Promotion of sign language research by the African Deaf community:

Cases in West and Central French-speaking Africa

Abstract

This article is based on a draft of the joint plenary talk by the two authors at the 8th World Congress of African Linguistics (WOCAL8) held on 23 August 2015 at Kyoto University, Japan. In Part 1, Kamei, a Japanese hearing cultural anthropologist, reports the general situation of sign languages in West and Central Africa. Although most of the countries in these areas use French as their official language, we observed the influence of the American Sign Language (ASL) vocabulary. Historically, Andrew J. Foster, a Deaf AfricanAmerican pastor, and his Deaf African colleagues conducted missionary activities. Through their activities after the independence of African countries in the 1960s, urban Deaf communities created a new creole sign language using the ASL vocabulary, written/spoken French, and African indigenous signs. We recognize that it is not a dialect of ASL, but an independent sign language created by African Deaf communities. This article proposes a new name for this language: “Langue des Signes d’Afrique Francophone (LSAF)”. In Part 2, Yédê, a Deaf researcher and sign language instructor in Côte d’Ivoire, presents his experience with collaborative research in West Africa. In 2009, we started research training workshops for Deaf people in Côte d’Ivoire and established a Deaf research team. It has already published the first sign language dictionary in this country and textbooks in Togo, Burkina Faso, and Niger. If Deaf people continue to be the “signing models” for hearing researchers, the research cannot continue when the researchers leave. However, if Deaf people are well trained and become “researchers” themselves, they can continue to study and use the results of research to advocate for linguistic rights for the Deaf. In conclusion, we show future perspectives for autonomous and united research collaborations among local Deaf research teams in West and Central Africa.