Sign Languages in Contact

Albanian Sign Language: Language Contact, International Sign, and Gesture

Albanian Sign Language: Language Contact, International Sign, and Gesture Karin Hoyer After World War II, Albania was the most inaccessible country in Europe. The Communist regime under the longtime party leadership of Enver Hoxha was characterized by isolation from the rest of the world, propaganda, and political persecution. When people adjusted their TV antennas to illegally receive broadcasts from Yugoslavia and Italy, deaf people were sometimes able to get a glimpse of Italian signed news programs . Manipulation of one’s TV antenna was, however, a very dangerous act because one never knew who in the neighborhood was spying for the regime. A suspicious-looking antenna was enough of a crime to result in imprisonment. Living in Communist Albania was a challenge for everyone. Moreover, the lives of deaf people were, to a great extent, determined by the rules set by hearing people, who regarded visual communication in public as shameful. Many deaf people were thus socially isolated within their hearing family. An important consequence of this was that no Deaf community emerged despite the fact that a school for deaf children was founded in the 1960s. According to Andoni, Shabani, and Baçi (2003), the collapse of Communism and the opening up of the country in the 1990s enabled linguistic minorities to come out of the woodwork and become visible in Albanian society. The end of the isolation meant freedom to move about the country and to think freely. For deaf people, this new era signaled the genesis of a community and the rapid development of a language that has come to be known as Albanian Sign Language (AlbSL). In this chapter, I discuss the post-Communist situation in Albania with regard to deaf people and Albanian Sign Language, including the recent development of AlbSL as a result of its contact with International Sign. I also discuss the relationship between conventional, emblematic gestures in use among Albanian hearing people and their apparent influence on the signs of AlbSL. 195 A RECENT HISTORY OF ALBANIA AND ITS DEAF PEOPLE In this section, I provide a short overview of the recent history of Albania, the situation of deaf people there during the Communist regime, and the recent and current state of deaf education. I also discuss the establishment of a Deaf organization after the opening up of the country and its activities during the first five years of the new millennium . A Balkan country, Albania is situated north of Greece, east of Italy (on the other side of the Adriatic Sea), south of Serbia and Montenegro, and west of the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYR Macedonia). Modern Albania, which has a long and belligerent history, was first inhabited in the centuries before Christ. After enduring several invasions and the rule of various conquerors, the people of the region in 1912 proclaimed their independence (Prifti 2002). During World War II, the country was occupied by Italy, and after the war, the Communist Party in Albania seized power. In the 1990s, the opening up of the country was characterized by political and economic instability. The Democratic Party, the first nonCommunist party in the postwar era, was founded in 1990. In 1997, collapsing pyramid schemes caused rioting all around Albania. In 1999, in response to the Serbs’ attack on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, NATO started an air war in neighboring former Yugoslavia. Hundreds of thousands of Kosovar refugees crossed the border into Albania and were welcomed into the homes of Albanians as a token of the strong tradition of hospitality of these long-suffering people. Today, Albania is taking its first tentative steps toward real democracy — hoping for future membership in the European Union. The population of Albania is about 3.2 million.1 According to SIL Ethnologue, the majority of the population claims Standard Albanian (Tosk) as their mother tongue. Spoken minority languages are Gheg (an Albanian variety spoken in the northern part of the country), Greek, Macedonian, Romani, Romanian, and Serbian. The Albanian National Association of the Deaf (ANAD) estimates the deaf population to be about three thousand, but no reliable numbers are available. During the Communist regime, deaf education was rooted in oralism. An elementary school for deaf children was established in the capital of Tirana in 1963. However, many deaf children from poor families in mountain villages have never had a chance to attend this boarding 196 : karin hoyer school. They still live isolated from other deaf...