The Godfather of Auslan - what rubbish

I feel the need to begin this blog with a warning...I AM going to offend some readers.


I am sick of the 'ownership' battle over Auslan (Australian Sign Language) that goes on in this country. For goodness sake !


Auslan is a language, and like all languages it flows and grows. Stay with me here....it is like a river. It winds a path from the depths of the forest and farm land through the smallest towns and biggest cities. On it's way people may influence its path, put things in and take things out. People downstream are influenced by the actions of those up-steam; and tributaries may seem isolated, but even they see the effects of others before them and send items downstream.


And so it is with languages.


Every language finds roots in its past, but also grows and branches out in many directions. Some events effect one branch more than others. For example, the rise of the internet has seen the word 'google' to move from a word to define a strong stare, to a means to look for items on the internet. From an unusual word, to one that finds its place in daily communication...at least in the young...but far less so in the old. in fact you may well find large numbers of our elderly community whose language has had little influence by the rise of the internet and for whom WTF remains a random set of letters and not an announcement of astonishment and questioning :)


So lets come back to Auslan shall we.  It too is evolving everyday...and it always has. You only need to spend some time with out antique dictionaries - as I have in resent weeks - to see that. Which brings me to my exciting discovery in an antique book shop. You are not going to believe this but I found an Auslan dictionary from 1942! Can you believe it. It even has hand written notes in it from a teacher at Royal Institute of the Deaf to the books owner, talking about how they sign some things differently.


So I guess that brings me to my real beef here....Mr 'I am the Godfather of sign' Trevor Johnson. Ohh ego large much? I could not believe it when he first declared this little piece of pompous rubbish some years ago now on ABC radio, but to see it in print again recently just refueled my annoyance at the ego of this linguistic theorist.


You know the problem with linguists? Linguists, by there very nature want to hold a language still. Freeze it and look at it. Examine it as it is in that set moment of time. But a language can no more be held still than a river (ok forget dams for a minute - although even they fill up and overflow eventually). A language is forever flowing, growing, changing, evolving.  Flowing in new directions. Evolving to adapt to it's changing environment.  That is why a linguistic analysis is always out of date. Always looking backwards instead of forwards.


Look I am not saying there is nothing to be learned from the past...but just don't get stuck there.


You know what I love about Auslan now and in the future...the internet.  Video chat has change our language and will dramatically change it's future.  I already see it's influence in the language of the next generation as i travel around OZ.  Where once the kids in remote outback areas were ostracized by their geographic location, and their language reflected this.  They often used 'old signs' in very English ordered grammar. This was natural as their language came to them via old dictionaries - like the archaic Signs Of Australia from the 1970's; and they rarely got to converse with other fluent signers, so naturally their grammar was very English in nature.  Today, however I see something very very different.


I recently came back from another regional tour - Victoria this time...and what did I see. I saw teenagers as remote as can be, fluently signing and chatting to me about friends in cities like Brisbane, Sydney, and Perth.  They are the national generation. As an interesting result I also no longer see the 'dialects' we saw so strongly in the past.


It was natural that such a large country would have dialects in our sign language. After all it is a visual language. Casting back in time, before the internet, before the car even...how were deaf communities to share their signs between cities, or even towns.  It was natural to find two dialects evolve around the two large Deaf schools (Sydney and Melbourne). It was completely understandable to find even smaller dialect regions, in rural towns, like Sale (VIC) for example; whose older generation signers have distinctive dialect from those of the same age in the neighboring town.


Today I see a more national evolution of Auslan. An instant shared evolution across hundreds of km. Isn't that exciting and fantastic...


let's keep looking forward, together, shall we, because it is a very exciting place to be

That signs not right! - The great northern verses southern sign debate

One of the most common questions I am asked by people learning Auslan pertains to sign variations, especially between states. "That's not a Queenslanbd sign" "Is that Melbourne sign" "My Tafe teachers said..." and so.

Quiet frankly I am sick of it; this blog is as much a rave about why I think the whole argument is rubbish predominately spread by ignorant individuals who live in a very small world and 'do not get out much'. Definitely by people with a limited language experience. Yes, some of those people ARE Deaf. Some are not. All of them are getting ready to send out a firing squad after me for that comment, but I am beyond caring, as it needs to be said. This is why:

A) Sign variation verses difference

Before we go any further lets define some terms.

Sign dialect/difference : This is where there are two signs for one word. A good example is the colour Blue.

The sign to the left is more common in Qld and NSW and referred to as a 'Norther Dialect' sign. The one on the right more common in southern states like VIC, TAS, SA and WA; thus being referred to as a Southern Sign.

Broadly speaking these 'regions' originated through three main events:

1. The fact that most deaf people aged 40 and over boarded at one of the two Deaf schools at the time; being RIDBC (in Sydney) or VCD (in Melbourne). Not surprisingly QLD and NSW students went to Sydney, everybody else went to Melbourne. As communication in a visual medium, such as sign language, was limited to 'in-person' interaction at the time, sign language in Australia, not surprisingly evolved independently from the two major centres. Thus we have two signs for Blue, for example.

Of course the evolution of Auslan is far more complex than that, and a subject that I have passionately researched for many many years, but not one which I will delve further into in this article.

2. Our vast size. Australia is a geographically sprawled country, which in itself has contributed and influences our language. Until the age of aeroplane travel movement between even our capital cities was long, expensive and infrequent event for the average person. It was also only recent Internet developments that saw video chat a reality. These factors have all influenced the evolution of geographical dialects in our language, both oral and signed.

3. Of course we can not discredit the influence of the original origins of our language in the first place. Being the Catholic nuns and brothers who brought with them a language evolved from the French sign language and predominantly one handed; and that of the British two handed language.  

B) Variations in Signs

The fact is that most of the time, when someone raises a 'sign dialect' that are talking less of a true difference and more about an alternatives. For example ‘swimmers’ ‘bathers’ and ‘togs’ are three English words that mean the same thing. Similarly Auslan is a rich and diverse language and each signer and community may show preferences to one sign over another, just as and oral English speaker will have a preference for one word over another. That does not make the other English word more or less appropriate or 'correct'.

What's the current story
Where there are true ‘differences’ such as the colours red, green, blue and brown, in almost every case you will find that there is increasingly more and more what used to be ‘southern signs’, now in everyday use in Queensland. In fact we have found that the ‘next generation’, especially those under say 25, are communicating so much on a national basis through Internet video chat, Utube and alike, that Auslan signs are becoming far more diversely used nationally and the language, I believe, is becoming even more rich as a result.

This is why I say it is only the less traveled, more 'sheltered' members of the signing community (an in that I add both hearing and Deaf) that will continue to preach the 'that sign is wrong' approach. The more I travel, and the more I interact with the younger generations the more rich and 'shared' I see Auslan evolving. No more is Blue, to continue the example, a Northern and Southern sign. In over 4 different Deaf schools across the country the same rule now applies. Toady's teenagers use both signs. . . daily. It is very interesting. When you ask them about it they report that, mum/dad/teacher uses this sign (say the southern). I use both. I use this one (say southern) for 'Blue" - generally, but this one (say the northern) for more blue. Like 'This is more blue than that'. What fascinated me is that this 'new rule' or adaption was common across states, in both city and country areas. I went back and asked these children "How did you learn the other sign"; almost always they said Internet chat. "Why did you start using it for 'more blue'. Almost all of them thought it was 'just right', it just is. It has simultaneously evolved across the country through a more diverse communication tool - the Internet.

Isn't that fantastic.

Three interesting towns
I travel all around Australia and the best example I can give of why it is not good enough to say ‘Qld signs’ verses ‘SA signs’ etc, is a row of 3 towns in VIC that are along the Hwy, each neighboring each other. The first is very strong in what would have been traditionally referred to as ‘Sydney dialect’. The second is very strong in an English grammar approach a kin to the older Signed English approach. The third is very ‘Melbourne’ in its sign preferences. Why?


Well I looked in to the local history of sign and discovered the first town had an elderly generation of signers who had gone to RIDBC (Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children – Sydney) as children and a number of Sydney based teachers of the Deaf had migrated to the area of the years. Giving the area a stronger bond to Sydney sign preferences, even though it is a Victorian town. It’s next neighbor has an elderly group of signers who had had little to do with either Melbourne nor Sydney. They did not travel away to school and instead learned sign through their local school, where parents and the community had learned the language from an unknown original source, believed to have come from the Victorian college for the Deaf, however the ‘English grammar’ structure remained strong in their language. The third town had strong ties to the Victorian college that remained strong to today. A great number of their elderly Deaf community reported going to school there, and still having strong friendship bonds to Deaf people in Melbourne. These tire inadvertently influence the local language. Perhaps what is of most interest to me is the regional language. You see, despite the history and broad preferences and language tendencies, all three towns also displayed what can best be described as a local dialect. Signs that were commonly preferred between all three towns that did not follow any of the afore referred to ‘so called rules’. I will refer to the color signs as they are such an obvious example. The sign for ‘Blue’ followed the northern preference, yet ‘Red’ southern. Such examples were common.

So what does that mean for a learner?

So that brings me back to my earlier statement. There is no such thing as Qld sign, verses NSW sign and so on. Language is influenced by so much more than state boundaries. It is influenced by personal experiences, travel and history of it’s users, age and overall demographic and yes, geographical location to a smaller extent.

The best advise I have for anybody wanting to make sure they are learning signs ‘preferred’ by their local signing community is to jump in and chat with them. If you get a chance to diving to a sign conversation with your local community (on line or even better in person) you can always ask them. You signed ** for ** I sign **, both right?

The fact is that the younger signers around Australia think that we are all ‘bazzar’. A teenage boy I met recently in Victoria put it best, I think:

“What do you mean ‘Qld sign’ or ‘Melbourne Sign’, it is all my sign. My brother is not ‘wrong’, no matter what English word he uses. He can play with his language, expand it, grow it. He can even take words from other languages, like ‘déjà vu’, but you try and tell me I am wrong if I choose one sign over another!”

Who am I to argue, besides, I agree.