Rowley, Kate; Cormier, Kearsy; (2023) Attitudes towards age variation and language change in the British deaf community. Language & Communication , 92 pp. 15-32. 10.1016/j.langcom.2023.06.001.

Text Rowley and Cormier 2023 pre proof version.pdf Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 28 June 2025. Download (1MB)

Abstract

There are age-related differences in signers of British Sign Language (BSL) and evidence that BSL is changing. Here we explore attitudes of BSL signers towards age-related differences and language change. We studied interview data from the BSL Corpus (Schembri et al., 2014) from 80 signers from four regions in the U.K. We carried out a thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke (2006) on responses to questions related to age variation and language change. Findings reveal signers were aware of variation and change in BSL, which also align with linguistic behaviour. Some variation and change was deemed more acceptable than others, e.g. signs for new concepts. Other changes were seen as a threat to BSL's vitality. We explore these attitudes, looking particularly at language endangerment and vitality within minority languages.

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