Surgery performed on Deaf people without their consent. Signers unemployed or under-employed, their talents wasted. Shockingly frequent mental health problems as Deaf people struggle to live within a hostile social system. Deaf children in classrooms where they can’t understand the language of instruction. Police, prisons, banks, Inland Revenue – an endless list of institutions not […]
Tag: BSL
Prof’s Vow of Silence
It’s going to be a quiet week in my office. This week is the British Deaf Association’s ‘Sign Language Week’ (http://www.bda.org.uk/). My contribution? I’m going to shut up. So if, when you see me this week, you cheerily wish me good morning and hear not a sound in reply, it’s not (just) because I’m a […]
Interpreting for deaf jurors
http://youtu.be/_7uYtXD_J34 (BSL version) Jury service in adversarial court systems is an important civic duty and responsibility. Jurors have to understand and weigh up evidence presented, assess the credibility of witnesses and decide on the likelihood of certain events having occurred in the light of their own personal experiences. There has been increasing interest in whether […]
New Competition: Sign the Anthem
Today’s blog posting announces a competition being run by the Centre for Translation & Interpreting Studies in Scotland (CTISS), this Department’s longest-established research centre. It’s a translation challenge, and it’s open to all. Let me explain. In case you didn’t know, 2014 is a big year for Scotland. Of course, there’s the small matter of […]
Sign language brokering experiences in the Deaf community
Many people will have seen the video of the cute young girl Claire Koch singing Christmas carols and simultaneously signing the songs in American Sign Language for her deaf parents that went viral in December 2013. The general response was the feel good factor – how amazing, considerate and talented this little girl is. Children like […]
BSL Highlights
As the year draws to a close, here are 10 highlights from the work of the British Sign Language team at Heriot-Watt University. We have grown significantly during 2013. New additions to the family include Professor Jemina Napier, plus Clare Canton, Yvonne Waddell and Stacey Webb. This means we now have six PhD students working […]
Working Together
Following on from our previous set of posts on the work LINCS does on, for and with D/deaf communities, in this video, lecturer Gary Quinn signs about his work on the Science Signs project.
Who's who in BSL at Heriot-Watt University
Welcome to the 4th BSL blog on lifelinlincs After the last three weeks where you have seen discussion of sign language-related topics, in the blog for this week we thought we would take the opportunity to do a profile of the BSL team at Heriot-Watt University – a who’s who of the ten members of […]
Influences on sign language
Click here to watch this post in BSL Following on from Jemina Napier’s post last week I am continuing the discussion along a similar theme. Today I’m going to talk about how sign language has changed. I’ll also be talking about what factors influence sign language use, and whether those influences come from outwith or […]
Sign language research: Deaf-hearing involvement and research ethics
Click here to watch this blog post in BSL My topic for this week, the second week of the BSL blog, is on the relationship between ethics and deaf-hearing involvement in conducting research projects. After commencing employment here at Heriot-Watt University, I recently discovered that a joint funding bid to the EU Lifelong Learning Leonardo […]