Viva Brighton Issue #62 April 2018

LOWDOWN ON...
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British Sign Language
With teacher Sam Caiels
Who do you teach here
at Hamilton Lodge?
My job is Deaf Studies
and BSL Coordinator, so
I teach the 63 children
here at the school and
college, the staff and, in
the evening, people from
the community.
How do you teach
BSL? It depends on
whether the child arrives
at the school with any
sign language or any English. If they arrive with
absolutely no language whatsoever, we might start
with very simple objects, things that they can see,
and being able to identify who people are.
Are BSL sentences constructed differently to
standard English ones? Completely differently.
For example, in English you would say ‘what is
your name?’ and in sign language you would say
‘your name what?’ It’s probably more similar to
foreign languages like Spanish and their syntactical
structure. It’s a language in its own right, with
its own grammar.
How universally is it understood? Other countries
have their own sign languages. For example,
in American Sign Language they use one hand for
the alphabet, in BSL we use two. There is a way of
being able to understand deaf people from around
the world using a kind of international sign
language, kind of like Esperanto, mostly based
on gesture. But in the way that spoken English is
different from Spanish is different from Greek, it’s
the same with the signed languages.
Can you have a dialect or an accent in BSL?
Yes. There are generational differences and
regional differences. For
example, in the north of
England they use more
finger spelling than in
the South and you can
recognise where a deaf
person went to school
based on their accent. My
school was Mary Hare
and other people will
know that because of the
way that I sign. Another
example is colours. There
are 22 different signs for purple in the UK. Which
one you use will tell people where you come from.
Are new symbols created all the time? Oh yes
absolutely. Just like in English, I suppose.
Do people use sign language creatively? You
can absolutely have a very creative style of BSL.
There’s also something called visual vernacular,
and mime. You’d be able to tell a story just using
your hand shapes. I guess an English poet would
use one word, one sound and rhyming words but
a deaf person would use their hand shapes in a
repeated fashion to create a visual rhyme. It’s a
creative adaptation of BSL. You can do songs,
poems... it’s limitless really. Like any language, you
can play with it to your heart’s content.
Are there famous sign language performers?
Yes, the earliest one I can remember was called
Dot Miles, she was a very famous BSL poet. Because
of her there are loads of new, young artists.
Lots of deaf people are involved in theatre and
drama, with deaf and hearing audiences. Every
year we have Shakespeare translated into BSL and
performed at The Globe. Interview by Lizzie Lower,
with thanks to BSL interpreter Jill Blackadder
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