Table Of ContentSign Language
Brokering in
Deaf-Hearing Families
Jemina Napier
Sign Language Brokering in Deaf-Hearing
Families
Jemina Napier
Sign Language
Brokering in
Deaf-Hearing
Families
Jemina Napier
Department of Languages & Intercultural Studies
Heriot-Watt University
Edinburgh, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-67139-6 ISBN 978-3-030-67140-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67140-2
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For sign language brokers everywhere….
Preface
The agenda for professional interpreting services to be used in a range of
settings has been to ensure that only suitably trained practitioners are
employed to reduce the risk of miscommunication or misunderstanding.
This is important in ensuring standards for access to information and
communication. I have worked for over 30 years as a professional sign
language interpreter and for over 20 years doing research on professional
sign language interpreting practice. Ensuring that professional interpret-
ers are provided, however, is not a guarantee of quality, access or inclu-
sion. But that is not what this book is about.
With the push towards professionalisation of community interpreting,
communicating via an untrained, bilingual person has been discouraged.
But it happens. Everyday. Everywhere. This is often referred to as natural
or native translation: a task that bilinguals naturally partake in through-
out their lives.1 Although the risks of ‘ad hoc’ interpreting in high-stakes
settings (e.g. by bilingual nurses and cleaners for patients in hospitals)
have been discussed in the literature,2 there is increasing interest in non-
professional interpreting. There is now an international conference on
non-professional interpreting and translation that takes place every two
years, which includes discussion of research on ad hoc interpreting by
bilinguals in public service settings, interpreting by parishioners in church
sermons, and also interpreting or ‘brokering’ by children and adolescents
vii
viii Preface
for family members, typically referred to as child language brokering
(CLB). That is what this book about.
The primary aim of this book is to report findings from a multi-
country, mixed-methods study that investigated the phenomena of CLB
in deaf-hearing families where sign language is the home language, what
I refer to as sign language brokering (SLB). Hearing children with deaf
parents are typically referred to as Children of Deaf Adults (Codas). I am
a Coda, but I have noted elsewhere (Napier, 2008; Napier & Leeson,
2016) that I am not comfortable using the term because of the connota-
tions associated with it. I prefer the term People from Deaf Families (PDFs)
as I feel that this term is more encompassing in terms of hearing and deaf
people that use sign language every day in families that may have a com-
bination of deaf and hearing members (see Chap. 1 for a more detailed
discussion).
But in this book, I am focusing on heritage signers, those PDFs who
have grown up using a sign language at home with deaf parents (see Chap.
1). Although my research participants are primarily hearing, deaf heritage
signers are also included; but all participants had deaf parents (some also
had other deaf family members). I would hope one day to extend this
research to genuinely include all PDFs, so that we can also capture all
experiences.
One of the family roles that are often taken on by heritage signers is
the role of language broker, or family interpreter. It is known that children
act in a language brokering role in migrant families where parents have
little or no competency in the majority language, in a variety of contexts
including schools, banks, government offices, stores and restaurants and
doctors’ offices (see Chap. 2). These are also the experiences of heritage
signers, who broker between their signing deaf parents and the hearing
majority who use a spoken language. To date, however, very little research
has been conducted to specifically explore SLB experiences.
What is particularly distinctive about this book is that although there
is an increasing body of work that focuses on the CLB experiences of
children in migrant families, typically this work draws on educational
psychology in order to discuss the developmental impact on children.
There is little work that explores the phenomena from a linguistic per-
spective, or within the disciplines of Applied Linguistics or Interpreting
Preface ix
Studies, and a dearth of work that has examined the situation in deaf-
hearing families.
This book therefore reports, for the first time, an in-depth empirical
study of SLB in deaf-hearing families that draws upon interdisciplinary
theoretical frameworks from Applied (Sign) Linguistics, Interpreting
Studies, Deaf Studies, Sociology (sociolinguistics and social psychology),
Childhood Studies and Developmental Psychology. Furthermore, the
study draws on several methods to explore the phenomena of SLB, which
provides a rich corpus of data to explore the issues through different theo-
retical and methodological lenses. One of the ground-breaking elements
of this book is that it directly draws upon, and in some instances repli-
cates, studies of CLB with migrant communities, which provides a
broader frame for our understanding of CLB and non-professional inter-
preting in general.
The book is structured as a series of stand-alone chapters so that people
can access the chapters that they are interested in without necessarily hav-
ing to read the whole book. As this book will discuss a range of issues to
do with language, culture, bilingualism, communication, mediation and
interpreting, I envisage that it will be of interest to scholars and students
in applied linguistics, interpreting studies, deaf studies and intercultural
communication studies. In particular, those interested in sign languages,
multilingualism, minority languages, family language policy, applied sign
linguistics, sign language interpreting and translation studies and deaf
studies will see synergies with their own work. Furthermore, CLB
researchers in the disciplines of developmental psychology, sociology,
childhood studies, applied linguistics and interpreting and translation
studies will be able to draw parallels to their own work.
These research results may be useful to professionals in social institu-
tions who support deaf families and their children through educational,
social service, medical and mental health provisions. The findings also
provide an underpinning to understanding the scope for sign language
brokers to become professional sign language interpreters and thus can be
a useful source for sign language interpreter educators. Finally, some deaf
parents and heritage signers out there may come across this book and if
they are academically inclined, they may read it and realise that they are
not alone. It is my hope that heritage signers who take on a brokering role
x Preface
in their families will themselves also directly benefit from this book in
gaining a deeper understanding of what it is that they do, why they do it,
and that it is something to be valued.
Edinburgh, UK Jemina Napier
Notes
1. See http://unprofessionaltranslation.blogspot.com
2. See, for example, Flores, G., Abreu, M., Barone, C., Bachur, R., & Lin,
H. (2012). Errors of medical interpretation and their potential clinical
consequences: A comparison of professional versus ad hoc versus no inter-
preters. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 60(5), 545–553; and Hagan, S.,
Swartz, L., Killan, S., Chiliza, P., Bisogno, B., & Joska, J. (2013). The
accuracy of interpreting key psychiatric terms by ad hoc interpreters at a
South African psychiatric hospital. African Journal of Psychiatry, 16(6).
https://doi.org/10.4314/ajpsy.v16i6.54
References
Napier, J. (2008). Exploring linguistic and cultural identity: My personal experi-
ence. In M. Bishop & S. Hicks (Eds.), Hearing, mother father deaf: Hearing
people in deaf families (pp. 219–243). Washington, DC: Gallaudet
University Press.
Napier, J., & Leeson, L. (2016). Sign language in action. London: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Acknowledgements
The data presented in this book would not have been possible without
many different kinds of support, from organisations and people. First, I
would like to acknowledge the funding sources that provided the finan-
cial support for me to carry out this body of work. A Macquarie University
Safety Net Grant (2012) enabled me to carry out the first two stages of
data collection internationally and in Australia. This was followed by a
Heriot-Watt University School of Social Sciences Internal Research Grant
(2013–2018), which funded the next stages of data collection in the
UK. I would also like to acknowledge the Heriot-Watt University School
of Social Sciences for a period of sabbatical in 2018 and the Institute for
Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of
Edinburgh for my time there as a visiting research fellow from 1 September
to 31 December 2018, which gave me focused time to begin the data
analysis and drafting of this book. Thanks also to the John Benjamins
Publishing Company, who gave permission for a book chapter that I pre-
viously published in one of their volumes to be updated and featured in
this book as Chap. 4.
Next, I would like to acknowledge the support of key organisations
who assisted in putting me in touch with deaf and hearing people that
could participate in my study in Australia and the UK, and also assisted
with disseminating research findings. These include Deaf Australia, the
Australian Sign Language Interpreters Association, CODA International,
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