Sign Languages, Recognition of

Background

Sign languages have enjoyed implicit legal recognition for some time, at least since the 1980s. This means that some countries have legislation that, for example, entitles deaf people to interpreting services, accepts the use of sign language in certain judicial situations, and enables deaf children to receive education in sign language. In some countries (e.g., Sweden), the passage of such legislation coincided with or was followed by pedagogic recognition.

A more recent development, however, and the topic of this entry, is the demand for explicit legal recognition. Added to the academic, societal, (limited) pedagogic, and implicit legal recognition, a demand emerged for the explicit recognition of sign languages in legislation. The emancipatory movement of the 1980s and 1990s led to a shift in policy goals of many Deaf associations toward this explicit legal recognition.

It is not clear exactly when this demand became a topic on the Deaf political agenda, but references to recognition can be found as early as 1982, when the Manifesto of the British Deaf Association asked the British government “to recognize BSL, to reflect this in legislation, and to acknowledge that the British Deaf community is a linguistic minority of British people.” On an international level, the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) used the concept for the first time in 1991, when the federation’s commission on sign language at the WFD conference in Tokyo put forward the following ecommendations:

• 1.
  1. We recommend that the WFD call for the recognition of sign languages and of the right to use sign languages around the world. A. This calls on every government to propose (if not already implemented) official recognition of the sign language(s) used by deaf people in their country as one of the country’s indigenous languages.

The first sign languages were recognized legally in 1995. Academic attention to legal sign language recognition started around the same time and dates at least from the mid- to late 1990s. On the Deaf policy agenda, the basic condition for a sign language to be called “recognized” seems to be that a state, in its legislation or policy, acknowledges the existence and linguistic validity of sign languages. Although some laws do not go beyond this symbolic recognition, others are much more comprehensive and include a number of rights as well as implementation and/or monitoring specifications. The status of sign languages (their explicit and implicit legal recognition) is in [Page 862]itself not an indicator of the nature and degree of the rights to which sign language users are entitled. Equally important is the language’s prestige (its societal position and relevance). This entry covers only explicit legal recognition.

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