their own primary research subject’ (Butz & Besio 2009, p. 1665). Within this framework, I also used data from my Facebook page Silent Signs, where I share my experiences and observations in different community settings.

Additionally, I conducted semi-structured interviews with eight women living in Sydney, who also identified as Australian, Lebanese and Muslim women with a hearing impairment. Recruitment, preparing and conducting the interviews were a fundamental part of my research. Numerous challenges emerged due to language and communication barriers; reflecting the lived experiences of these women. For example, consent forms were offered in English and Arabic, a sign language interpreter was hired for three of the interviews and, due to my own hearing loss, assistance was needed with transcribing the interviews. I even made a video in Auslan (Australian sign language) to recruit participants and this proved to be a successful way of approaching and connecting with these women. You can view the video here.

Numerous themes and results emerged from my research and the key findings can be summarized as follows:

• Most of the women regard Auslan as their primary language.
• The majority of participants identified themselves by their hearing-loss identity first, followed by their identity as a ‘Muslim’ which was in the top two responses. Most of the women who chose the ‘Muslim’ identity stressed that religion allowed them to cope with all the different challenges they faced and to even perceive their hearing loss as a blessing from God. Many gave thanks and the Arabic phrase ‘Alhamdulillah’ (which translates as ‘All praise belongs to God’) was used numerous times by different women.
• All women in the study faced different identity challenges such as conflicts between their ‘Muslim’, ‘Deaf’ and other identities. Navigating their ‘Lebanese’, ‘Australian’ and ‘Woman’ identities also included other identities such as being a ‘Mother’, ‘Wife’ or ‘Student’.
• The women’s experiences and stories also showed that strong cultural stigma, barriers to communication, isolation in the family and a lack of accessibility in the community served to produce hearing loss as a ‘curse’.

Of course, my thesis has obvious limitations, including a very narrow sample. More expansive research will be needed not only to highlight diversity in deaf discourse but to also close the anecdotal gap between Islam and disability. I look forward to expanding on my honours thesis and conducting further research to meet these research desiderata.

At the moment, I am working at Advance Diversity Services on a research project about the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and accessibility for people from different ethnic backgrounds. I also volunteer with MuslimCare Australia where I run a “Muslim Deaf Group” to raise awareness and provide support for other people like myself.

I recently collaborated with the Muslim Deaf Association Sydney on a Ramadan project where we encouraged people to sign “Ramadan Mubarak” in Auslan and send in their videos. You can see the final video here.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions at Silent Signs.

Ramadan Mubarak!

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References

Butz, D., & Besio, K. (2009). Autoethnography Geography Compass, 3 (5), 1660-1674 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00279.x

Wehbe, A., (2016), ‘Blessing or a Curse? Exploring the Identity and Lived Experiences of Australian, Lebanese, Muslim Women with a Hearing Impairment’, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia