Tsung-Lun Alan Wan: In your book, your discussion of signing songs really stood out to me. From my experience in Taiwan, signed songs are a highly contested genre. Historically, when the Taiwanese government attempted to erase regional variation in Taiwan Sign Language, they hired hearing experts and special education teachers to compile sign-language dictionaries, including books of signed songs (!), which were then criticized as promoting signed Chinese rather than Taiwan Sign Language by the signing community.
In many hearing-led signed-song performances, lyrics are translated word by word into signs, handshapes are modified for choreography, and signs are sometimes invented for aesthetic effect. As a result, these performances may become unintelligible to deaf people, while allowing hearing performers to enjoy a form of supposed sign language that overlooks deaf perspectives and sign-language conventions. In contrast, the work of some deaf artists in Taiwan seems much closer to what you describe in your book: they begin from the meaning of the lyrics, select appropriate signs, and then adapt them rhythmically and aesthetically to the music, but this is not as popular as those led by hearing and circulated among hearing people.
For readers outside the U.S. who may not be familiar with the American context of signed songs, could you share why you chose translation/interpretation in signed songs as a research topic? What made this genre theoretically or ethnographically important for you?
Kristin Snoddon: Thank you for sharing these insights and experiences from the Taiwan context. I did not know about the government’s attempts to erase regional variations of Taiwanese Sign Language. To understand how signed songs can provoke controversy, it may be important to consider how sign languages are often viewed as a means to an end–a translation–that also functions as a vessel to convey something–such as signed Chinese and cultural artefacts from hearing communities like music. It’s another issue as to how signed Chinese (like signed English) is often presented as a standard, hegemonic language variety when so much that makes sign languages intelligible to deaf people is missing from manually coded Chinese and English.
The artist whom I interviewed in my book, Robert Bhola, had disparaging words to say about many hearing-led signed-song performances. But as you say, some hearing people–who are apparently the majority of song signers on the Internet–enjoy creating and consuming this work. I do not think deaf people in general are usually as interested in signing songs or viewing signed translations of popular music–but this can also be culture-specific, and many deaf people enjoy various forms of musical participation.
When I began to explore the topic of deaf interpreters and sign language ideologies, musical translation in signed songs was a research topic that inspired me, because I found Robert’s work–like that of other deaf and hard of hearing song signers like Rosa Lee Timm–to be inspiring. This was due not only to the artist’s sign language proficiency but also to being able to convey the essential message contained in a song. This makes the signed song an artistic creation in its own right. In my book, deaf interpreters are presented as exceptional facilitators of intelligibility. With signing songs, this extends to making intelligible what might otherwise be inaccessible and beyond ordinary language, such as the tone and instrumentals of a song. Theoretically and ethnographically, I was interested in the struggle to cross borders when there are sensory asymmetries and unequal access to semiotic resources. To make something intelligible, you need to understand what is intelligible to the other person–to know something about what it is like to live in that person’s body. I do not think the message always gets through, maybe because the other person also needs to be willing and open to receive it.
Tsung-Lun Alan Wan: I really like the phrasing: “the struggle to cross borders.” It made me think of a point you make in the book: that some hearing people assume communication with deaf people must be mediated by a sign language interpreter, while in some situations, other modalities such as email and the chat box during a video meeting may allow for a more direct form of interaction between deaf and hearing interlocutors. I had previously tended to assume that, compared with writing things down, communicating through a sign language interpreter would be a more respectful way for hearing people to interact with deaf signers. But your discussion helped me see that, what matters may be whether the hearing interlocutor is willing to participate in the struggle of crossing borders with “sensory asymmetries and unequal access to semiotic resources”.
This also reminds me of a small scene I recently witnessed in Taiwan. A deaf mother was ordering food at a bento shop. The staff at the counter took out paper and a pen, assuming that she would need to write down her order. The customer signed “troublesome” in TSL, which the staff obviously did not understand. Then the customer pointed directly to the items on the menu. At that moment, the staff seemed to realize that, within that semiotic environment, the deaf customer did not need paper and writing at all. The menu itself, pointing, and the shared material setting were already sufficient for communication.
I found this small moment of boundary negotiation very interesting. It seems to show that communication access is not always about introducing an additional mediating tool or person. Sometimes it is about recognizing and learning to use the semiotic resources that are already available in the interactional environment, hence a collaborative way of doing communication. Would you say that this is a fair reading of your argument?
Kristin Snoddon: I agree that it can often appear more respectful to the deaf person to communicate via a sign language interpreter, and indeed it is often the default mode of communication for deaf academics working with hearing colleagues and students. However, some of my favourite moments have taken place when the hearing interlocutor–such as a student, faculty colleague, or an audience member during a presentation–understands me, and I understand them, and we exchange ideas even when the interpreter does not know what we are talking about. I think this can also be a mark of successful interpretation since the interpreter does not manage the discussion. As John Lee Clark said to me once, we should try and hear what lives beyond translation and what lives in the gaps.
The scene with the deaf mother ordering food resonates with me–while it was kind and well meaning of the staff to offer a paper and pen, it is much quicker to point at a menu. I think there is also a point to be made here about distantism–what John calls a standing apart, an insistence on adhering to normative communication via sight and hearing. In the scene you describe, the pen and paper offered a more detached, formal, and logocentric way of communicating that appears almost circumlocutory as compared to simply pointing at a menu.
So I agree with you about communication access and efficiency, and making use of resources in the environment to achieve immediate goals. Part of making this work is collaborative–what Mara Green refers to as the willingness to co-construct meaning when there are sensory asymmetries. The other part is creative–seeing how to make use of the affordances of objects and instruments that another person who typically faces fewer communication barriers may not have previously realized were latent in the environment.
Tsung-Lun Alan Wan: Yes, distantism seems to be a very important entry point here, and it was one of the concepts in your book that felt truly illuminating to me. I agree that distantism speaks to many of the issues you discuss in the book, including the possibility of more direct collaborative communication rather than a more circumlocutory form of mediation through a third material object (or person). This also connects to the third part of your book on ethnography at Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. There, the focus seems to move away from translating music into signed song and toward a more direct experience of music through fleeting vibration, touch, movement, and affect. You frame this partly in terms of epistemology, which seems to suggest that how we define certain forms of interaction as more direct, and others as “standing apart,” is itself grounded in culturally specific understandings.
This makes me curious about the role of modality here. Is modality as decisive as the formulation of distantism, with its critique of the dominance of sight and hearing, might seem to suggest?
I once met a young deaf-blind man at a disability studies forum in Taipei. When he introduced himself to me, he explained to me that he could not see sign language, so he didn’t think about learning it. I mentioned that tactile signing has been developing in the United States, but he did not seem especially interested. For him, it was more desirable to have hearing people speak into a microphone, have their speech converted into text through AI speech recognition, and then enlarge that text on his iPad screen so that he could still read it (also the way he received language from me).
In this case, he seemed to believe having our interaction mediated by AI speech recognition and a tablet interface is a more direct way of communication, compared to involving a third party human interpreter (it is also likely because he has never experienced tactile signing, so for him of course it is more distant). This makes me wonder how we can take seriously the problem of “standing apart” without assuming in advance that certain modalities are necessarily more direct, more intimate, or more connecting?
Kristin Snoddon: I agree there is a potential tension between the critique of distantism and that of autonomy in communication. The critique of distantism arises in the context of deafblind communicative practices, where there has been a movement to foreground direct experience and contact instead of trying to emulate normative communication. In this case, normative communication has often meant communication through a sign language interpreter because this is a normal practice in sighted deaf communities–many deafblind people are or have been part of deaf communities prior to losing their vision. The Protactile community in the USA arose in the context of deafblind community members having to talk with each other through interpreters and not being able to communicate directly. For direct communication with each other, they needed a language based on touch, which is Protactile. So I agree this is a culturally specific understanding of distantism that privileges tactile (and olfactory) modalities, including proprioception, over sight and hearing. Many social norms for appropriate behaviour and language needed to be overcome in order for this understanding to arise.
But the point of anti-distantism arguments is to claim residence in the world as an autonomous being, despite these social norms that govern human behaviour and language. I advance this critique of distantism in my book when writing about deaf people’s direct experience of music at Trinidad Carnival instead of via a song signer or interpreter–the latter is also a logocentric orientation toward music and understanding compared to being immersed in the experience of Carnival. So I would argue that the young man you describe is acting in accord with an anti-distantist view that supports autonomy if he is choosing to communicate using speech-to-text technology. There is no right or wrong way to use language as long as it works for us.
There is a social movement to share Protactile with deafblind community members and interpreters or co-navigators through training workshops because learning Protactile opens up communication for many people. I know that encountering signing deaf communities and learning sign language changed my entire life. However, there needs to be an opportunity and an incentive to learn a new language and modality for communication.
Tsung-Lun Alan Wan: The final question — in the last part of your book, you discuss how the intersection of deafness and queer identity may further marginalize gay deaf people in Trinidad and Tobago, especially when hearing sign language interpreters may refuse to interpret LGBTQ+ content because of their homophobic beliefs. You also show how PT, a deaf Caribbean interpreter, intervenes in this situation and also does work translating LGBTQ+ identity terms for the local LGBTQ+ deaf community. I found this to be a powerful example of linguistic flourishing, one of the core concepts in your book. We know that, in neurodiversity advocacy, there is more and more discussion on flourishing in relation to individual well-being and the creation of conditions that allow neurodivergent people to live well. It is nice to see linguistic flourishing theorized from the perspective of deaf epistemology. Could you say more about how you understand linguistic flourishing in relation to “being understood”? What might this concept allow applied linguistics to see or ask differently, and how would you like the field to engage with it further?
Kristin Snoddon: I am glad that you recognized the presence of linguistic flourishing in this chapter through sign language practices related to Trinbagonian LGBTQI+ identities. In some ways, this chapter was the most difficult for me to write with respect to my positionality as someone who is an outsider to Caribbean and LGBTQI+ communities (not to mention deaf interpreter communities, since I am not a DI). The issues of positionality and difference are fundamentally related to understanding because there are central aspects of identity and experience that we can never understand firsthand if we do not share a particular social identity and lived experience with someone else. At the same time, I believe there is a common desire to be understood, including by people who are different from us, which may be felt more by those whose experiences are minoritized. This includes understanding our own experiences as part of a process of self-actualization.
Experiences of not being understood and of communication barriers are a central part of deaf lives. Because these experiences and barriers shape language practices, I would like the field of applied linguistics to engage with them further by exploring their impacts when there are sensory asymmetries. In the context of deaf epistemology, linguistic flourishing happens when there is an anticipation that what we are saying–in whatever form this takes–will be understood. In the chapter, PT describes learning a language to identify and express their own experiences as a queer person, and how this in turn opens up the possibility for new experiences and ways of building identity. But these processes rely on having access to alliances and coalitions with various kinds of people that can support flourishing.
CaMP Anthropology 