Abstract
This article reports preliminary survey and interview data from a 3-year study regarding language ideologies related to deaf interpreters (DIs). DIs are professional sign language interpreters who are deaf and who may work as part of a team with hearing sign language interpreters. Survey data provide a snapshot of current DI demographics and reflect that most DIs are Canadian-born and from a grandparent generation. This suggests that a precarious national sign language ecosystem currently exists in Canada. Data from an interview with one DI participant reveal how this participant, by virtue of his education in Canadian deaf schools and professional background, was positioned as a peer of other Canadian deaf professionals. Simultaneously, due to his immigrant background and accompanying lived experiences of language and multilayered repertoire, he was positioned in solidarity with deaf clients who were newcomers to Canada and multiply marginalised. This dual positioning and status enabled insights regarding dominant language ideologies among DIs and other deaf professionals.
Keywords
1. Introduction
This article reports preliminary data from a 3-year study regarding language ideologies related to deaf interpreters (DIs). DIs are professional sign language interpreters who are deaf and who may work as part of a team with hearing sign language interpreters (De Meulder & Heyerick, 2013). Language ideologies are thoughts and beliefs about languages and the people who use them (Kusters et al., 2020; Silverstein, 1979). They are also “attempts to rationalize language usage” and “necessarily constructed from the sociocultural experience of the speaker” or signer (Kroskrity, 2006, p. 496; see also Silverstein, 1979). In the case of sign languages, language ideologies involve deaf and hearing people’s ideas about and experiences of multimodal communication and understanding in everyday life (Kusters et al., 2020). Language ideologies are infused in discourses of sign language interpreting and postsecondary interpreter training programmes. However, sign language ideologies related to DIs are an underexplored area of research.
Some scholars and professional bodies have argued that DIs have more advanced linguistic and cultural competences than hearing interpreters (De Meulder & Heyerick, 2013; Russell & McLaughlin, 2018; Stone, 2009) and that they may be more competent at accommodating the needs of diverse deaf people, including deaf newcomers to Canada, deaf individuals who do not know a standard national sign language, and deaf people with disabilities (Association of Visual Language Interpreters of Canada, 2015). The Canadian Association of Sign Language Interpreters (CASLI) (2022) states, “a DI performs multilayered functions while primarily serving as a way to reduce further trauma and/or potential communication breakdowns” (p. 4) in high-stakes situations, including but not limited to those involving immigration and refugee hearings or child welfare systems. In such situations, the perceived linguistic resources (or lack thereof) of the deaf client as the intended consumer of sign language interpreting services means that the client’s repertoire does not fit with that of the institutional space (Busch, 2017), mediated by the services of a hearing interpreter. The DI is brought in due to their perceived broader repertoire, which encompasses a multiplicity of semiotic resources and communicative strategies (CASLI, 2022). Deploying their full repertoire, the DI works to facilitate the deaf and hearing clients’ mutual understanding and participation in institutional processes.
However, little is known about DI demographics and the qualifications and experiences needed to interpret for ethnically and racially diverse deaf consumers today. This is due in part to the changing landscape of deaf education in Canada, where many deaf learners grow up outside of deaf schools, which have traditionally served as sites of national sign language transmission and maintenance. As a result, the numbers of deaf signers of standard national sign languages, and opportunities for deaf children to learn these languages, are decreasing, and this affects the provision of sign language interpreting services in order for deaf individuals to access public services and information. In addition, the numbers of indigenous, refugee, and immigrant deaf learners are increasing (Cannon & Luckner, 2016; Weber, 2020). For these deaf new signers (De Meulder, 2019), it can often be more challenging to acquire standard national sign language varieties and conform to a “classic native deaf” model (Kusters et al., 2017, p. 25) of a fluent signer who is enculturated through attending deaf schools and relationships with other deaf people who attended these schools. In the past, many deaf Canadians also attended Gallaudet University or the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, which provide university education for deaf people, but this is no longer the case due to provincial funding cuts and policy barriers (Canadian Hearing Society, 2014). DIs may face pressure to both conform to standard national sign language ideologies and accommodate the needs of highly diverse deaf populations. This pressure is compounded by the lack of formal training opportunities for DIs.
The data reported in this article are part of a larger study titled “The Institutionalization of Deaf Interpreters in Canada” that explores tensions between perceived assumptions about deaf people’s similitude based on shared life experiences (Kusters & Friedner, 2015) and the need to incorporate diverse deaf experiences in sign language interpreting. The study investigates the demographics and educational and professional backgrounds of DIs in Canada today, interrogates the sign language ideologies that undergird the perceived role and practice of DIs, and identifies training and professional development opportunities that are perceived as needed by and for DIs.
This article reports survey data and data from an interview with one DI participant that highlights the participant’s positionality and consciousness (Kroskrity, 2006), and lived experience of language (Busch, 2017) in becoming a DI and mediating across signing practices. In so doing, the article reveals the multiplicity of sign language ideologies within signing and interpreter communities and challenges both assumptions of deaf people’s similitude and dominant language ideologies as they emerge in deaf communities.
The next section provides further contextual information about the study. Following this, I outline the study methodology and report and analyse survey and interview findings.
2. Context
2.1. Policy context
Signing deaf communities have often lobbied for recognition as a cultural and linguistic minority group, but this recognition has seldom been achieved in policy (De Meulder, Murray, & McKee, 2019; Snoddon, 2009; Snoddon & Wilkinson, 2019). This lack of recognition of deaf people as a cultural and linguistic group is often attributed to their overriding classification as disabled individuals, which is how they are made sense of by nondeaf people who may “confuse our ignorance of life with a physical difference for an account of that life” (McDermott & Varenne, 1995, p. 329). Consequentially, in Canadian law, the sign language rights of deaf people have generally been viewed as the right to a sign language interpreter (Paul & Snoddon, 2017; Snoddon & Wilkinson, 2019), who is often viewed as mediating deaf people’s non-normative language and communication practices (Young et al., 2019).
This framing of sign language rights as the right to an interpreter was enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 and continues with the 2019 Accessible Canada Act’s recognition of sign languages within the context of barrier prevention and removal for disabled persons (Snoddon & Wilkinson, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the precarity of sign language interpreting as an institution because interpreter provision for emergency government briefings was sometimes found to be inefficient and of uneven quality, thereby impeding deaf people’s access to vital public health information (Rijckaert & Gebruers, 2022; Snoddon & Wilkinson, 2022). At the same time, the pandemic highlighted the role of DIs, who became more visible in government briefings (Gebruers et al., 2022). The growth of DIs as a profession that is largely outside of formal sign language interpreter training opportunities has the potential to upend entrenched views of sign language rights and recognition as the right to an interpreter and alter the power imbalances inherent in mediated communication. This is because deaf people’s right to freedom of expression and opinion, and access to information, as outlined in Article 21 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, is mediated by deaf people themselves, instead of solely by a hearing intermediary. In a policy context where the only sign language rights available to deaf Canadians are the right to an interpreter—as an accessibility accommodation in some but not all situations—DIs can also be critical for ensuring the transmission of sign languages and cultural values to other deaf people.
2.2. DEAF-SAME
Some scholars have argued that deaf people’s similitude based on shared life experiences—“
Signing deaf people who claim an intersubjective connection with other deaf signers may prioritise unmediated communication and understanding as moral values, even if these are shown to be effortful and imperfect (Green, 2015; Moriarty & Kusters, 2021). However, the “superdiversity” (Vertovec, 2007) among deaf Canadians today has supplanted previous understandings of diversity that were based on deaf people’s group identity and shared membership in sign language communities and deaf cultures (Kusters et al., 2015). It is important to note that these forms of group identity marked a radical shift from dominant traditional conceptions of deaf people as deficient and in need of a cure. However, in demonstrating the linguistic validity of sign languages and the potentiality of bilingual education for deaf learners, deaf studies also produced a normative ideal of deaf people as fluent signers of standard national sign languages. In addition, deaf studies produced a homogenising ideal of deaf communities as “apolitical and egalitarian” spaces (Kroskrity, 1998, p. 115) rather than spaces marked by social divisions and divergent perspectives that are also “indices of group membership” (Kroskrity, 2006, p. 503). These normative deaf ideals can actually support traditional conceptions of the hearing sign language interpreter’s training and role in mediating between signing deaf and non-signing hearing consumers of interpreting services. In contrast, DIs may be framed as accommodating deaf people with non-normative communication needs.
2.3. The institutionalisation of sign language interpreting in Canada
Despite 40 years of formal sign language interpreting in Canada, the institutionalisation of sign language interpreting remains fragile. This is especially true in terms of interpreter training and certification, as well as frameworks for handling complaints against interpreters (Snoddon & Wilkinson, 2022). This precarity is in part due to the relatively small number of training programmes for sign language interpreters. Some scholars have also raised concerns about teaching faculty being hired without formal academic qualifications or training in curriculum design (Malcolm, 2017). Two-year diploma programmes in American Sign Language (ASL)-English interpretation have been offered by a single college in British Columbia (Douglas College, 2021), Alberta, Manitoba (Red River College, n.d.), and Nova Scotia (Nova Scotia Community College, 2021). However, at time of writing, the programmes in Alberta and British Columbia have been suspended. In Ontario, George Brown College (2021) began offering a 4-year Honours Bachelor of Interpretation programme in 2016, and in Quebec, the Université du Québec à Montréal (2020) began offering a programme in Langue des signes québécoise-French interpretation in 2019.
Another issue is the lack of diverse faculty members in interpreter training programmes, and how this lack affects the cultural competence of sign language interpreters and the services they provide to deaf people (West-Oyedele, 2015). Most sign language interpreters in Canada are white and Anglophone (CASLI, n.d.). Most sign language interpreter training programmes lack a focus on multiculturalism and cultural competence, meaning that non-white graduates lack access to support networks and mentors (West-Oyedele, 2015). In addition, diverse populations of deaf Canadians are not adequately represented within interpreter training programmes, which creates further barriers for deaf people who may sign nonstandard sign language varieties.
In Canada, DIs are not required to undergo formal training in postsecondary interpreter training programmes, and it is not possible for DIs to become certified through the national sign language interpreter association (Snoddon & Wilkinson, 2022). This is in contrast to the certification process for DIs in the United States, where the national Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (2020) offers a certified DI process including an exam and training requirement. Several US states may also have their own processes for DI certification; for example, the state of Texas, in collaboration with the University of Arizona’s National Centre for Interpretation, created a Deaf Interpreter Certification test (Hill, S., personal communication, June 20, 2021). In the United Kingdom, according to the National Occupational Standards (n.d.) for interpreting and translation, deaf individuals may receive an advanced diploma in sign language interpreting and translating (Signature, 2020) and may become registered with the National Registers of Communication Professionals working with Deaf and Deafblind People (n.d.). However, the four different streams in this qualification require DIs to obtain more training than hearing interpreters, while, at the same time, fewer training courses are available for DIs.
3. Methodology
The ongoing 3-year study employs a multi-phase mixed-methods approach with complementary methodologies (Phakiti & Paltridge, 2015) to gather data from stakeholders in deaf and interpreting communities regarding (a) DI demographics, (b) sign language ideologies and ideologies of understanding, including ideologies related to deaf-same, and (c) perceived DI training needs. This approach involves a demographic survey and semi-structured interviews to gather data regarding participant experiences and beliefs.
Following the university research ethics board approval of the study, from October to November 2022 an online survey in ASL and English was distributed via email and Google Forms to all DIs in Canada who could be identified through the national interpreter association directory. This approach was intended to give all members of the DI population an equal chance of participating (Fogli & Herkenhoff, 2018). Participants were provided in advance with information about the survey and its purpose. At the time of survey dissemination, this target sample included 54 members who identified as DIs (in comparison with what was then listed as 795 hearing ASL interpreters). The survey contained 12 questionnaire items that collected data regarding participants’ demographic information, including geographical location, citizenship, gender identity, age group, race, and hearing status; educational background; and experience with sign language interpreters and interpreting, including experience working in different settings and with diverse consumers (see Appendix 1). The questionnaire items included a combination of open, closed, and multiple-choice questions. Participants were free to skip any questions. I first developed the survey in English with feedback from the research assistant and research collaborators, who also piloted the survey. The research assistant translated the survey into ASL.
From December 2022 to January 2023, preliminary statistical analysis of survey results was undertaken to support the development of interview questions regarding participant experiences with and beliefs about ASL and interpreting. Next, an interview guide was developed for semi-structured interviews with participants who had completed the survey, all of whom were invited to participate remotely in interviews beginning in January 2023. Interviews took place in ASL using Zoom and were video-recorded. Data were collected related to participant experiences and constructions of barriers and supports for DIs and language ideologies (Rolland et al., 2019). Participants were asked about their beliefs about DIs; training and professional development experiences; experiences working as a team with hearing interpreters; and experiences of interpreting for diverse deaf consumers (see Appendix 2). I transcribed the ASL interview data and translated it into English. Field notes and interview data were thematically coded and analysed following multiple perspectives and insights regarding sign language ideologies and ideologies of understanding between DIs and deaf consumers and perceived training needs.
4. Survey findings
A total of 25 DI participants (46% of the target population) completed the survey. This is comparable with the results of Napier et al. (2022), who reported a 43% response rate to their demographic survey of sign language interpreters in the United Kingdom. This is an acceptable response rate for sampling professional groups (Baruch & Holtom, 2008; cited in Napier et al., 2022), and it enables a snapshot of current DI demographics in Canada. Because the survey design and administration were intended to give all members of the DI population an equal opportunity to participate, even a relatively small sample size can yield results that accurately represent this population (Fogli & Herkenhoff, 2018). A statistical analysis of survey data was conducted.
4.1. Demographics
All participants except five reported being born in Canada. Participants reported that they resided in seven different provinces, with ten living in Ontario (40%) and five in Alberta (20%). A total of 63% (16) of participants identified as women and 37% (nine) as men; there were no participants who identified as transgender or non-binary. Fifteen respondents (60%) reported being aged 55 and older, while 5 (20%) were in the 45–54 age range, 4 (16%) in the 35–44 age range, and 1 (4%) was in the 25–34 age range. Most participants (88%, or 22) identified as white, while three participants (12%) identified as non-white.
4.2. Educational and professional training background
Ten participants (40%) indicated they had attended both deaf and mainstream schools, while 9 (36%) indicated they had attended deaf schools, and 3 (12%) attended mainstream schools. Three participants did not indicate their educational background prior to attending postsecondary education. Most participants (20, i.e., 60%) reported having graduated from university and/or college, while 5 (20%) reported not having attended postsecondary education or not having graduated. Eight participants (32%) reported having graduated from an interpreter training programme; however, it is speculated that participants had differing views of what was meant by “training programme” in the survey item, and some may have attended a 2-year college interpreter training programme or a university interpreter training program outside of Canada. Follow-up interviews enabled more in-depth responses from participants regarding their professional development related to DI training.
4.3. Professional experience
All participants reported working as a DI in community settings. The most commonly reported settings where participants worked were medical and mental health settings (88%, i.e., 22 participants for each setting); interpreting for deafblind persons and conference interpreting (76%, i.e., 19 participants for each setting); and legal interpreting (68%, i.e., 17 participants). Less commonly reported settings where DIs worked were K-12 educational settings (44%, i.e., 11 participants); corporate settings (40%, i.e., ten participants); theatre (40%, i.e., ten participants); postsecondary educational settings (24%, i.e., six participants); religious settings (24%, i.e., six participants); and video relay services (16%, i.e., four participants). All participants except one reported having worked with deaf newcomers to Canada, and all reported having worked with deaf people with disabilities. All participants except 4 (16%) reported having worked with deaf people of colour/from different ethnic backgrounds. It is possible that this question, and the ASL translation provided to signify persons of colour, were not sufficiently clear for all participants. All except one reported having worked with deaf people who do not know a standard national sign language.
4.4. Limitations
The generalisability of the survey findings is limited by the response rate of 46%, that is, 25 participants out of the target population of 54 DIs. It is speculated that there may be research fatigue among Canadian deaf communities, who are frequently targeted by social media posts seeking participant recruitment by various researchers and postsecondary institutions. Because the survey was administered in ASL and English, it may not have attracted many participants with Langue des signes québécoise-French backgrounds. Moreover, the survey recruitment email that was sent to all DIs listed in the association directory stated that participants would not be paid for participation in the survey. (However, following the completion of the interviews, participants received a $100 honorarium). This may also have discouraged participation, even though offering an incentive can also bias survey responses (Fogli & Herkenhoff, 2018). Another possible issue is that the translation of the English survey to ASL was not checked by performing a back-translation.
The survey data revealed that the typical profile of a DI in Canada is a white Canadian-born female aged 55+, who attended both deaf and mainstream schools and graduated from postsecondary education but not a formal interpreter training programme. The typical DI works predominantly in community, medical, and mental health settings but has also been interpreted for deafblind persons, at conferences, and in legal settings. In addition, this prototypical DI has worked with all deaf consumer groups that were identified by the survey: newcomers to Canada, people with disabilities, people from other ethnic groups, and people who do not know a standard national sign language.
5. Interview findings
Given the differences in demographic background between a typical Canadian DI and the populations with whom this DI works, the interview with Participant #9 (P9) was of special interest. At the time of writing, 11 DI participants had completed interviews. Data from these interviews which differ from P9’s comments will be discussed in forthcoming publications. As interview data revealed, P9’s life experiences and background as someone who had immigrated to Canada with his family as a child were central to his development as a DI and how he positioned himself in working with deaf newcomers to Canada and other deaf clients with marginalised social identities. These life experiences also shaped P9’s linguistic repertoire and critical stance on language ideologies among DIs. In what follows, I draw on Busch’s (2017) discussion of the biological dimension of the linguistic repertoire as constituted by “moments of lived experience of language” that “inscribe themselves into the linguistic memory” (p. 343). In this interview, P9 repeatedly made use of storytelling as a central feature of deaf cultures that draws on iconicity, gesture, and constructed action (Green, 2017; Ladd, 2022). In this way, the interview demonstrated how language ideologies become “inscribed into the body” (Busch, 2017, p. 349).
5.1. Dominant language ideologies
Busch (2017) writes of the linguistic repertoire “as a structure bearing the traces of past experience of situated interactions” (p. 352). These interactions often highlight how linguistic resources are viewed, especially when the speaker or signer’s repertoire is “perceived as unequal” (Busch, 2017, p. 352). During the interview, P9 repeatedly referred to his consternation at confronting dominant language ideologies among deaf Canadians: “In my experience, I find the deaf community does not really champion ASL. There is still a hierarchy where English is at the top, even among my close friends.” What he relayed as pivotal experiences shaping his career as a DI were also marked by these confrontations. One such experience was being hired as a deaf adult literacy programme instructor and coordinator, prior to becoming a DI:
What was puzzling about this, what has bothered me at the back of my mind for many years, maybe 35 years, is what happened following the interview, when I was hired. All the hearing people congratulated me. The deaf group asked me, how were you hired with your poor English? Inside me, something twisted.
In the interviews that have been conducted to date, several other DI participants in this study have also reported working as deaf adult literacy instructors. This suggests that this experience is formative for some DIs in Canada. However, in the above excerpt, P9 reported that his qualifications for this role were undermined by other deaf people due to his perceived lack of English proficiency.
P9’s reaction may be cast as cognitive dissonance at witnessing the apparent buttressing of English as the language of power among signing deaf professionals and interpreters. In his professional role as literacy programme instructor and coordinator, he was cast as an usurper: “I was caught off guard when I passed someone in the hallway, a deaf person with a MA degree and a background in linguistics. I was hired instead of them, and they were angry. This has stayed with me.” However, in spite of what P9 experienced as doubts surrounding his professional fitness and language proficiencies, over the course of 5 years, he was able to attract “200, 300” additional learners from the city and its surrounding regions, from what had previously been a class of approximately ten learners. He did this by organising various family activities and events for the deaf community. However, as he saw it, “My point is really that the L1 [first language] pulls people. Of course it does.” He attributed this insight to his experience as a deaf adult literacy instructor:
I saw again and again that the foundation must be to teach the L1 first, and second, teach English. For many people, it’s the other way around, and English comes first. Wait a minute, let me think like someone who has a MA degree [P9 flutters his hands and pretends to ruminate]—really, they are wrong. The foundation comes first. ASL comes first. I am living proof of this. If you see ASL first, learning English will proceed better and better. If you take ASL away and only see English, how do you process information? There is—honestly, there is no functioning at all. ASL must come first. It must. For the brain to process information, it must be visual.
In the above quote, P9 makes reference to core bilingual education teachings, such as the linguistic interdependence theory developed by Cummins (1981, 2021) wherein minority-language learners’ proficiency in their first language transfers to proficiency in a second, dominant language. Cummins’ theory has also been applied in the case of sign language-medium early intervention and education for deaf learners (Snoddon, 2008, 2019). The linguistic interdependence theory has been criticised due to its supposed monoglossic orientation and view of languages as bounded systems (e.g., García & Li, 2014). However, others have noted that named languages are central to self-determination and language rights for indigenous, deaf, and other minority-language speakers/signers (De Meulder, Kusters, et al., 2019; Nicholas & McCarty, 2022).
P9’s casting of ASL as the first language of deaf people was also linked to his lived experiences as an immigrant from a multilingual family. This casting also had the effect of decentring dominant sign language ideologies and “native deaf narratives” (Kusters et al., 2017) that link national sign languages, such as ASL, to the experiences of white, multigenerational deaf families and to deaf people who are relatively privileged in terms of educational background, language proficiencies, class, and race. P9’s comment regarding people with MA degrees may also reflect ideologies regarding other deaf people with higher educational qualifications. Ladd (2003, 2022) and De Meulder (2017) have analysed class and educational differences among deaf community members in the United Kingdom from the perspective of “subaltern-elites”—that is, signing deaf academic researchers with formal qualifications (like myself). However, in his interview, P9 represented a different view as a deaf professional who was minoritised among other deaf professionals in terms of language and race. This provided fresh insight regarding dominant language ideologies among deaf and interpreter communities.
In response to a question about support experienced as a DI, P9 expressed his valorisation of what he termed “grassroots” deaf people, in contrast to other DIs/professionals whom he regarded as often dismissing less privileged deaf individuals. Ladd (2003, 2022) defines the “grassroots” in terms of its historical linkages to deaf residential schools and deaf clubs and to generations of working-class deaf people who were employed in the manual trades (see also Padden & Humphries, 2005). Beginning in the later 20th century, the rise of a deaf professional class, or subaltern-elites, has meant the increased employment of signing deaf people within schools, agencies, and other institutional sites for managing the delivery of public services to deaf people (Padden & Humphries, 2005). However, deaf professionals employed within these spaces have needed to grapple with the conflicting demands of working alongside hearing colleagues and managers and remaining in solidarity with grassroots deaf community values. As P9 narrated:
In my life, it’s always been important to always first ask a person who is deaf for their opinion. But they always ask hearing people, or ask deaf professionals first. Come on. Deaf professionals live comfortable lives and experience fewer barriers. Grassroots deaf people have real barriers. Look at them. The L1 is fucked up. They [other deaf interpreters and professionals] know this. Deaf adult literacy instructors work with language deprived deaf people who have no signing. They know what it’s like for these people. It’s worse because they are deaf themselves.
Here, P9 expressed solidarity with deaf individuals who are regarded as the target population for both DI services and Canadian government-funded Language Instruction for Newcomers and Literacy and Basic Skills programmes for deaf adults. These individuals are usually immigrants or refugees and, depending on individual life trajectories and educational services in their countries of origin, may not be viewed as possessing any or “full” proficiency (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2008, p. 88) in ASL or another national sign language, nor in English or another spoken/written language. Yet for P9, this group of deaf individuals evoked an ideology of authenticity (Dolowy-Rybińska & Hornsby, 2021), of possessing a “grassroots” identity related not to language proficiency but to facing lifelong barriers to language and communication.
As Sivunen (2019) notes, deaf migrants are marginalised in the refugee studies literature due to language barriers and lack of interpreting services. However, “they may also have some oral or literacy skills in their language of origin, use home signs, have fluency in a recognized sign language and/or some ability in a language they may have learned as a lingua franca” (Duggan & Holmström, 2022; Sivunen, 2019, p. 1). Domestic provisions for sign language interpreting services for deaf individuals and services typically provided to refugees and immigrants may not align with the linguistic and semiotic repertoires of deaf migrants. Thus, there is a greater risk of linguistic injustice in the case of deaf refugees and immigrants, who are not recognised in policy due to not fitting into established categories of personhood (Butler, 2004), and whose repertoires may not include what are recognised as named languages (Duggan & Holmström, 2022).
As deaf people who are not born into signing deaf families generally acquire language atypically, it might be assumed that other DIs and literacy instructors who were P9’s colleagues would evidence greater recognition of the sociolinguistic situation and repertoires of deaf newcomers. Instead, as P9 narrated, dominant language ideologies emerged that privileged English. In some respects, this is in line with the findings of Duggan and Holmström (2022) regarding language ideologies among deaf teachers of deaf migrants at a folk high school in Sweden. Deaf teacher ideologies mandated the use of Swedish Sign Language instead of what was viewed as a gesture or home sign (Duggan & Holmström, 2022). However, for P9, the social identities and positioning of deaf newcomers and other clients of DI services overtly led to the devaluation of deaf clients’ language practices and repertoires by other DIs and professionals. As P9 saw it, these dominant language ideologies also tended to denigrate ASL as the named national sign language of surrounding deaf communities.
5.2. Gesture
As P9 made evident in his interview, including in the metacommunicative aspects of his utterances, he had an exceptional facility for gesture, and this formed the basis of his work as a DI with clients who were sometimes deemed to have “no language.” This facility also demonstrated P9’s linguistic, semiotic, and communicative competence and skill in mediation as a mode of language activity involving “the dynamic nature of meaning-making” (North & Piccardo, 2016, p. 4). Green (2017) relates gesture to an iconic and “pantomimic repertoire” “characterized by bodily actions that enact other bodily actions” (p. 328; see also Kusters & Sahasrabudhe, 2018). This repertoire is supposedly distinguishable from a “lexical repertoire” that “involves bodily actions that form signs” (Green, 2017, pp. 328–329). However, Green (2017) also critiques such distinctions between the lexical and gestural, including implications that gesture is less developed or less rich as a communicative resource compared with named national sign languages. This point also relates to dominant language ideologies that negatively evaluate gesture as not being “real” language (Dolowy-Rybińska & Hornsby, 2021).
P9’s first professional experience of working as a DI was rooted in his gestural competence:
A deaf person was in jail—I want to thank the hearing interpreter who told me; they were the bravest person in the world to do this. The interpreter came up to me and asked for a private talk. They were worried about breaching the interpreter code of ethics; they were flustered. I said, tell me. They said that a deaf person was in prison with literally no language. None. They said, no language, and at the back of my mind, I already knew what this meant. I arrived at the prison; the guard opened the door. I entered, and the deaf person turned his gaze toward me. He waved at me for attention and patted his ear with his hand, brow furrowed. Deaf? He signed “deaf” like this, hand patting his ear. What he used looked like gesture, body language. No language, none. That challenged me.
For P9, this encounter invoked communicative resources that went beyond the conventions of named national sign languages arising from institutional spaces or deaf schools. These conventionalised languages and institutional spaces may not always prepare DIs to mediate communication with diverse deaf clients. This encounter also allowed P9 to deploy his full repertoire and lived experience of language (Busch, 2017).
P9 connected his facility with gesture to his previous employment as a literacy instructor and experience with assessing learner knowledge:
For example, a learner from another country comes to class. I’m not sure what signs or gestures they will use. It’s important to communicate with them visually, important to start with their own knowledge. If they use gesture or home signs, that’s their language. I will first figure out how to communicate with them using that. Next, I will teach them ASL structure.
P9 gave the example of teaching learners the ASL sign MEAT. With his dominant hand in a covered T handshape for a handling gesture (Padden et al., 2013), he mimed biting off something chewy, then signed MEAT. As P9 narrated:
It’s easy for the learners to pick up new signs. Many white teachers will simply model the sign MEAT. No, you need to connect this to something. MEAT. Bite off, get it? Yes, MEAT. If you just sign MEAT, the learner will be puzzled. MEAT, what is this? The other teachers say, oh, you know, cow, bird, that? MEAT? But there is no concept here, nothing. So I will say, wait a minute. I indicate my body, sign BIRD, mime a chicken flapping its wings, you know what I mean? Take the body apart, hold up and point to this fleshy substance—MEAT. The learners understand and practice signing MEAT. It’s the same as the English word M-E-A-T [P9 fingerspells this word]. Connect this to different examples. If the learners think MEAT only means one animal like “buffalo,” this means the sign was taught incorrectly. MEAT, bite off, indicate different referents, different kinds of meat. They understand and make all of the different connections. Through this experience, I became a DI. I learned to think more visually and establish connections.
In the above excerpt, P9 produced a metanarrative regarding his strategic deployment of gesture for teaching ASL to deaf newcomers, or deployment of body movements that represent actions to teach body movements that represent discrete signs (Green, 2017).
For P9, to work successfully as a DI meant acting as an intermediary between ASL and gesture, and not between ASL and more English-like signing, which is often not accessible to deaf clients. This is in keeping with an understanding of gesture as co-existing with national sign languages in signers’ repertoires (Green, 2017; Kusters & Sahasrabudhe, 2018) and of Tester’s (2021) concept of intralingual interpreting within the same sign language. P9 traced his facility with gesture to his immigrant family’s intercultural experiences: “It’s inside of me. I grew up with this. It’s how I was raised. He narrated the experience of his parents first arriving in Canada with shaky English and not being able to use speech to communicate: “Hearing people using gesture, that stayed with me.” Travelling around the world with his family broadened his exposure to semiotic repertoires:
I remember going to Morocco with my mother. All around us were hearing people using gesture. Hearing people. Beckoning come here, drive car, drink, sleep, rooms upstairs, sleep, money/pay. Come see, come upstairs. Sleep/bed. Come. I was fascinated by such clear gesturing. With my family, communication was always through gesture. It’s innate, natural.
In the above quote, P9 invoked sign language ideologies that regard gesture as both understandable and produced fluently by hearing people, especially in certain sociolinguistic (non-Western) contexts (Kusters & Sahasrabudhe, 2018). P9 contrasted this broadness in communicative repertoires with Canadian white settler culture, where “people are reserved and do not gesture.” He remarked on the lack of facility with gesture among both sign language interpreting students and DI trainees with whom he worked as an interpreter trainer:
In the 25 years I’ve been teaching, if there are ten students in the class there are maybe one or two who use body language, move their bodies. It’s like it’s a special facility inside of them; it’s how they express their expertise, their logic, their memory. Two. The other eight students do not have this skill. This means those two students have an outer life inside of them, have a purpose in interpreting.
Thus, for P9, facility with gesture did not connect only with signing communities but rather with multilingual, multicultural communities and individuals with broad semiotic repertoires like those he encountered growing up. This illustrates how “dramatic or recurring situations of interaction with others become part of the repertoire, in the form of explicit and implicit language attitudes and habitualized patterns of language practices” (Busch, 2017, p. 350).
5.3. Language attitudes
P9 also narrated his experience of attending deaf residential schools as a deaf immigrant as learning to be comfortable with diversity among deaf people. This was in contrast to what he saw as the more negative language attitudes of other DIs, as expressed through their interactions with deaf clients. At deaf schools, he found himself next to students with different learning abilities and levels:
I didn’t have another, different, group that I preferred to socialize with. This is because my family trained me well. I would fly home with my family to visit our country and then fly back. Because of this, I’ve already seen poor people. It’s natural, commonplace. It’s not my thing to look down on people. But white deaf people, I’m puzzled. We are supposed to be
Here, P9 described his positioning of himself in relationship to the world as a cognitive act of comprehension (Busch, 2017). He located the site of DIs’ language attitudes in the face:
It’s important to use your face, an ASL face. Many DIs will frame things in a paternalistic manner. It’s how they start looking down on you. When I sit down with someone, you’re equal, I’m equal; you know it. For example, a person from Pakistan comes here; back home, they are a leader. They know things. Coming here, a white DI will sign slowly to them with raised eyebrows,
In the above excerpt, as P9 narrated, through exaggeratedly slow and simplistic signing, a DI conveys a negative evaluation of a deaf client’s language abilities. This evaluation also serves to justify the differential social position and status of the DI and client (Dolowy-Rybińska & Hornsby, 2021).
By contrast, P9’s connection to the life experiences of deaf refugees and immigrants led to clearer communication as a DI. This was because he grasped and conveyed the essential aspect of utterances like that relayed above, where the key information related to whether the deaf client had processed through immigration (rather than to the experience of flying and landing on a plane). P9 also relayed how he subtly conveyed the concept of undocumented immigration:
You flew here, landed, disembarked, was your passport stamped? [P9 moves his dominant hand to his chest and holds up his other hand, as if taking an oath of citizenship, to indicate legitimate resident status.] Or did you bypass this, getting your passport stamped? Show the client a furtive facial expression with nonmanual markers, tongue at the side of the inside cheek. With a furtive facial expression, sign a passport being stamped to indicate bypassing this step in the immigration process. The white DIs will instead wave for the client’s attention and sign,
For P9, his competence as a DI was evident in these acts of framing communication to be in line with diverse deaf clients’ life experiences, instead of evoking a white settler standpoint of ownership of land and country. In the metanarrative of his interview, he relayed how language attitudes among DIs emerged in their communication with deaf clients. Language attitudes that were manifestations of dominant language ideologies (Dolowy-Rybińska & Hornsby, 2021) were evident in other DIs’ slow signing about unneeded details, such as about the process of flying on and disembarking from a plane. According to P9, language attitudes were also evident in other DIs’ lack of comprehension of immigrants’ life experiences and cultures that hindered communication with deaf clients in high-stakes situations. P9 repeatedly linked his facility as a DI to what he saw as “grassroots” deaf life experiences:
I’m community-based, a community interpreter. More advanced language use for me means visual language. Make it explicit that you are assuming a character [for constructed action]. Use gesture and signing space. Take the information that is being relayed, and manage and transform the message. Many DIs take the message in English and hold still. They are missing cultural information.
Related to cultural information, P9 gave the example of many DIs not understanding that some African name conventions may mean starting with the family name before the individual’s given name. Instead of following this convention, DIs may incorrectly reverse the order of names. This issue and others that P9 highlighted related to negative language attitudes and dominant language ideologies reflect a need for greater awareness of cultural and linguistic diversity to be included in training for DIs. This training may also serve to address covert language ideologies and positively influence DI behaviours by changing language attitudes (Dolowy-Rybińska & Hornsby, 2021).
5.4. A DI framework
Instead of acknowledging P9’s greater facility in interpreting for a diverse deaf clientele, he felt that other DIs and deaf professionals frequently dismissed him as being of limited English proficiency. However, in his interview, he presented a framework and ethos for DI work and for positive language practices (Dolowy-Rybińska & Hornsby, 2021). In the above excerpt where he contrasted “managing and transforming the message” to “taking the message and holding still,” P9 also made reference to diverse conceptions of the DI’s role and function. Specifically, he referred to the conception of the DI’s role as being chiefly “mirroring,” or replicating a message in terms of its lexical and nonmanual features as it is signed by a presenter or interpreter (Boudreault, 2005). Mirroring by DIs may take place during a question-and-answer session at a conference to enable deaf audience members to ask questions of a presenter without going to the front of the stage to be visible to the rest of the audience (Boudreault, 2005). However, as DIs became more visible during government COVID-19 briefings, I have witnessed criticism among some deaf community members that DIs simply mirror or copy the signing of a hearing interpreter, rather than process and translate the source material into a more legible ASL rendition.
As P9 narrated his experiences of becoming a DI, he also relayed his metalinguistic insights into the DI process and role:
Before I started working as a DI, I thought an interpreter was someone who could hear and translate auditory content. Then all of a sudden I looked at the concept of translation and said, fuck, no. Put translation aside. That woke me up. That impacted me. I looked at the concept of translation and realized it means the deaf client missing information.
P9 referred to the missed information as “cultural information.” What he regarded as translation meant a lack of processing of the source message to more fully enter the visual realm: “For seeing the language, setting up the visual concept is important.” Boudreault (2005) refers to this function of the DI’s role as a “facilitator” when a hearing interpreter does not understand a deaf client’s signing, or vice versa. However, for P9, rather than this being what Boudreault (2005) called an “extraordinary circumstance,” the need for a DI to convey information “in visual, more concrete terms” (p. 332), was in fact central to the essence of deaf interpreting. Along these lines, Tester (2021, p. 134) has proposed a taxonomy of intralingual interpreting to further explicate the linguistic and semiotic functions of the DI’s role in the context of the courtroom.
For P9, the DI’s role also necessitated a longer time lag behind the hearing interpreter to allow for enhanced processing and accuracy:
It’s important to stay behind the hearing interpreter in terms of a time lag. Many DIs try to keep up, their gaze fixed on the hearing interpreter, mirroring. Frantically copying the hearing interpreter’s signing in order to keep up. I never do this. I receive the source language information visually, process it in my head, stay behind in time. The other DIs say, you’re slow! Well, of course. Research in interpreting shows—for example, listen to the source language. Wait to receive the full message, hands folded. Perfect, you can proceed with appropriate facial expression, affect. Simultaneous interpreting means there is no affect.
In P9’s espousal of a consecutive rather than a simultaneous model of interpreting for DIs, he rejected dominant language ideologies among interpreters that favour the emulation of normative communication among hearing people. These ideologies entail attempting to keep pace with spoken communication and not interrupting or delaying the flow of spoken communication by lagging behind. As P9 argued, a simultaneous model of interpreting worked against effective processing and comprehension:
Simultaneous interpreting means following the hearing interpreter closely all the way with a panicked expression, copying signing, compressing information, sending information, compressing and sending. I call this simultaneous interpreting. I’m trained as a consecutive interpreter, with a time lag behind the hearing interpreter. Many DIs are weak in this area. The time lag gives us time to modify the message. Stretch the visual information, explain clearly, modify the message. This is about pace.
Tester (2021) also stresses the importance of pace in terms of footing and alignment between the DI and hearing interpreter in the courtroom.
P9 rejected notions of the DI’s role of facilitator as being atypical or of this role serving atypical populations of deaf people. These notions are rooted in dominant language ideologies and normative conceptions of the language facilities that a signing deaf person should possess. For P9, the DI’s role goes beyond the linguistic or representational and included an ethics of relationality. This is conveyed in the following excerpt:
Everything goes back to the communication barrier that deaf clients experience. For the impacts of this to be corrected, you have to go back to the communication barrier. But we focus on the impacts instead . . . White deaf interpreters look at the impacts instead and say, oh that’s just what the deaf clients are like. I say, oh really? Look at the communication barriers, then we can understand better the clients’ emotions, their anger, communicate with them better.
P9 then described interpreting for a visit involving multiple hearing child protection services personnel and a deaf single mother:
Maybe you’ll think I broke the interpreter code of ethics. I saw a group of child protection services staff conferring with themselves while the mother sat alone in turmoil. I looked at her and saw things from her perspective; I understood what she was feeling. I waved to her for attention and said, you can just tell them that you’d like to postpone the meeting. You can ask them to reschedule for another time. She looked at me in surprise. Can I really? Oh, yes. I’ll interpret for you. I sat back and waved for attention to the hearing staff and interpreter. I interpreted for the client, do you mind rescheduling for next week or something? The hearing people were taken aback but said sure. The deaf client was so relieved.
P9 described the habitual feelings of stress for marginalised deaf clients who must deal with police and social services on top of experiencing lifelong communication barriers. This requires a DI to embody an ethics of relationality along with language skill:
DIs must understand the whole picture, have cultural sensitivity, modify the source message so it is more clear in ASL instead of mirroring it. Interpret consecutively instead of simultaneously for clarity. If I don’t understand something, I ask the client to hold for a minute and clarify things with them. But in my heart, I always understand. I never say to them, you were not clear. I never point at them in this way.
P9 expressed his consternation at other DIs with academic degrees and qualifications who did not engage with deaf clients for better communication. He described riding in a taxi with a client on the way to a court hearing to establish a communicative rapport:
If you block yourselves off from the clients, look away from them, your receptive skills will be limited. The clients are ASL, full stop. For example—I’m copying a client’s fast signing—before, I sold drugs, did crack, dealt drugs, mouthed off to the police—I look at the other DIs and say, well? Will you wave at the client and tell them to slow down? No, leave them be. I’m an expert; that’s my job. Practice your receptive skills; listen to them.
In P9’s narrative, he outlined what he saw as essential aspects of the DI’s role and how dominant language ideologies among other DIs needed to be overcome to inhabit and fulfil this role. In this way, P9 described how he was positioned, and how he positioned himself against dominant language ideologies among DIs (Busch, 2017).
6. Discussion and conclusion
The data reported in this article provide a snapshot of current DI demographics and language ideologies among DIs in Canada today from the perspective of one DI interview participant. Demographic survey data reflect that most DIs are Canadian-born and from a grandparent generation (Bickford et al., 2015) that attended deaf schools as sites of national sign language transmission and maintenance. Today, many deaf learners lack access to education in sign language, reflecting disrupted intergenerational transmission patterns and more limited sites of sign language transmission (Snoddon, 2020). This disparity is reflected in the smaller numbers of DIs who are from a younger, child-bearing generation (Bickford et al., 2015) and suggests that a precarious national sign language ecosystem currently exists in Canada. This indicates that in the near future, Canadian governments may face greater difficulty in providing both public services and information in sign language to deaf individuals—rights enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Paul & Snoddon, 2017), the Accessible Canada Act, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Snoddon & Wilkinson, 2021).
The interview data reported in this article describe a DI participant who, by virtue of his education in Canadian deaf schools and professional background, was positioned as a peer of other Canadian deaf professionals, or subaltern-elites. Simultaneously, due to his immigrant background and accompanying lived experiences of language and multilayered repertoire (Busch, 2017), he was positioned in solidarity with deaf clients who were newcomers to Canada and multiply marginalised. This dual positioning and status enabled insights regarding dominant language ideologies among DIs and other deaf professionals that valorised English at the expense of ASL. These ideologies also privileged deaf professionals over what the participant viewed as “grassroots” deaf people who experience lifelong communication barriers. Dominant language ideologies overlooked the importance of gesture in communication with deaf and hearing people and emerged in negative language attitudes towards diverse deaf clients.
By contrast, the participant’s affinity for other deaf people who have entered an unfamiliar space and experience non-belonging (Busch, 2017) emerged in a DI framework and ethics. This framework viewed the role of a DI primarily as a facilitator and intralingual consecutive interpreter (Boudreault, 2005; Tester, 2021) who works to ensure the clarity and accuracy of signing for diverse deaf clients. In this role, the DI establishes a communicative rapport with deaf clients and embodies an ethics of relationality. Future research will further explore language ideologies regarding DI roles and training and support professional development opportunities for DIs to enhance their cultural competence and negotiation of linguistic and semiotic repertoires in interpreting for diverse deaf people.
Footnotes
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant.
