With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Barbara LeMaster will conduct 15 months of research on a rare and dying form of gendered Irish Sign Language (ISL) used in Dublin, Ireland. In one segment of the Dublin deaf community, the native vocabularies for women (born before 1929) and men (born before 1944) are so different that they can impair communication on the most mundane of topics. For example, men and women have different signs for everyday terms such as 'cat,' 'Monday,' 'night,' 'red,' 'carry,' and so on. These varieties emerged from sex-segregated education at two residential deaf schools in Dublin.
The goal of this 15-month project is to isolate all female and male signs in an existing data set, then to identify intra- and inter-gender variants to determine the extent of gender-marking in this variety of ISL. Documentation of gendered Irish Sign Language is important for a number of reasons. First, no documented language, whether spoken or signed, has as extreme gender differences as this one. Second, the users, particularly of the female form, are aging, and there are only a few native signers left to consult. Third, unlike other gender different situations, these gender varieties are the product of language socialization experiences that completely segregated females and males - as though deaf girls and boys grew up on separate islands. Perhaps most importantly, this research provides foundational data for the future production of a dictionary of gendered ISL, and for any current and future work tracking the dissemination of these gendered signs, and their meanings over time. Fortunately, the current technologies enable better ways than ever before to study, record and preserve this rare and rapidly disappearing language for historical, cultural, and linguistic merit.
