From Teaching Deaf Children to Sign Language Research in Norway

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• From Teaching Deaf Children to Sign Language Research in Norway
• Marit Vogt-Svendsen (bio)

Introduction

The motivation for starting with sign language research probably started in my childhood in the 1950s and early 1960s. I was born in Italy where my father was a vicar in the Norwegian seamen's church in Genova, but we came home to Norway when I was two years old. Then, I grew up in Oslo at a home for deaf and deafblind adults with special needs, the Home for the Deaf (Hjemmet for Døve, today called Signo, Conrad Svendsen Centre), where my father was assistant to the director. Since my father was also a vicar for the deaf, my brothers and I occasionally followed him when he gave sermons in the deaf church or visited associations and schools at Christmas, bazaars, etc. As a youth, I occasionally joined the youth club for deaf people in Oslo. In all these environments where deaf children, youngsters, and adults were gathered, I saw the same thing: Deaf people communicated and understood each other very well. I never doubted that sign language was language on an equal footing with spoken language. My childhood experiences gave me an intuitive understanding for free.

At the Home for the Deaf, as I remember, there was a basic respect for sign language. Through discussions I witnessed, I eventually understood that there were disagreements between this institution and the [End Page 452] schools for the deaf when it came to the acceptance of sign language. I was upset. How could anyone think that sign language was poor and primitive, not a proper language, and should not be used in schools when it was that language deaf persons had access to in normal communication contexts? To me, the debate seemed incomprehensible. I remember discussing this with my father as an early teenager He completely agreed with my arguments. The very first incentive for working with deaf people and sign language was founded.

Becoming a Teacher for Deaf Children

Although I grew up at the Home for the Deaf, my sign language skills were limited. I knew some signs and could make myself understood in simple conversations, but I did not understand all conversations between deaf people. When deaf people signed to me, they adapted their language to my limitations and used a combination of sign and speech. I experienced the same with the pupils at the school for deaf children in Oslo, Skådalen school, where I started as a teacher in 1972, just after finishing my general teacher training. At that time, the job required no sign language competence. I was told to speak and point and use as few signs as possible during the lessons. It must be added that the school for the deaf in Trondheim was probably more sign language-friendly than the one in Oslo. At the Skådalen school, if I had to use a sign, it had to be simultaneous with the spoken word, so that "the pupils could learn Norwegian." They had to lipread. Likewise, the education of teachers of the deaf had a strong emphasis on the spoken language and a lack of information about sign language as a full-fledged language. This was also the policy at the Norwegian Institute of Special Education, also called the Advanced Teacher Training College of Special Education (Statens spesiallærerhøgskole), where I studied when on leave from Skådalen from 1973 to 75. There was no sign language training, but we did receive a limited number of hours where we learned some single signs.

Experiences with Signed Norwegian

Beyond the 1970s, it was obvious that the pupils did not learn Norwegian well enough, either orally or in writing, by using mainly Norwegian in the classroom. Like in several countries, an attempt [End Page 453] was made to make spoken language visible by adding signs to all the words. Teachers and the Norwegian Association of the Deaf (Norges Døveforbund, henceforth NDF) agreed to build a system that followed the spoken language word for word. This so-called "new sign language" was eventually called Signed Norwegian (tegnspråknorsk). It deviated from Norwegian Sign Language (henceforth NSL) with...