Deaf people with “no language”: Mobility and flexible accumulation in languaging practices of deaf people in Cambodia

Erin Moriarty Harrelson

doi:10.1515/applirev-2017-0081

Article

Deaf people with “no language”: Mobility and flexible accumulation in languaging practices of deaf people in Cambodia

Erin Moriarty Harrelson

Published/Copyright: October 21, 2017

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Submit Manuscript Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Applied Linguistics Review Volume 10 Issue 1

Abstract

Deaf people in Cambodia are often represented in the media as lacking language but in reality, deaf people’s repertoires and communicative practices challenge essentialisms regarding modalities and conventional understandings of “language.” Drawing on fieldwork in Cambodia, this article examines how notions of an urban/rural dichotomy devalue the communicative practices of rural deaf people. These ideologies marginalize the creative deployment of various modalities by deaf people in everyday languaging that are not commonly indexed as parts of a linguistic repertoire. Communicative practices such as drawing a picture to communicate, gestures, the use of physical objects such as city maps are devalued because academics and lay people tend to have rigid conceptualizations of language. This article calls for closer attention to modalities such as gestures, the drawing of pictures and the use of physical objects in everyday languaging to interrogate how the “invention” of languages results in distinctions between groups and individuals, especially in terms of access to linguistic resources such as a national signed language and perceptions about the use of modalities other than signing or speaking. In NGO narratives, often echoed by deaf Cambodians themselves, deaf people acquire a signed language only after rural-urban migration, which misrepresents their communicative competencies and creative use of linguistic resources. In reality, deaf people’s linguistic repertoires are constantly expanding as they enter new spaces, resulting in the flexible accumulation of languaging practices and modalities.

Keywords: translanguaging; signed languages; multimodality

References

Blommaert, Jan. 2008. Language, asylum and the national order. Urban Language and Literacies 50. 2–21.10.1086/600131Search in Google Scholar

Blommaert, Jan & Ad Backus. 2013. Superdiverse repertoires and the individual. Current challenges for Educational Studies. In I. De Saint-Georges & J. J. Weber (eds.), Multilingualism and multimodality: Current challenges for educational studies, 11–32. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.10.1007/978-94-6209-266-2_2Search in Google Scholar

Bourdieu, Pierre & Loic J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An invitation to reflexive sociology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Search in Google Scholar

Branson, Jan & Don Miller. 2007. Beyond ‘language’: Linguistic imperialism, sign languages, and linguistic anthropology. In Sinfree Makoni & Alastair Pennycook (eds.), Disinventing and reconstituting languages, 116–134. Great Britain: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781853599255-007Search in Google Scholar

Busch, Brigitta. 2015. Urban language and literacies: The lived experience of language. linguistic repertoire and Spracherleben, the lived experience of language. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies 148. London, UK.10.1093/applin/amv030Search in Google Scholar

Canagarajah, Suresh. 2013. Translingual practice: Global Englishes and cosmopolitan relations. London & New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203120293Search in Google Scholar

Creese, Angela & Adrian Blackledge. 2015. Translanguaging and identity in educational settings. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 35. 20–35.10.1017/S0267190514000233Search in Google Scholar

Davis, Erik. 2016. Deathpower: Buddhism’s ritual imagination in Cambodia. New York: Columbia University Press.10.7312/davi16918Search in Google Scholar

Derks, Annike. 2008. Khmer women on the move: Exploring work and life in urban Cambodia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.10.21313/hawaii/9780824831288.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Goldin-Meadow, Susan. 2003. The resilience of language: What gesture creation in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language. New York: Psychology Press.Search in Google Scholar

Green, Elizabeth Mara. 2014. Building the tower of Babel: International Sign, linguistic commensuration, and moral orientation. Language in Society 43. 445–465.10.1017/S0047404514000396Search in Google Scholar

Gumperz, John J. 1964. Linguistic and social interaction in two communities. American Anthropologist 66(6). 137–153.10.1525/aa.1964.66.suppl_3.02a00100Search in Google Scholar

Heller, Monica, Adam Jaworski & Crispin Thurlow. 2014. Introduction: Sociolinguistics and tourism. Journal of Sociolinguistics 18(4). 425–458.10.1111/josl.12091Search in Google Scholar

Hutt, David. 2016. Shifting idylls: Urban-rural dynamics in Cambodia. The Diplomat. http://thediplomat.com/2016/12/shifting-idylls-urban-rural-dynamics-in-cambodia/ (accessed 10 December 2016).Search in Google Scholar

Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511807572Search in Google Scholar

Kusters, Annelies. 2015. Deaf space in Adamorobe: An ethnographic study of a village in Ghana. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.10.2307/j.ctv2rh28wpSearch in Google Scholar

Kusters, Annelies, Max Spotti, Ruth Swanwick & Elina Tapio. 2017. Beyond languages, beyond modalities: Transforming the study of semiotic repertoires. International Journal of Multilingualism 14(3). 219–232.10.1080/14790718.2017.1321651Search in Google Scholar

Makoni, Sinfree & Alastair Pennycook (eds.). 2007. Disinventing and reconstituting languages. In Disinventing And Reconstituting Languages, 1–41. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781853599255-003Search in Google Scholar

Meir, Irit, Wendy Sandler, Carol Padden & Mark Arono. 2010. Emerging sign languages. In Mark Marschark & Patricia E. Spencer (eds.), Oxford handbook of Deaf Studies, language, and education, 267–280. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195390032.013.0018Search in Google Scholar

Ministry of Planning (MoP). 2012. Migration in Cambodia: Report of the Cambodian Rural Urban Migration Project (CRUMP). Phnom Penh: Ministry of Planning.Search in Google Scholar

Moriarty Harrelson, Erin 2017. Regimes of mobilities: Deaf development, NGOs and deaf tourism in Cambodia. Washington, DC: American University dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Nepveux, Denise & Emily Smith Beitiks. 2010. Producing African disability through documentary film: Emmanuel’s gift and moja moja. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 4(3). 237–254.10.3828/jlcds.2010.21Search in Google Scholar

Nyst, Victoria, Kara Sylla & Moustapha Magassouba. 2012. Deaf signers in the Dogon, a rural area in Mali. In Ulrike Zeshan & Conny de Vos (eds.), Sign languages in village communities: Anthropological and linguistic insights. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9781614511496.251Search in Google Scholar

Otheguy, Ricardo, Ofelia García & Wallis Reid. 2015. Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review 6(3). 281–307.10.1515/applirev-2015-0014Search in Google Scholar

Pennycook, Alastair. 2010. Language as local practice. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203846223Search in Google Scholar

Pennycook, Alastair, 2016. Spatial repertoires and multimodal translanguaging. Paper presented at Translanguaging And Repertoires Across Signed and Spoken Languages: Insights From Linguistic Ethnographies in (Super)Diverse Contexts at Max Planack Institute, Göttingen, Germany, 20–21 June.Search in Google Scholar

Pennycook, Alistair & Emi Otsuji. 2014. Metrolingual multitasking and spatial repertoires: ‘Pizza mo two minutes coming’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 18(2). 161–184.10.1111/josl.12079Search in Google Scholar

Wei, Li. 2010. Moment analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics 43(5). 1222–1235.10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.035Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2017-10-21

Published in Print: 2019-02-25

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2017-0081

Keywords for this article

translanguaging; signed languages; multimodality