The Officialisation of South African Sign Language: Implications for Place-Name Planning

IF 0.5 3区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Language Matters Pub Date : 2020-09-01 DOI:10.1080/10228195.2020.1825515

Theodorus du Plessis

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.

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南非手语的官方化:对地名规划的影响

摘要南非议会宪法审查委员会在2017年建议将南非手语（SASL）宣布为该国的第12种官方语言，并对宪法进行相应修订。由于一种语言的官方化意味着它在官方语言领域和功能中的常规使用，人们希望这适用于SASL。这将包括地名标准化，因为手语地名通常是真实的，因此书面地名经常用手语重命名。从地名规划的角度来看，使用SASL作为一种替代官方语言变得具有挑战性。本文将南非的地名政策与手语中关于地名的独特惯例放在一起。阐述了适应聋人社区的包容性地名命名政策面临的挑战，并就未来的地名规划提出了建议。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Language Matters Multiple-

CiteScore

1.20

自引率

0.00%

发文量

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.