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

Two men and a woman signing (Image credit: David Fulmer via Wikipedia)

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 PhD candidate in Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

My guest today is Associate Professor Su Kyong Isakson. Su Kyong teaches Interpreter Education at the Community College of Baltimore County in Maryland, in the U.S. She is also a co-founder of The Coda Network and a professional interpreter. Her work includes mentoring, coaching, and focusing on the teaching methods of heritage signers.

Today we are going to talk in general about interpreter education, and in particular about a 2018 paper that Su Kyong wrote entitled The Case for Heritage ASL Instruction for Hearing Heritage Signers. Just a note for the audience, ASL stands for American Sign Language.

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

Su Kyong: Thank you for having me here. I’m excited to talk about this body of work.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. And just to start us off, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you became an interpreter educator?

Su Kyong: Sure, funny story, I went to grad school because I was mad. So, nothing like having a passion to get you to do something.

(Emily and Su Kyong laugh)

And so, really what had happened was our national certifying body and professional organization had taken a vote on whether deaf interpreted parents or deaf-parented interpreters should have a dedicated seat on the board, the governing board of this national body, and the membership voted on it, and in fact, they voted on it twice.

They voted it down. (laughs)

Emily: Wow…

Su Kyong: And so, it was at a time in my life when I was taking some professional development courses around interpreting and like, you know, getting better in my own practice. And for the first time had a cohort of other Codas, you know, children of deaf adults, who were also interpreters, that I was doing this work with and like really digging into the interpreting work with, and to then have this motion like fail by the majority of people who are in our organization just really spoke to me about the fact that people do not appreciate and under appreciate what we bring to the field.

So, I got mad, and I went back to grad school (laughs) and decided that I was going to change the field, from within the classroom, one student at a time.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s an awesome origin story, you know, if you watch any Marvel or something, (Emily and Su Kyong laugh) that’s a wonderful origin story, how you became an interpreter educator.

And just to get us kind of shifted into your work and what you did your grad studies on, could you tell our audience what it means to be a heritage language learner in general and what differentiated instruction is?

Su Kyong: Yeah, sure. So, a heritage language learner is somebody who has a heritage language, and so I think, maybe your audience may not know what heritage language stands for, but it’s basically a minority language used within the home that is different than the majority language of the place that you’re living in and so it typically doesn’t have a lot of supports to maintain that language and so a heritage language learner would be somebody who has a heritage language, but then later decides to learn that language in a formal setting.

So, I myself, my heritage language is Korean sign language and Korean. And so, me going to a community Korean language class is me becoming a heritage language learner of Korean. So that’s what a heritage language learner is. And then differentiated instruction is a teaching approach that basically meets students where they are. So, part of that requires you to be able to assess students and their current level of performance and then tailor your instruction to that student so that you can then take them to the next level. That’s basically differentiated instruction.

Emily: Yeah, well said, and I think that’s good background for us to officially switch to talking about your paper, your 2018 paper entitled, The Case for Heritage ASL Instruction for Hearing Heritage Signers. And in this paper, you present a solution to the shortage of culturally and linguistically competent interpreters, which is the education of heritage signers as heritage language learners. So, why is there a shortage of interpreters and what were some of the difficulties American Heritage signers reported when they began learning American Sign Language?

Su Kyong: Yeah, so something to keep in mind that’s really interesting about the context of sign language interpreters in the United States, and I’ll only speak to the United States, I don’t know about other markets but something that’s really unique to this context is that most of the interpreters who are working in this field are second language learners. And so, they’re coming to this language and this culture by way of maybe a college class or maybe they had a friend who is deaf, or a family member, like a distant family member who is deaf or something, you know, and like they’re learning this language like, you know, as an after fact, right?

Like not like somebody like you and I who grew up with this language. And this is not the case for most people who go into like interpreter translation work. In fact, they are native users of the language. You know, when you hire a Chinese English interpreter, they are native users of Chinese, and they perhaps have learned English as a second language, right? But our field is predominantly filled with second language users of American Sign Language, most of them are native English users as well, okay. But folks like you and I, who grew up with deaf parents, we are native users of American Sign Language or whatever sign language you used in our home and native users of English.

Basically, this paper is saying, well, the solution is right in front of us. Why aren’t we utilizing and training up the folks that we already know hold proficiency in these languages? You know, there’s a whole host of, there’s this whole market that’s been geared towards the development of second language learners in American Sign Language. And almost nothing has been focused on developing native language users of sign language. And so, you know, this all started when we had the Rehab Act, you know, back in the 70s and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act like it, it opened the floodgates basically for requiring interpreters, which is all great! And at the same time, the market had to react very quickly, right? Putting interpreters out into the field. When you look at the history of interpreter education, it went from like an eight-week signing class to now a six-year program. You can get a PhD in it, right? It’s changed a lot since the 60s you know, and it’s come a really long way! But that demand for interpreters really has continued to outpace the supply that the market has been able to give of qualified interpreters in ASL and English.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if you could touch upon briefly in your study, what were the difficulties that a heritage signer had when they did want to pursue formalized ASL classes? Like what were the experiences there?

Su Kyong: Yeah, sure. So, most heritage signers would report that the classes that they were taking, first of all, they were met with teachers that had language attitudes about their signing ability. They were met with classmates that also had language attitudes about what they expected the heritage signer to be able to do, and that was sometimes in stark contrast with what they really could do. Because what we do know about heritage signers is that variability in their their production and their receptive variability of language is like goes, it swings the gamut, right? Like you could be super passive and like only understand sign language and not even be able to produce sign language, all the way up to being a super, super proficient signer, right? Who can hold very, you know, in-depth conversations, you know, and everywhere in between. And so, when heritage signers were going to take ASL classes or screening into ASL classes and then going into interpreter training programs, they were coming across people that had all sorts of expectations about what they should and should be able to do.

So, coming across language attitudes and biases around that was a big, big thing. But then because I had already mentioned before that a lot of this field had largely focused its effort on quickly training up interpreters, which meant that they were focusing on the development of L2 language users. And so, everything was too basic for Codas. They were coming into the classroom, they’re like, I already know how to do all this stuff. However, there wasn’t anything that was targeted towards the things that they needed, which, you know, and there are some things that they need, right?

And you can describe heritage signers or any heritage language user as something like Swiss cheese. (Su Kyong and Emily laugh) Swiss cheese is very delicious, ages well, but there’s lots of holes in it. And you don’t know where the holes are, right? And so, part of it is trying to figure out where the gaps are and how you can fill that in. And it could be anything from like grammatical structures to limited vocabulary to like, you know, being able to use some of the more sophisticated parts of language like personification and depiction and things like that.

So yeah, Codas were struggling with a whole range of things when it came to the classroom. And they basically felt like none of this was designed for me. Like nobody sees me. And they don’t get what I need. (laughs)

Emily: Yeah, yeah, I agree with everything you’re saying, and I really love that Swiss cheese visual or example, that’s a great way to put it. So, thank you for that explanation, yeah.

So, to talk a bit more about the methodology that you used in this paper and in your master’s, your paper presents data from The Heritage Signers: Language Profile Questionnaire, can you explain how you developed this heritage language tool to be relevant in this context in the heritage designer context?

Su Kyong: Yeah, sure. So, this is an adaptation of an existing tool that was used by Maria Carreira from CSULB, California State University of Long Beach, and she uses this in her heritage Spanish program. And so I took that tool, and I basically translated it for our audience, thinking carefully about, well, what is relevant within the context of heritage signers, trying to be really as broad and encompassing as I can, knowing that there are folks out there that experience you know parents who speak only and sign a little bit or speak and sign simultaneously or are deafblind and use a tactile mode of you know sign language. And so, trying to be really encompassing of that whole breadth really of variety that we have in our community. And it was literally going through line by line and thinking about each question with that level of depth.

And… In addition to that, I had worked with Dr. Joseph Hill, who’s a sociolinguist who graduated from Gallaudet University and currently focuses a lot on Black ASL. But we had worked together to develop these language attitude questions and the scale to try to determine, to try to determine like the heritage signer’s own feelings about their language or like even being corrected around their language and what language attitudes they may hold themselves, which was an interesting endeavor. And let’s see, and then I had also done one-on-one interviews with those who were willing to follow up after filling out my survey. You know, I had done a pilot and got about a hundred and, don’t quote me, about 160 people who filled it out and followed up with some one-on-one interviews and really had asked questions about like, you know, tell me your most salient memory around language and just really trying to get to the heart of some of these stories about what it means to be a heritage signer and having like these early recollections of, of difference, language difference in our lives, yeah.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and you report two really interesting, to me, distinctions between heritage speakers and heritage signers. So that being the generational status and schooling in the heritage language. Could you give us some examples of distinctions in those two areas that I just mentioned?

Su Kyong: Yeah, so this is a very interesting thing to look at because when we look at generational status. So, the original work about heritage languages in the United States was focused on the community of Spanish speakers. And so, when we talk about the community of Spanish speakers, we talk about, well, a couple of things. One, those who are native and indigenous to the land, right? Because as we know, the borders of America have not always been the borders as we know that they are now. So, there are indigenous speakers of Spanish in the United States, but then there are also those that have migrated here from other countries.

And so, when we look at generational status, what we’re really talking about and often what happens with, what we say is that those that are closer to the motherland, so to speak, you know, like the first-generation person is going to have like the most proficiency and they’re native. But this isn’t necessarily the case when it comes to the deaf community, right? First of all, there’s no country that deaf people come from where there’s a majority of sign language users, right? (laughs) And oftentimes what we see is that deaf folks are isolated in their experience. They are one deaf person among many hearing family members and so, it is very questionable at what age that person receives exposure to language.

What we do know is that children who are born of those deaf parents and who grew up in a signing environment, those children definitely have native exposure, in the same way that like, you know, somebody from Mexico would have native exposure to Spanish, right. Like it was a part of their environment, and they were enriched with that language in their home. But then there’s also this piece about being heritage, right? It was only within the home, and it’s not supported anywhere else, which is where the schooling part comes in.

So, from the ages of zero to five, they’re at home, they’re with their family, they’re signing all the time, if it’s a signing family, that’s great. And then the child enrolls into kindergarten where they now for however many hours a day, seven, eight hours a day, are being exposed to English, much more than they would have from the ages of zero to five. Exposure to English could have been very like incidental, going to the grocery store, you know, seeing extended family members for short periods of times you know instead of those eight hours of academic instruction in English.

And so, this is where a lot of the research on heritage signers really starts to notice a difference in the ability to maintain the heritage language for these kids, right? And so, their signing starts to suffer and their English skills start to go on the upswing. And so, yeah, two very, very big differences um, in that way.

Now when it comes to heritage speakers, let’s say a Spanish speaking child were to go to an immersion school where they also speak Spanish, they would be able to better maintain their language and would be able to learn academic subjects in that language. However, this isn’t something that is widely available, although it is more widely available in that context, in the Spanish speaking context, than it is for signers.

Deaf children because of the, you know, because of IDEA and the federal government’s responsibility to provide equal access to education, gives deaf children the opportunity to go to like schools for the deaf or like programs where they use American Sign Language primarily. But Codas don’t have access to those programs.

And so, schooling in American Sign Language is not even really an option. There really isn’t. I mean, I think I can think of maybe on one hand, across the United States, and not all at the same time, where there have been programs in American Sign language that are open to Codas. And there’s maybe two that I know of right now that are still running. One is PS47 in New York, and then there’s an immersion program in New Mexico. But all the other programs have come and gone, right? So, there is no like long standing practice of incorporating Codas with deaf children in the classroom to be able to maintain their heritage language.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. So essentially the first time that they are going into heritage language schooling is in, when they go to university or college, and or maybe go to an associate’s degree program if they want to pursue like a career, but there’s no like recreational or community language schools it seems right just to-

Su Kyong: Well, yeah, so community language classes, you know, it’s not like going to a Saturday school to learn Ukrainian. (laughs)

Emily: Mm-hmm. Yeah, because it’s Saturday school. Exactly. Yeah, that’s the word I was looking for.

Su Kyong: You know, like we don’t really have those. Yeah, we don’t have those really. But we do have like elective classes in American Sign Language, like in middle school and high school and in colleges. But that also affords a certain set of privileges, right? And so does going to a Saturday school. But yeah, and these Saturday schools, yeah, in American Sign Language, like really don’t don’t exist anywhere that I know of.

Emily: Yeah, so as you’ve mentioned before, I myself am a heritage signer and sign language interpreter as well. So, I believe the implications of your work in this paper is very important. So how can the future education of heritage signers be modified? And how can deaf parents establish specific opportunities for heritage language development for their hearing children?

Su Kyong: Yeah, so one of the things that is, that’s really tricky is well, here’s what we know, is that… When heritage language users have a strong connection with the community, they have a stronger identity with that community, right? So, let’s take Codas, for example, you have a strong connection with the Deaf community, Deaf signing community. You identify strongly as a Coda and that in turn will speak to your proficiency in the language. Like they tend to have better proficiency in the language.

Okay, so if families really are looking to maintain a child’s use of sign language and really encourage that, then maintaining that connection with the community is a key, as a key piece there. But also having peers.

Peers for language is really, really important. And the thing that’s super tricky about Codas and their peers is that it’s so much easier for them to speak to one another because their vocabulary in English is much larger than their signed vocabulary often. And because, like I had mentioned also, their sign proficiency is highly variable and so once they run into a roadblock, they switch immediately to English to ease that, you know, to ease the communication because really, you know, I just want to borrow your Barbie doll and let’s play, right? (Su Kyong and Emily laugh) Like, that’s really what it’s all about. So, trying to find peers that will maintain that language can be quite tricky.

If I were to take a page out of my own book, my own story. Growing up, so in the home, my mom used Korean Sign Language, and she didn’t learn American Sign Language, we both didn’t learn American Sign Language until I was probably about six or seven years old when she enrolled at the Ohlone School for the, Ohlone College rather in California. So that’s when she started learning ASL. That’s when we started using ASL in the home. But not too long after that, probably two or three years after that, we started going to Korea quite regularly over the summers. And during that time, I would spend anywhere from one to two months at a summer religious camp with my family where there were tons of Coda kids and deaf kids. And the only common language we had was Korean Sign Language.

Now, this is a very unique situation. I don’t know how anybody would be able to recreate this but, but it’s so strongly imprinted in my mind, this experience. And I had this summer experience probably two or three times during, which most people consider a pretty tenuous time in maintaining your heritage language, which is around like preteen. Like, you know, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, you know, this is where like the kids really are like, no, I’m using the majority language! You know, they don’t want to use the the home language at all, right? But I had that reinforcement in these summer camps and then because I grew up in a culturally Korean home and have identified as Korean and later when my daughter was born, my partner and I were talking about how are we going to maintain these heritage languages that, you know, which ones are we going to maintain? And I was like, well, to me it’s a no-brainer that we’re going to pass on Korean Sign Language.

But then the question became how because I’m not proficient enough at this point because it’s been years since I had those summer experiences. And of course, those were about borrowing Barbie dolls, right? Not raising children. (Su Kyong and Emily laugh) And, you know, so the context is quite a bit different. And so, I hired a nanny who was deaf and from Korea, to basically be the language model that I wanted my child to have, right. And so, yeah, these intentional choices that we can make and same thing with like doing a Saturday class or like, you know, intentionally choosing a peer group that will reinforce that language use, intentionally being plugged into the Deaf community so that your child is exposed to and engages with many different types of signers is all going to help maintain that heritage language. Yeah, so that’s what families can be doing.

Now, in terms of education, it depends on if we’re talking K through 12. I don’t know that we have very much control over that. But if we’re talking college, it’s a different story. One of the things that folks can be doing is really taking a critical assessment of sign language use by heritage signers. And what I mean by that is not just being like, oh, you’re better than all your peers in ASL 5, we’re just going to pass you on. Because really that doesn’t help them. It doesn’t help them get any better, right? And every time they sign something a little funky or not quite the right way, you know, coming down on them hard. It doesn’t really help because again, like they wanted to be in school. They wanted to learn the language. And now you’re telling me that I’m better than all my peers. But then when I make a mistake, you’re coming down me like I should have known better. Like there’s a lot of conflicting information that’s going on here, right?

So really taking a careful assessment of a heritage signer’s skills and thinking critically about how you can be providing these supports while they are in, of course, with your other class, your other classes, because it’s always where you have one heritage signer and like the rest of them L2ers you know, (laughs) thinking about how you can be providing additional supports. And this is differentiated instruction. This is really just differentiated instruction.

It’s going to be, you know, the hearing students in the class are always going to be like, oh, but the Coda knows so much more, and you know they’re going to want to pair with them and want to learn from them. But that doesn’t necessarily benefit the Coda at all. In fact, all it does is benefit the L2ers. And all the research tells us that, that having mixed classrooms like this really just benefits the L2ers. (laughs)

Emily: Again!

Su Kyong: Again, right?! (Su Kyong and Emily laugh)

But what are we doing to enrich the experience of Codas? Right, how can we be bringing in deaf people, other deaf maybe even signing peers to be partnered with them or in the classroom, right? Our program right now is launching a deaf interpreter training program. And so, we have deaf interpreters in with hearing interpreters and of course Coda interpreters, right? And so, what an enriched classroom to be able to have this mix of students, but then also Codas are not alone any longer, they have deaf students too. And that’s a completely different experience, but it still enriches one another in a way that is very different than when a Coda is paired with an L2er, you know.

Emily: Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your family story as well, just to acknowledge that it’s a beautiful story and everything you said about the educational changes or things that could be considered, I think is very important to think about. So, thank you for that.

And to start to wrap up our conversation today, what is next for you and your work? Is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience today while you’re on the podcast?

Su Kyong: Oh, boy. What is next? I’m always… I’ve always got my fingers in lots of different projects. (laughs) I am on a team that supports a federal grant working with atypical language users and training interpreters to work with atypical language users. And this is actually a really interesting project that is going to be wrapping up within the next year because the grant runs out. But I actually do look forward to where that’s, where that’s going to take me, and I’d love to see that work continue.

And for the audience, you know, this atypical language users are like folks who um who probably have, let’s say, kind of like my mom, right? Like she didn’t learn a formal sign language until she was like 10 or 11 years old. And prior to that she relied on home made signs. And all the way to folks who like have rheumatoid arthritis and probably have like different signing ability because their hand mobility is, you know, limited.  And so, continuing to train interpreters to work with this population, I think is really important and uplifting multicultural and multilingual Codas and signers and deaf folks to really claim to really like space and their knowledge and what they have to contribute to the field of interpreting I think is something that I would love to continue to do. I’ve already been doing some of that work. But the more I see us stepping into ourselves and really claiming what we bring and sharing it with our field, the more I can see the dialogue around the work of interpreters shift. And I think it really needs to do a hard pivot. (Su Kyong and Emily laugh) We’re behind. We’re behind! So, we need to do a hard pivot. And so, I’m happy to see that move. And so, I hope to continue down that path.

Emily: Yeah, that’s wonderful. Yeah, thanks, thank you again, Su Kyong, for your time today. This has been a wonderful conversation. So, thank you!

Su Kyong: Absolutely.

Emily: Yeah, 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!

This book details a study of sign language brokering that is carried out by deaf and hearing people who grow up using sign language at home with deaf parents, known as heritage signers. Child language brokering (CLB) is a form of interpreting carried out informally by children, typically for migrant families. The study of sign language brokering has been largely absent from the emerging body of CLB literature. The book gives an overview of the international, multi-stage, mixed-method study employing an online survey, semi-structured interviews and visual methods, to explore the lived experiences of deaf parents and heritage signers. It will be of interest to practitioners and academics working with signing deaf communities and those who wish to pursue professional practice with deaf communities, as well as academics and students in the fields of Applied Linguistics, Intercultural Communication, Interpreting Studies and the Social Science of Childhood.

Summaries of Sign Language Brokering in Deaf-Hearing Families can be found in BSL, ISL, and International Sign.

If you enjoy the show, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

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 Jemina Napier. Jemina is a professor in the School of Social Sciences, Language and Intercultural Studies at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her work includes researching interpreting and translation, linguistic and cultural diversity, gender inequality and interpreting in academic professions, higher education and leadership, and sign language brokering.

Today we are going to talk in general about an area of study in linguistics known as child language brokering, and in particular about a 2021 book that Jemina wrote entitled Sign Language Brokering in Deaf-Hearing Families.

Jemina, welcome to the show, and thank you so much for joining us today!

Dr Napier: Thanks, Emily. Thanks for the invitation. It’s really a real privilege to be here.

Emily: Oh, thank you so much again! And just to start off, can you tell us a bit about yourself, how you became a linguist, as well as what led you to research sign language interpreting?

Dr Napier: Sure. So, I’m, as you can hear, I’m a hearing person, but I grew up in a multi-generational deaf family. So, there are four generations of deafness in my family. Going back from, in my generation, I have one cousin, but my parents, siblings, their cousins, my grandparents and also great-grandparents and several aunts and uncles.

So, I grew up with British Sign Language as my home language and grew up bilingually between British Sign Language (BSL) and English. So, I have the lived experience of child language brokering, which I know we’ll come back to, and began work as a professional sign language interpreter when I was very young, when they were just establishing the profession in the UK, sort of separating out interpreting from social work, support for deaf people.

So, I was in the very early stages of that professionalisation. So, I did my first paid interpreting job when I was 17, and there wasn’t any interpreter training available at that time. But then, so I started working and kind of learning on the job, if you like, but went to university to study sociology.

And then I was lucky enough to enrol in a master’s program in BSL interpreting, which was finally set up. So, I was already working as an interpreter, but then I did training and through that interpreting program, I discovered linguistics and thought, ooh, linguistics! This has been an interesting way to kind of analyse what we do as interpreters and have a better understanding of what we do as interpreters.

So, I applied for a scholarship to do my PhD, a Commonwealth scholarship, and that actually took me to Macquarie University, where you are, where I did my PhD in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University, so I graduated with my PhD in 2002, and I looked at linguistic coping strategies of sign language interpreters when they work in university lectures.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, that’s fascinating and awesome to hear how you got that start in-from interpreting into linguistics, kind of similar to myself. And as you’ve mentioned, quite a bit of your work has to do with the sign language interpreting profession, but there is a form of non-professional interpreting that exists and it is sometimes known as child language brokering. So, could you explain what that term means and why it’s something that linguists study?

Dr Napier: Sure, so child language brokering is a term that was coined by Nigel Hall, I think, back in the late 80s, early 90s, but there’s been a real explosion of research in that area probably over the last decade or so, 10, 15 years. Initially, child language brokering research was done to understand the kind of brokering. So basically, child language brokering is a form of interpreting that children do for their parents.

So typically, originally, research has been focused on migrant parents or people who relocate to a different country, whether it’s as refugees, asylum seekers, or for work, for marriage. And if they have young children, often children, as we know, children tend to acquire languages more quickly than adults do, especially if they’re exposed to a new majority language. So, there’s been a whole plethora of research that’s focused on this interpreting that children do between their parents and other people.

So, whether it’s in hospitals, at the local shop, at the bank, all these interactions that their parents might have. And the reason that the term child language brokering was coined was to try and distinguish it from professional interpreting, because what children do, or young children, or young people do is, obviously they are still interpreting. So, you know, language A to language B and back again, but they’ve got more of a vested interest and they’re more involved in it.

And also, there’s a kind of cultural mediation aspect. So, children might take responsibility to explain more, or, you know, they understand what their parents do or don’t know, or family members do or don’t know. So, it’s actually kind of seen as a slightly broader task, if you like, than just the sort of nature of the interpreting and sort of mediation that professional interpreters do and are trained to do. Because they are typically, they remain more impartial than, you know, they’re there just to facilitate the communication and not give any opinions. Whereas, as you can imagine, children can give opinions, but also have power to decide what to interpret and not to interpret. So that’s kind of the broad reason why this term has been coined.

And initially a lot of research was done by psychologists, like educational psychologists, child development psychologists looking at the impact of brokering on children, whether they know there’s sort of parentification, reverse parenting roles, and so on. But over the last 10, 15 years, more linguists and interpreting study scholars have become interested in it because of understanding more about bilingualism, how brokering can be an asset. It can be a cognitive asset for children to develop bilingual skills and actually utilise their bilingual skills. That they develop empathy probably from a younger age because they’re thinking about, well, who I’m interpreting for and what they need. And then linguists now and interpreting study scholars are more interested in looking at the act of brokering, just understanding more about the act of brokering itself. So not just the kind of emotional, psychological, cognitive effect, but actually just as a languaging practice. How, as you’ve said, I’ve done a lot of research on professional interpreting in different contexts like health, legal, education and so on. But child language brokering is a masked interpreting practice. And so, it helps us to understand interpreting needs, you know, where access needs are paramount and maybe not being provided by professional interpreters, but also just as a languaging practice in itself, it’s interesting to see how children manage, and young people manage those practices.

Emily: Yeah, I think it’s fascinating as a language broker myself growing up, I just think the act of brokering is something that needs a lot more research, right? So, it’s great to talk about this today. And thank you so much for defining what child language brokering is. A lot of people don’t know what’s the difference between that and interpreting. Aren’t you, isn’t it just kids interpreting?

So, I really appreciate that. And to move on to the next question, we can talk about your book, your 2021 book, Sign Language Brokering in Deaf-Hearing Families. In the book, you apply the concept of child language brokering to heritage signers in deaf-hearing families. So, what does sign language brokering mean and how might it appear as a language practice in deaf-hearing families?

Dr Napier: Sure, thanks. So just to start off with why I became interested in this, because I often used to be told, oh, you must have interpreted for your parents all your life and you must have been an interpreter all your life. And I used to say no, I used to say no, I’ve not interpreted all my life. Because I never felt that – interpreting wasn’t something that was imposed upon me by my parents. So, it was never something that I was required to do. And so, I always used to deny that and say no, it’s not true.

But then once I had my daughter, she was very young, she was only about 2 or 3, and I actually discovered her interpreting or brokering for my mother when she was watching TV once and the captions weren’t working or something, there was a cartoon on. And so, she was telling my mother what they were saying on the TV. And my mum said to me, I didn’t ask her to do that. And so, it piqued my interest. And I thought, hold on a minute. I realised that actually that’s exactly the kind of thing that I did when I was young, because when I was young, we didn’t have captions, we didn’t have video relay services, we didn’t have professional interpreting services.

So of course I did interpret for my parents, but because it didn’t feel like an imposition, I didn’t think of it in that way. And so, I started, so it piqued my interest, and I realised that I did that. So, I did do that. I did broker when I was a child. I did help my parents, but it was not from being asked, it was because I offered. And so, I started reading around and I discovered the early work on child language brokering and realised, I was like, this is it. This is actually, this captures what it was that I did and from my lived experience. And then I realised that there was no research on it. There was one seminal book that was published in 1994 by Paul Preston, where he did an extensive study with heritage signers, which is the term I prefer rather than children of deaf adults. And there’s a whole other reason for that. We might come on to later. And so, he did his study with heritage signers and touched on their experiences of interpreting or brokering for their parents, but he was focusing more on their sense of identity and linguistic and cultural identity.

So, he did touch on it. But apart from that, there was nothing. And there’s some anecdotal things here and there, but there was really nothing, no substantial empirical research anyway. So, I decided to do this. And so, I coined it sign language brokering because I felt it was important to distinguish between the child language brokering practices that might manifest in families that had deaf and hearing members, whether that was hearing children with deaf parents. And if you think about my family, there were lots of different deaf and hearing people in my family. And most of the hearing people could sign, but other families don’t have that makeup necessarily. So basically, I set out to explore what the parallels were. So, what the similarities and differences were between child language brokering, which has been identified as happening in a whole range of settings.

And even though there are lots of taboos around, you know, using your child as an interpreter or as a broker, we know it still happens. The research shows that it happens, and it happens everywhere and regularly. So, because I was able to draw on that data, I was able to replicate some of that and say, okay, well, let’s look at then how this happens in deaf-hearing families and is sign language brokering the same as child language brokering and what the synergies are and perhaps what the differences are as well.

So, what I found essentially is that, yes, sign language brokering happens in exactly the same way as child language brokering. It happens everywhere, it happens regularly, but it’s actually quite complex and quite nuanced as a languaging practice when you consider the different perspectives of the people that are involved.

Emily: I think it’s fascinating because, like you mentioned earlier, from child language brokering, typically the context is on migrant families, right? And in deaf-hearing families, you don’t always have that migrant aspect, but there is still brokering happening. I think that’s really, really interesting.

Dr Napier: And just add to, yeah, on that point is that many deaf parents might well be very bilingual, you know, in written English. And some parents might choose to speak at times, but for them it’s about accessing and participating in the world around them, which is not accessible because they can’t hear. Annelies Kusters and Maartje De Meulder, who are two deaf scholars, have coined the term sensorial asymmetries, that’s it. Sensorial asymmetries, because they were saying that even though a deaf person could be professionally qualified, professionally educated, you know, very bilingual, multilingual even, in sign languages and written languages, but they can’t access what’s going on around them. And they, you know, many people use different strategies, like, you know, gesturing and writing notes and all that kind of thing. But when you’re getting into quite complex conversations, then there’s some kind of access is needed through interpreters or whatever.

So, I think that’s one of the slight differences is that people might have competence. So, for example, in the UK context where I live now, deaf parents might well be very competent in English, but they still, their children are still brokers for them. And that’s where it becomes really complex and nuanced.

Emily: Yeah, and in your book, you present data from three stages of the four-stage project you did. And stage one utilised international survey across several countries. Stage two involved interviews conducted in Australia. And then stage three applied group interviews in England using vignette and visual methods. Can you explain what vignette and visual methods are and tell us a bit more about the innovative methods you used in stage three, as well as what ethical considerations were needed to work with signing communities?

Dr Napier: Sure. Yeah, that’s a very big question. (laughs)

Emily: I know. (laughs)

Dr Napier: I started off at stage one. Again, I think, I just to give context, I think which is important. So, stage one was the survey, which I actually adapted from a survey that had been done with child language brokers with Latino children in schools in America.

So, I adapted the survey so that it was more culturally sort of specific to deaf communities to get a picture of, okay, is this happening where it’s happening? And then that confirmed that it did. And then I went on to do follow up interviews for people who’d responded to the survey and who lived in Australia, which is where I was living at the time, who were willing to sort of delve a bit deeper and talk about their responses.

And then I did in stage three, when I was back in the UK, I did these focus group interviews with deaf parents and with young children. So up until that point, I’d only been interacting with or collected data from people who were 16 plus. And then I did interviews with some teenage, a couple of teenagers who are sort of 14, 15.

So, once I did the workshops in the UK, we had a workshop that was facilitated by a deaf parent. So, I worked with Deaf Parenting UK, an organisation here. So, I had a deaf parent facilitate a focus group with deaf parents. And then I facilitated a group with young heritage signers, and they were aged from 5 to 15. So, I really wanted to use visual methods because I wanted to engage the children in talking about what they were doing. And I wanted to do something equivalent for the parents.

So, I did a lot of reading around about visual methods and understanding that visual methods are a really great way to engage deaf communities as well as visual language users. And so, I ended up using art elicitation method. So, I asked after talking to children about what we mean by brokering and asking them if they do it, then I asked them to draw pictures and to represent what they did.

And then with the parents, the equivalent was how do you feel about when your child brokers for you? How does that make you feel? And I had photos, pre-existing photos, which were spread out on the floor, and they could pick them up and then talk about why that photo represented for them, how they were feeling.

But another component was the vignette methods where there was actually a video, it went, a video that went viral. I think it was around 2010, I think, at this little girl called Laura in America and she was signing a Christmas Carol, a Christmas concert, and it went viral because the mother posted the video on YouTube saying, oh, isn’t my little girl cute? And all of these people were saying, well, she shouldn’t have been doing that, there should have been an interpreter, and they shouldn’t have asked her to do that. And then the parents were like, hold on a minute, we didn’t ask her to do that, she did it herself. And it turns out that there was actually a professional interpreter there, it’s just that the girl, she was wanting to engage with her parents, and she was doing it for them, and she was very funny. So, I showed that video and asked the parents and the children to respond to that because vignette methodology is a way to present a case which might resonate but gives people a bit of distance.

So rather than saying, I do this, or asking them, do you do this, you can present a case study and then they can talk about their response to it, what they think about it, what they feel about it and then if they’re comfortable, then they can start to say, yes, actually, I do that too, or no, I never would do that and this is why, or I have done that but I wouldn’t do it now. So, it gives you a chance to respond to something, but you can kind of create a bit of distance from your own personal experience if it makes you uncomfortable. So, I used that video as one example and I also created a couple of case studies, written case studies, which I showed and talked through, which were again adapted from case studies that had been used in child language brokering studies with spoken language, in spoken language families, migrant families. So again, because I wanted to be able to have that point of comparison across the different child language brokering and sign language brokering.

The second part of your question was about ethics. And so, I think there are two key things there. One is about working with deaf people, using visual methods and thinking about how you make sure that informed consent is received. So, I made sure that all of my consent forms were available in British Sign Language. Everything was conducted in British Sign Language with the deaf parents. And I brought in a deaf parent so that they would perhaps feel more comfortable talking about some potentially sensitive issues with rather than someone who is a child of deaf parents, but also had to be sensitive to children, thinking about how do we get consent for the children? So, I had to ask parents for their agreement to have the children involved. Also had to ask the children as well about if they understood what they were being asked to do. And I tried to make it as fun as possible, but it was really interesting to see there was a definitely different engagement from the 5-year-olds compared to the 15-year-olds. And the 5-year-olds got bored quite quickly. Yeah, there’s the Sign Language Linguistic Society having a terms of reference for doing research with deaf communities and signing deaf communities and around involvement of deaf researchers, making sure that information is available in sign language, the consent is received and so on. So, I was very careful about adhering to those guidelines.

Emily: I loved reading about your methodology in your book and seeing the visual methods. I thought that was so interesting. And I loved seeing the drawings that you put. And most of the drawings were of children drawing about interpreting at McDonald’s. It’s pretty funny just at the drive-thru, ordering food. I loved seeing that. That was a nice different perspective that I hadn’t seen in brokering research so far. So, I really enjoyed reading about that.

Dr Napier: Thank you.

Emily: And then a really interesting theme you discuss in your book is shame resilience. You point out strategies used by deaf parents and heritage signers that normalise brokering in their families. What are some examples of direct stigma and courtesy stigma? And how did brokering overcome shame in your study?

Dr Napier: Yeah, and thanks for that question. So, Erving Goffman came up with the terms direct and courtesy stigma or indirect stigma. And I drew on another theory of shame resilience and shame web. I can’t remember the name of the author now off the top of my head, but from cognitive psychology and developmental psychology. And I really liked Goffman’s framing of stigma because so when direct stigma basically is when you experience stigma directly that you’re discriminated against directly because someone perceives you as being inferior in some way. So, for deaf people, typically that’s people making fun of them signing, perhaps making fun of the way their voices sound and using derogatory language such as deaf and dumb and just being, quite cruel. And so that would be like, so deaf parents potentially could experience direct stigma.

So, children who have deaf parents could experience courtesy stigma or indirect stigma. So, they see people making fun of their parents teasing their parents, being cruel towards their parents. But also, they can also experience direct stigma as well because a child might be bullied because they have deaf parents or teased because they have deaf parents at school. So, children, heritage signers can experience both. And in my book as well, I should also clarify that I did collect data with deaf and hearing heritage signers who have deaf parents because most research talks about children who have deaf parents as, because 90% of deaf parents typically have hearing children. But I wanted to make sure that I collected data from deaf people as well, because some deaf heritage signers also talk about similar experiences of brokering for their own deaf parents for lots of different reasons. So of course, you’ve got that kind of complexity then of the fact that you can experience direct or courtesy stigma. And what I found in my data from talking to the parents and from young brokers and older brokers is that often brokering is a way, is a form of shame resilience.

So rather than, some of them acknowledge that they did feel shame if they witnessed some kind of bullying or experienced bullying or witnessed teasing or cruelty towards their parents. But they often talked about the fact that they wanted to overcome that and kind of move towards shame rather than back away from it. So actually, kind of confront it almost. And brokering was a way to do that because they could stand up in front of people. And if people were like, I don’t understand what you’re saying, then the child would step in and broker and say, I can tell you what they’re saying. This is fine. My parents not an idiot. And they saw that as a way to almost like take control, not take control, but to support and help and mitigate against that kind of stigma. And the parents also commented on how it was very nuanced for them. It created a lot of tensions for them because parents often talked about the fact that they want to be independent. They don’t want their children to help them, but they appreciate that there’s times when perhaps there’s no other option. And also, they can see that sometimes the child’s pride in wanting to help, wanting to do that. And so, they don’t want to say no because they don’t want to diminish what their child is trying to do for them.

So, there’s kind of a tension there between I don’t really need your help, but I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, and I want to support you to do that. So that was a very, really strong theme that came out through all of the interviews.

Emily: Yeah, and it’s super interesting to hear the perspective of deaf parents. That’s not really widely researched yet either. And this brokering act, what parents think and feel. So, thank you for explaining a bit more about that, about that shame resilience. I thought that was really, really interesting. And as I’ve mentioned briefly, I am a heritage signer, so both my parents are deaf, and I also am a sign language interpreter who’s now focusing more on linguistics. But just from my own lived experience, I believe your project really has lasting impacts on understanding sign language brokering as a languaging practice. So how does studying sign language brokering raise awareness for signing deaf-hearing families, their experiences with schoolteachers, health professionals, and even opportunities for heritage signers to become professional interpreters and translators?

Dr Napier: Yeah, thanks. As you’ll know, having read the book that the last chapter, I talked very specifically about the implications for these different groups. So not only for theoretical implications, but for parents and other professionals who come into contact with their parents. And I think the key things there are that, because I think child language brokering has been a taboo subject for a really long time. So, I think there was a kind of pendulum swing. When sign language interpreting was professionalised, there was a definite rhetoric, a definite kind of discourse in deaf communities saying, you should not be using your children as interpreters. You don’t need to. We have professional interpreters now. And there was, and I mentioned it in the book, there was actually a whole campaign from a video relay interpreting company in the United States, where they showed a video of a girl talking about how she used to missed school because she used to go to interpret for her parents. And they were saying, you don’t need to do this now. We have this company, we have this video interpreting, you don’t need to do this. So, they actually kind of really perpetuated that discourse.

And what was happening from my point of view is that people then didn’t talk about it. They masked, they was like, no, no, no, I don’t ask my children to interpret. But then through this research, we found that, okay, yes, they do, they broker, but it’s nuanced. I keep using the term nuanced because I think it’s really important because it’s not cut and dry. It’s not, they either, they do, or they don’t. So, okay, yes, sometimes they do and in certain circumstances, and there’s a reasoning behind it, and then there are mixed feelings about that on both sides.

So, I think it’s really important to raise awareness amongst deaf families or deaf parents of mixed hearing families that brokering is actually a normative practice in mixed deaf hearing families and that it’s okay to recognise it and talk about it and not say, no, you shouldn’t be doing that, but also not saying, yes, you should be doing it all the time either. It’s about finding a way to kind of identify, because in one of the chapters in my book, I talk about children’s need to feel helpful and want to cooperate, and that’s natural for kids to do, and they help with chores. So, this is a natural instinct for children as they grow up developmentally. So, for parents to lock that down actually could have an impact, a negative impact on children. So, I think it’s really important for families to have an awareness of what this means, why it happens, the different perspectives that are involved. So, I’ve given various presentations to deaf parent groups and CODA organisations about these findings.

But I think it’s also important to raise awareness amongst professionals like teachers. So, for example, if parents go to parent-teacher night or they bump into a teacher in the school playground, what’s appropriate? So, okay, if the bump into the teacher in school playground and the child turns around and offers to broker a brief conversation with the teacher, okay. So the child has offered, but for the teacher to think through what it means, it means if they say to little Jenny, can you interpret for your mom for me, what that imposition might feel like, both for the mother and for the child, and also not to expect that when you’re having quite detailed conversations with parents, that, I mean, I used to, I interpreted for my parents’ evenings when I was young, because we didn’t have interpreters available back then, but we don’t need, we shouldn’t need to do that now, but we know it still happens, especially in regional or rural areas where there might not be interpreters, but there shouldn’t be an expectation that the children do it. So, they should bring in professional interpreters for some things and then also recognise when it might be appropriate to say to the child, yes, okay, you want to tell me what your mum’s saying? Great, tell me what your mum’s saying, because it’s actually about recognising their bilingualism or their multilingualism and fostering that and making their pride in that.

And so I did another study with a group of people involved in mental health and healthcare research, and we interviewed 11 heritage signers here in the UK, specifically about whether they are a broker in healthcare context, and I was shocked that, I mean, we collected this data in 2017, 18, just before COVID, and all of them said, yes, I regularly interpret for one of my parents in a GP appointment, which, and I live in the UK, where there are very well-established, well-funded healthcare interpreting services, so it shouldn’t be needed, but it still happens. So it’s about educating professionals that they can book professional interpreters, there are mechanisms to book interpreters, and so if a deaf person turns up with their child, don’t just ask the child to interpret, especially if you’re giving a diagnosis and then the child is interpreting for health issues, and how’s that kind of transference and how that makes them feel, especially if it’s quite serious. So, we really need to raise awareness amongst professionals that come into contact.

And it’s the same applies to child language brokering, with migrant parents to speak other languages. It’s the same principle, is that you should be bringing your professional interpreters in these kinds of interactions. But acknowledging that it’s okay, if you come out to the waiting room and the kid says, hey, the doctor says your name has been called, fine. So, it’s all relative, really, isn’t it?

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. And if I could just get you to touch a bit on heritage signers becoming professional interpreters and translators, do you think brokering provides an opportunity to do so? If you could talk a bit about that.

Dr Napier: Absolutely, I published an article about that based on the first survey that I did in 2017, where a lot of the people who responded to the survey and they were made a lot of open comments, like getting the opportunity to provide open comments. And they talked about their brokering experiences being a pathway for them into sign language, professional sign language interpreting. You might feel like this, I know, I certainly feel like this, because I realised it was something I was good at, and I enjoyed. And then when there was the opportunity there to become an interpreter, I followed it. I didn’t even, when I was a kid, I didn’t even know interpreting was a thing, a professional thing that you couldn’t do. Because it wasn’t really, I had never seen examples of it when I was young, very much.

So yeah, talking to people now that are professional interpreters, a lot of them will say, well, yeah, it was a natural process for me. And some said they kind of fell into it by accident because they were kind of pushed into it or they were strongly encouraged by parents or family members. And they didn’t really know what else to do. So, they were like, well, this is something I know that I’m good at. I can wave my hands around, I can sign. And then some talked about making conscious decision that this is something I want to do. And especially for younger generations, they could seek out interpreter training programs. And it tends to be the older ones that kind of fell into it because there wasn’t any training and it was just like, oh, you’re bilingual. We need someone you know. But interestingly, with the younger kids I’ve spoken to, professional interpreting is much more widely available. Some of them were saying, I think only about a third of them in all the interviews and things I did said that they were thinking about interpreting as a career. Others weren’t, but some of them were quite young. And I know that they might change their mind later on. So, there’s definitely a connection, a strong connection there. But interestingly, when we look at other research I’ve done in the last couple of years, looking at diversity and representation in the sign language interpreting profession, we found that numbers of heritage signers who do work as professional interpreters is quite low. And it’s probably gone, in the UK, it’s gone up from about 10% to about 30%, primarily because we have a lot more deaf interpreters now, deaf practitioners who, interestingly, a lot of deaf practitioners are heritage signers. Proportionately, there are more deaf interpreters who are heritage signers than hearing interpreters. So, I’ve actually been saying, well, we need to be thinking about how we try and actively recruit heritage signers into the profession, because maybe they’re not getting that message that it is something that they can do. So, I think we still have a bit more work to do in that area, I think.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think for myself, for me, I always loved brokering, growing up, or interpreting as I knew it then, that I did enjoy it, I wanted to help, I loved signing, working with signing communities, people, and so I just, I wanted to become an interpreter so bad. So, for me, I actively sought it out, but a lot of other friends that have deaf parents or people I know in the community are like, I know that’s not for me, but I don’t know if they fully understand what it means to be an interpreter, or what it looks like and all those things. So, I definitely, more work is needed to be done there and kind of the promotion, recruitment or education, I guess, maybe. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And just to kind of bring our conversation to a close, my last question for you is, what is next for you in your work? What other research are you working on now?

Dr Napier: Yeah, thanks. So, I’m actually just submitted a book proposal. So, I’m planning on writing another book, which focuses on data that I have previously collected, but I just had too much data for the last book.

So, this is going to be a smaller manuscript, hopefully, but actually draws on, kind of replicates the study that was done by Valdes and Angelelli and others in the US, probably about 20 years ago now, but they actually asked young Latino children to broker a meeting between a parent and a teacher. So, what I’ve done is replicated that study, but I’ve done it with sign language brokers all hearing with a deaf parent and meeting a teacher. And so, I’ve adapted the methodology slightly.

So, what I’ve done is I’ve brought in a range of different people. So, I have a professional interpreter who’s not a heritage signer. I have professional interpreters who are heritage signers. And then I have adult heritage signers who don’t work as interpreters. And then two young teenage heritage signers who obviously are not working as interpreters. And I get them all each, I’ve got each of them to interpret or to broker the same interactions. So, the teacher and the parent repeated the same interaction 7 times. So, I’m writing, I’m doing the analysis on that data now and writing that up. So, I’m hoping that book will come out. It’ll probably be 2026 by the time it comes out, I think. So that’s my kind of major, major focus at the moment. So alongside, I’m still doing research on professional sign language interpreting in other contexts. We’re just wrapping up a project on interpreting in Mental Health Act assessments and how mental health professionals work collaboratively with interpreters in that context. Because it was obviously such a high stakes context. So, I’ve had a few publications coming out of that, but I’m still loving the sign language brokering research. So, I plan to continue on that path.

Emily: Yeah, that’s awesome. I’m so looking forward to that book coming out. That sounds like really exciting to read. And something that I’ve always thought is the dream to do is to do that kind of data collection and that kind of method. So, I’m really looking forward to that. Those are all the questions that I had for you today. Anything else you want to add before we go?

Dr Napier: I think it’s probably worth just making the point because I alluded to it earlier on about why I don’t use the term Coda, which is very common. So, Coda stands for child of Deaf adults. And there’s a whole section in my book where I talk about why I don’t use that.

Historically, I think that I kind of moved away, if you like, from that term because I felt that there was a lot of quite paternalistic views of deaf people and their capacity and a kind of an assumption that Codas experienced a lot of imposition as children, you know, and had ruined childhoods or spoiled childhoods because they had a lot of responsibility. And I didn’t have that experience. So, I didn’t want to associate myself with that kind of terminology. I also felt like, well, I’m not a child and my parents aren’t just adults to me, they’re my parents. So, I never quite felt comfortable with using child of deaf adults. So, I coined the term people from deaf families because I also felt it was important to recognise deaf people that grow up in deaf families can also have very similar experiences to hearing kids growing up. And also, to recognise that there are partners or extended family members or people that might have deaf grandparents, but not parents who also have very similar experiences. So, I started to use the term people from deaf families. And then when I was writing my book and came across the concept of heritage speakers and then so, and then a few people have started to talk about this notion of heritage signers. And I really liked that. It really spoke to me a lot more. It’s actually, because I wanted to focus on the use of sign language and the fact that these people growing up, they’re using sign language as their home language, which is different from the majority language that they’re surrounded by.

And actually, it was a heritage language for them. So that’s why I wanted to recognise. But one other area potentially for future research is also acknowledging that a lot of children who do grow up with deaf parents who are hearing don’t necessarily develop fluent sign language skills. And there’s a whole range of reasons for that. And I’ve done some research with Annelies Kusters and Maartje De Meulder on family language policy in deaf-hearing families and who speaks when they speak or sign, who decides, all that kind of stuff. So that’s a whole other area of research around children who have deaf parents, because you can’t assume that everyone necessarily is a heritage signer. So, I just kind of wanted to make that qualification as well.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely, thank you so much for adding that. I think that’s important to mention as well. And I encourage everyone, if this conversation was interesting to you, to go read Jemina’s book, Sign Language Brokering in Deaf-Hearing Families. And I’m looking forward to your next book coming out for sure.

So, thank you again, Jemina, 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!

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!

This is early days for the Language on the Move Podcast, so please support us by subscribing to our channel on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

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?

After we completed our fieldwork, we were fortunate to obtain additional funding; first, to travel to New York to share our findings at the United Nations; and second, to bring together our findings in the first book to be published on this topic: The Legal Protection of Refugees with Disabilities has just been published.

For me personally, this project was a unique opportunity as a young researcher – I was able to gain invaluable experience designing, coordinating and carrying out fieldwork across six different countries, with a variety of people, in a variety of languages. I learned many valuable lessons which have hopefully helped me grow as a researcher and contributed to my capabilities as a PhD candidate.

But what does this project, which centres around international human rights law, have to do with language or sociolinguistics? While this research is officially within a very different field, I have still identified so many points of crossover, or ways of thinking, that have really helped each of my research fields.

Article 1 of the CRPD states:

Persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.

Laura during fieldwork in Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda, 2013

Instead of placing the focus on the individual, the CRPD, both in Article 1 and throughout the remainder of its provisions, places the onus on societies. It forces us to think about the way our physical, social and legal structures differentially impact the various individuals who come into contact with them. For me, this critical reflection is also key to my growth as a sociolinguistics researcher.

For example, it may be easy to blame migrants for the various challenges they face: not being able to get a high-paying job, or having difficulty at school. But is this really about their individual ‘flaws’, or not trying hard enough, or does it have more to do with the legal, social, political and linguistic structures in our societies, which impact us all differently, advantaging some more than others?

In Chapter 6 of our book, for example, we discuss how a lack of work rights in many displacement settings greatly increased the risk of acquiring a disability, as refugees may be forced into exploitative and unregulated work.

Aside from legal status issues, language barriers played a significant role in access to a range of services – including gaining the knowledge that services existed in the first place. A comparison between the Syrian refugee populations in Turkey and Jordan provides an apt example: most Syrians in Jordan were able to communicate directly with locals, and even those who used Sign Language were more likely to find someone with whom they could communicate – Jordanian and Syrian Sign Language are mutually intelligible, and those literate in Arabic could also use written text to communicate. This obviously facilitated service provision, and access to work and education. By contrast, in Turkey, despite the government making very clear and concerted efforts to assist the Syrians there, language barriers created significant challenges in every aspect of life and access to services.

A refugee-run business in Za’atari Refugee Camp, Jordan, 2014

In places like Malaysia and Indonesia, although there were local disability rights organisations doing important work to advocate for greater inclusion, the invisibility of refugees living in their community, along with language barriers, meant that refugees largely missed out on benefiting from these groups. When we interviewed participants from Myanmar, the interpreters (themselves refugees) explained that they could not even translate ‘human rights’ as it was a completely unfamiliar concept – and we soon gave up asking. This contrasted with the situation in Uganda, where many of the refugees we met with had participated in programmes aimed at improving their rights, and when we spoke with them they were well versed in the ‘language’ of the CRPD and the concepts and rights it promotes.

Prolonged displacement situations are pertinent examples of how these types of linguistic barriers can play out quite differently over time depending on the particular structures in place in the host country. For example, in Malaysia, where young refugees have no access to the education system, their development of literacy and language skills is limited to what is offered by refugee volunteers. These classes are usually conducted in the language of the refugee group, and a range of barriers exist for children with disabilities, given the location of these ‘schools’ – in high-rise apartments, up narrow staircases – and the types of facilities they have – volunteer teachers with limited training, no assistance for those who need extra help, limited access to basic assistive technology like glasses or hearing aids. This understandably limits integration within the host society, and in any future country of resettlement, and the likelihood of being able to participate in the workforce in the future.

In contrast, in Uganda, where refugees are officially welcomed and permitted to settle permanently in the country, refugee children have the right to access local schools, and, in the case of a number of children who were deaf or hard of hearing who we met in camps in the south of the country, they may even be able to access specialised education, where needed.

In each setting, age-based policies that limited specific types of assistance to children (under 18 years) meant that those who had had disruptions due to their experiences as refugees or living through conflict situations may simply age out of opportunities that locals would have been able to access as soon as the need arose, following a ‘normal’ timeline.

It is unsurprising that these different levels of access would lead to different opportunities to participate in the host society, in both the short and long term, and very different experiences of what it means to have a disability. These experiences have reinforced for me the fundamental importance for social justice that we continue to question the way social, political and legal structures – and the beliefs and attitudes that underlie them – can impact on participation for the diverse individuals who make up our communities.

Reference

Crock, Mary, Laura Smith-Khan, Ron McCallum, and Ben Saul. 2017. The Legal Protection of Refugees with Disabilities: Forgotten and Invisible? Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Access the eBook and read the first chapter for free.

Images copyright of Mary Crock/University of Sydney.

Panel on Representing Culturally Diverse Clients

Cultural Diversity and the Law: Access to justice in multicultural Australia was a conference held in Sydney on the 13^th and 14^th of March. Jointly run by the Migration Council of Australia and the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration (AIJA), the conference brought together an impressive group of speakers, including the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, a range of other senior judges from around the country, key legal practitioners and community workers, the Attorney-General and shadow Attorney-General, and expert academics.

Plenary sessions focused mainly on the courts, considering the ways in which a changing demographic creates challenges for judges and other court officials. Hon Wayne Martin AC (Chief Justice of WA), introduced the Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity, which was recently established to improve inclusion in the Australian legal system. Importantly, he acknowledged his own status as “male, pale and stale” and how he could only understand discrimination from second-hand accounts.

Many of the judges who spoke discussed the concept of equality and how it has been dealt with, in and by the courts, explaining that there is scope for different treatment to ensure equal outcomes. They offered common examples of cultural differences that could create the potential for misunderstanding. Three or four speakers raised similar examples, such as the varied use and meaning of eye contact.

Many speakers focused on the conduct of trials and of judicial decision-making. Hon Justice Helen Wood (Supreme Court, Tasmania) focused on the case of Dietrich v The Queen. She argued that many of the principles raised in that decision related to fairness and discussed how these applied in terms of accommodating cultural diversity. Others discussed the importance of the broader physical context of the court building itself. They argued that ensuring court facilities are accommodating was one way to create greater ease in the stressful situation of appearing in court.

There were points in the conference that poignantly demonstrated the challenges we are yet to overcome. On a panel discussing “Justice, Security and Terrorism”, a representative of the Attorney-General’s department argued that we “need to hear from credible voices within their own community”. The irony of this statement in the context of an all-white panel was not lost on many of the audience.

Sessions and speakers that were particularly striking were those that took the broad ideas presented in the plenary and added greater depth and critical reflection to the discussion. A panel on “Ethics and Domestic Violence” offered up a discussion on intersectionality. The speakers argued that culturally inaccessible services can create to unique challenges for some women. Further, this panel comprised experienced and respected speakers from different cultural and professional backgrounds, better reflecting the conference values. One statement really stuck with me and (perhaps) challenged some of the underlying assumptions of the event as a whole: “We all have a culture” Maria Dimopoulos said, “and isn’t English a language?” For me this acted as an important reminder. We were not gathered there to address an “us and them” issue, to encourage the “us” to better accommodate the “them”. It was about actually stopping to consider the culture of the court and the law itself, and how our own culture and language may limit or influence the way we work and interact, and the assumptions we make. A question from the audience highlighted another overlooked intersection: the services discussed targeted heterosexual women and their children, bringing into question the inclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex people. This also made me consider the inclusion of people with disabilities and the Deaf community in discussions about cultural diversity, and the overall silence on this intersection throughout the conference.

Laura Smith-Khan with Hon Chief Justice Wayne Martin AC

Another interesting break-out session was on the status and role of interpreters in the court. Hon Justice Melissa Perry (Federal Court) explored the way interpreting is understood and dealt with by the court, and when procedural fairness issues may arise. Professor Sandra Hale (UNSW) shared findings from recent research looking at the status of interpreters working in courts. She argued that where the status, role or qualifications of the interpreter were not well understood, this might influence the attitude of the jury. In extreme cases, jurors may even mistake the interpreter for the defendant. She explained that practice between judges varied greatly. She advocated for greater respect and better conditions for court interpreters, as she saw these as closely linked with the quality of interpreting. Dr Georgina Heydon’s (RMIT) presentation complemented this argument. She introduced her research on vicarious trauma amongst interpreters. Her findings exposed alarming figures in terms of how often interpreters deal with distressing material, and uncovered a lack of support structures to assist them in addressing the second-hand trauma they may experience. Her participants reported that exposure to traumatic interpreting material compromised the quality of their performance. All three speakers on the panel identified the provision of briefing documents before a court hearing as one way to better equip and prepare interpreters for their work.

The issues of power dynamics and roles were taken up again in a fascinating presentation by Professor Simon Rice OAM (ANU) later in the day. After hearing from Hon Justice Helen Wood on fairness, and Ms Jessie Taylor (Barrister, Melbourne) on working with asylum seeker clients and the importance of rapport building, Professor Rice presented a critical consideration of the law. He picked up the idea of everyone having a culture, arguing that “Law has two ways of seeing the world: the law’s way or not.” He argued that many of the activities aimed at improving cultural inclusion are simply about trying to train or adapt people to conform to the system. In this one-way system, he had “trouble with what to do with my cultural awareness once I get it, because of the constraints in which I work.” He argued that “our idea of justice is a monocultural artefact” and that while the law declared a desire to respect cultural diversity, it was not open to legal diversity. In his own experience as an Administrative Appeals Tribunal member, Professor Rice described some of the small steps he took to make the Tribunal less intimidating, and more welcoming – the positioning of the various participants in the room, informal clothing, holding hearings in people’s homes or other locations. He saw these as some ways of “softening the edges” of what is an inherently imperfect system, which brings with it its own cultural limitations.

Professor Simon Rice OAM makes his presentation

This conference brought together a mix of professionals working in or around the Australian legal system. It is heartening to see these issues being addressed through the bringing together of very senior judges, legal practitioners, community workers and academics to start a conversation about what it really means to be culturally inclusive. Sessions focusing on migrant communities, alongside parallel sessions focusing on indigenous communities reflected an inclusive approach to cultural diversity. Focused sessions on linguistic- and gender-related challenges were also important in this regard. Hopefully future sessions will focus on sexuality and disability as other important intersections to discuss.

Perhaps the most important lesson I took away from the conference was one of critical self-reflection. Victorian Magistrate Anne Goldsborough put it perfectly. Accommodating cultural diversity in the law is not about learning everything about every culture. Rather, it is about learning to recognise and reject my own pre-conceived ideas – whether it be about my own culture and values, or the assumptions I make about others.

To discover more…

From conference participants:

ABC (2015), Interview with Ms Nyodal Nyuon, law student and spokesperson for the South Sudanese community in Australia and Ms Jessie Taylor, Victorian barrister.

ABC (2015), Interview with RMIT researchers Sedat Mulayim, Miranda Lai and Georgina Heydon.

Hale, S (2008) “Working with interpreters effectively in the courtroom”, conference slides, AIJA conference, 12-14 March, Freemantle, WA.

Perry, M and Zornada, K (2015) “Working with Interpreters: Judicial Perspectives”, conference paper.

Rice, S (2010) “Human rights issues relating to African refugees and immigrants in Australia”. Background paper for African Australians: A review of human rights and social inclusion issues, Australian Human Rights Commission (June 2010).

Other reading

Angermeyer, PS (2015) Speak English or What? Codeswitching and interpreter use in New York City courts. New York: Oxford University Press.

Eades, D (2013) Aboriginal ways of using English. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.

Solan, L (ed) (2012) The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law. Oxford University Press.

Organisation websites

Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration

Migration Council of Australia

A full list of conference speakers and organisations

International symbol for deafness from Redeafined

Bilingualism has been a media darling of late, and considering the intense focus of the current scientific community on bilingual brains and the breakneck speed with which globalized societies interact, it’s no surprise. The results of neurological and psychological research show the benefits of bilingualism are far-reaching, ranging from greater cognitive flexibility and faster response times to a substantially decreased risk of dementia. With these overwhelmingly positive findings, it seems logical that professionals and parents would advocate for the development of bilingual curriculums, and some do.  But for deaf children, bilingualism continues to be ignored or actively discouraged, revealing a striking double standard in the way society views education, language and deafness.

American Sign Language (ASL) was recognized as a language in the 1960s, exhibiting all the requisite linguistic parameters, including a vocabulary, syntax, morphology and overarching grammatical structure independent of English. Brain scans proved later that signed languages are processed in the same linguistic centers as spoken ones. Obviously, then, English-ASL bilingualism provides the same linguistic and cognitive benefits as spoken language bilingualism. So why is ASL frequently eschewed in favor of an exclusively auditory-verbal education?

The answer is likely no longer a case of Alexander Graham Bell-era eugenics, but the result of simple misinformation. Cochlear implant success stories pervade the news while their shortcomings are swept under the rug.  Readers are inundated with heart-warming stories of babies’ first heard sounds, while recalls on thousands of malfunctioning implants are relegated to the back pages, reported in the form of falling stock prices. The lopsided news coverage is understandable, particularly for fluffier venues; nobody likes a downer. And it’s easy to see how, in the face of such impressive technology, sign language advocates might be dismissed as out-of-date, or worse, bitter defenders of Deaf culture.

The truth is, though, that while cochlear implants have provided thousands of deaf people with unprecedented access to sound, they cannot replicate normal hearing.  Success rates of whether the user can hear and process speech vary greatly, and even the most advanced implants lack the discriminatory capacity and tonal nuance of the human ear. So while children who access language solely through an implant get incomplete linguistic exposure, those in signing environments can and do acquire spoken language incidentally.

Staunch implant supporters argue that the sound provided by implants is enough, but as a writer and teacher I’m hard-pressed to accept that there’s such a thing as “enough” language. I’m not advocating for Deaf separatism or the abandonment of technology; learning written and spoken English is an important skill for integration into mainstream society and should be a top priority in deaf education. Furthermore, the decision to implant a child is a personal one that belongs to each child’s parents. The problem is not cochlear implants, but rather the touting of implants as cure-alls for deafness and the stigma against sign that results. Deaf children are being denied access to language in favor of promoting access to speech.

A variety of anti-ASL arguments have infiltrated the educational philosophy; ASL prevents the development of speech; learning ASL is hard; the distinct grammar of ASL lowers deaf children’s reading levels. But the belief that signing hinders speech has been dispelled by most specialists. Parents of a hearing child would never be instructed to stop speaking Spanish, French, etcetera, out of concern that it might hurt their child’s English because the suggestion that language delays language is laughable.  In fact, teaching signs to hearing babies is the latest parenting trend, thought to decrease frustration and actually encourage early speech. Still, parents of deaf children are routinely counseled by medical professionals against signing with their implanted children.

The assertion that knowing two languages could harm one’s reading ability is also tenuous. While statistics of deaf children’s lower reading levels are wielded against ASL supporters, this data actually includes deaf children educated orally, and the latest research shows that deaf children who use both ASL and spoken English read better than those who know just one or the other. Finally, the suggestion that verbal communication is superior because it is easier for families should be met with the question easier for whom?

Hearing technology and sign language don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Through bilingualism, deaf children will not only catch up to their hearing peers, but access the benefits of linguistic and cultural diversity experienced by bilingual thinkers everywhere. Deaf children can and should have the best of both worlds, that is, if the signing world is allowed a word in edgewise.

Poulin-Dubois D, Blaye A, Coutya J, & Bialystok E (2011). The effects of bilingualism on toddlers’ executive functioning. Journal of experimental child psychology, 108 (3), 567-79 PMID: 21122877