In this presentation we will claim that teaching sign language to everyone is not a solution for a small linguistic community. Instead we propose a different approach for Icelandic Sign Language, an Icelandic Sign Language based school in the spirit of indigenous languages.
Endangered SignLanguage. Our context is Iceland; the language is Icelandic Sign Language: 250 deaf/hard-of-hearing(DHH) people. In 2007, Iceland enacted a policy making & the first language (L1) of the DHH. However, only one Icelandic-born deaf-of-deaf person has lived in Iceland since the 19th century--i.e., for generations, all DHH learners of & have received non-native input. Recently several DHH families with other SignL1s have moved to Iceland. While these families& children are becoming proficient in & the children& other SignL1s exert additional pressure on. Also, because of signing parents/caregivers, the bilingual children have stronger signing skills than Icelandic-born children; thus, we expect yet another source of fluctuation in. In other words, Icelandic DHH children (N~15-20, various ages, various levels of proficiency, in a language more dynamic than most) do not have a stable linguistic peer group. Previous research has argued that Deaf schools offer a better educational environment for DHH children because they create social enclaves. However, these cannot happen without peers; thus, one might argue for a linguistic-access-to-all solution.Claim: We show that the social isolation problem currently remains insurmountable: (1)despite the law, Icelandic policies align with the medical model of deafness, (2)Teacher-Education curriculum lacks information or requirements regarding delivery of instruction/assessment bimodally, (3)considering Icelanders; linguistic attitudes, adding another language to the national curriculum amounts to replacement of another subject/language, which carries socio-political implications.Solution: We recommend &-based language school(s) with curricula aligned with Indigenous Methodologies. This move enables the community (DHH and not) to self-select members (based on criteria other than hearing), dictate curricular prerogatives, and drive teacher training, and language documentation. It also aims to grow the linguistic community, which addresses endangerment/survivance. Finally, such immersion-based schools have potential to create a pipeline of (bimodal-)bilingual professionals and grow a generation that sees deafness from a non-medical standpoint.
