Deaf Health Wales Austrian Connection
Broadening awareness: Why we should change our idea of multilingualism
In 2005, Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS) was recognized as a language in its own right. As of the school year 26/27, it is also to be included in the curricula of AHS upper secondary schools. It is high time, because children and young people who do not have a perfect command of spoken German are often classified as problem cases. Anouschka Foltz from the Department of English Studies at the University of Graz, a researcher in the core topic Multilingualism, Migration and Cultural Transformation and co-investigator in the British government-funded research project “Deaf Health and Well-Being Wales” based at Bangor University in Wales, explains why this is the case and how things could be done differently.
Deaf children are at an educational disadvantage almost everywhere in Europe. If they do not learn a sign language as their native language from an early age, they may lack the basis for another language - that of the hearing people around them. Those affected then sometimes have to acquire this language with great effort and therefore often have problems understanding written texts. Many only come into contact with sign languages in their late teens or early adulthood.
In Wales, where I worked for four years and also made contact with other researchers, the situation is particularly difficult. No sign language interpreters are trained there - and the dialectal differences in British Sign Language (BSL) are large enough that signers from different regions in the UK don't necessarily understand each other. With the Welsh language receiving a lot of public funding, there are hardly any resources left for BSL. Deaf people theoretically have the right to communicate in BSL anywhere in the country, with the help of interpreters if necessary. However, many people see BSL not as a language, but as a communication aid. The belief that communication would also work without mediation is widespread. In the medical field, the lack of awareness of language barriers is a particularly big problem. Even making appointments with doctors is usually only possible by telephone.
In our research project, we want to improve the legal situation of deaf people and provide them with helpful resources - such as video translations of key information that can be accessed via QR codes. We are also working on a dictionary of medical terms in the different Welsh variants of British Sign Language, something that does not currently exist.
Sign languages are - with a few exceptions - barely visible throughout Europe, there is a lack of awareness of the needs of deaf people. In Styria, the situation is a little better than in Wales because we at least offer university degrees in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS). However, it would be ideal if there were bilingual kindergartens and schools where hearing and deaf people could learn ÖGS together. There are bilingual education programs for English in Styria, but not for other languages.
In general, the topic of multilingualism in the home is often viewed very negatively. The attitude is that everyone has to speak German at a high level and then perhaps one or two of the common foreign languages, also at a high level. However, this in no way takes into account the existing diversity. A whole range of native languages spoken by pupils in Austria are not taught as part of the regular school curriculum. There is little appreciation and patience when children learn several languages at the same time and are therefore somewhat slower in their acquisition of German. Few people see the advantage of them then being fluent in two or three languages as adults. Too little consideration is given to this, too much attention is paid to the deficits.
In the case of sign language, we need to reach out to the deaf community and learn their language too, otherwise integration won't work. It would be great for everyone involved if this could happen in bilingual schools. Much more could be done to make lessons multilingual, whether it's sign language, Turkish, Arabic or Serbian.
