In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

5 Romance and Reality: Sociolinguistic Similarities and Differences between Swiss German Sign Language and RhaetoRomansh Penny Boyes Braem, Benno Caramore, Roland Hermann, and Patricia Shores Hermann Switzerland is known and generally admired for the several languages spoken by its citizens living in different regions of the country. The well-known Swiss languages are Swiss German, French, Italian, and Rhaeto-Romansh. Not so wellknown or recognized is a fifth language used by many deaf Swiss citizens—Swiss German Sign Language (Deutschschweizerische Gebärdensprache, henceforth referred to as DSGS). THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC SITUATION OF SWISS GERMAN SIGN LANGUAGE (DSGS) DSGS is used by an estimated 7,000 deaf people scattered throughout the 18 German -speaking cantons of Switzerland. Deaf people living in the one predominately Italian-speaking or in the six French-speaking cantons have their own, separate signed languages. DSGS is composed of five related dialects that have historically developed within and around the five regional public schools for the deaf (in Basel, Bern, Zurich, St. Gallen, and Lucerne). Deaf children who have hearing, nonsigning families have typically learned DSGS from other children in the dormitories and in activities outside the classroom. 89 90 Boyes Braem, Caramore, Hermann, and Shores Hermann The first educational programs for deaf people in both the German and French parts of Switzerland were established between 1811 and 1838. At the beginning , all of these schools were private, having been founded by Catholic priests or Protestant ministers or family and friends of deaf individuals. Although the ultimate goal of all these schools was to teach the deaf pupils how to speak, the first teaching methods, which were directly influenced by Abbé de l’Epée’s signes méthodiques, included manual signing. Deaf teachers were employed in many of these schools. Close to 1840, well before the Congress of Milan in 1880, the schools in German Switzerland began to switch to the “German method” of teaching, which allowed no signing at all. This change occurred as more and more school directors were recruited from Germany, there being at that time no training program for teachers of the deaf in Switzerland. These new directors, together with the Swiss teachers, forbade signing in the schools and dismissed all the deaf teachers (Caramore 1988, 1990). This tradition of teaching deaf children to speak, speechread, read, and write the spoken language while forbidding the use of signing has remained strong in German Switzerland.1 Only one school for the deaf in German Switzerland (Zurich ) has ventured slightly from the traditional oralist method with its introduction in the 1980s of a system of Signed German into the classroom (Maye, Ringli, and Boyes Braem 1987). In the 1990s, most schools for the deaf in German Switzerland began to mainstream as many of their pupils as possible into hearing classrooms of public schools, providing no DSGS interpreters or any other kind of signed language support. Currently, hearing people who are training to become teachers of the deaf are not required to have any competence in DSGS. Because entrance to all Swiss universities requires a special degree (the Matura ) from higher secondary schools, people graduating from the schools for the deaf—which are not able to give this degree—have little hope of attaining a university -level education in Switzerland. Over the past ten years, the training program for deaf teachers of DSGS (Gebärdensprachlehrerausbildung, GSLA) has developed into a kind of alternative college for a small group of young deaf adults. During this three-year, part-time educational program, the deaf students take courses in not only teaching DSGS but also higher-level psychology, sociology , pedagogy, and linguistics. All of these courses are taught in DSGS, so the students are able for the first time to have full access to broad areas of information, which were lacking in their orally oriented public education. Several regional clubs and associations of deaf adults have been established, the most active of which have historically been sports clubs. However, in the mid1980s , the Swiss National Deaf Association set up the first DSGS courses in German Switzerland and began political advocacy for the public recognition of their language. The group has been helped in this effort by the small, private Association for the Support of Deaf Sign Language (Verein zur Unterstützung der Gebärdensprache der Gehörlosen), which over the past 18 years has published a series of booklets about signed language and Deaf culture.2 Professional interpreter training programs and services have been in place for less...

Share