{"title":"The Officialisation of South African Sign Language: Implications for Place-Name Planning","authors":"Theodorus du Plessis","doi":"10.1080/10228195.2020.1825515","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The South African Parliament’s Constitutional Review Committee recommended in 2017 that South African Sign Language (SASL) be declared the country’s 12th official language and that the Constitution be amended accordingly. Since the officialisation of a language entails its routinised use in official language domains and functions, one would expect this to be applicable to SASL. This would include, among other things, place-name standardisation, given the fact that place naming in signed languages is generally authentic and that written place names are consequently often renamed in signed languages. Using SASL as an alternative official language becomes challenging from a place-name planning point of view. This article considers place-name policy in South Africa in juxtaposition to the unique conventions regarding place naming in signed languages in general. The challenges regarding an inclusive approach to place-naming policy that accommodates the Deaf community are illustrated and recommendations are made regarding future place-name planning.","PeriodicalId":43882,"journal":{"name":"Language Matters","volume":"51 1","pages":"66 - 86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language Matters","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10228195.2020.1825515","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Abstract The South African Parliament’s Constitutional Review Committee recommended in 2017 that South African Sign Language (SASL) be declared the country’s 12th official language and that the Constitution be amended accordingly. Since the officialisation of a language entails its routinised use in official language domains and functions, one would expect this to be applicable to SASL. This would include, among other things, place-name standardisation, given the fact that place naming in signed languages is generally authentic and that written place names are consequently often renamed in signed languages. Using SASL as an alternative official language becomes challenging from a place-name planning point of view. This article considers place-name policy in South Africa in juxtaposition to the unique conventions regarding place naming in signed languages in general. The challenges regarding an inclusive approach to place-naming policy that accommodates the Deaf community are illustrated and recommendations are made regarding future place-name planning.
期刊介绍：
The purpose of Language Matters is to provide a journal of international standing with a unique African flavour focusing on multilingualism in Africa. Although the journal contributes to the language debate on all African languages, sub-Saharan Africa and issues related to multilingualism in the southern African context are the journal’s specific domains. The journal seeks to promote the dissemination of ideas, points of view, teaching strategies and research on different aspects of African languages, providing a forum for discussion on the whole spectrum of language usage and debate in Africa. The journal endorses a multidisciplinary approach to the study of language and welcomes contributions not only from sociolinguists, psycholinguists and the like, but also from educationalists, language practitioners, computer analysts, engineers or scholars with a genuine interest in and contribution to the study of language. All contributions are critically reviewed by at least two referees. Although the general focus remains on multilingualism and related issues, one of the three issues of Language Matters published each year is a special thematic edition on Language Politics in Africa. These special issues embrace a wide spectrum of language matters of current relevance in Southern Africa.
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